Exhibit A: Why I Don't Want To Trade Toews Or Kane

I saw that lineup and wanted to puke immediately. A friend who is no longer a friend sent it to me out of the blue and ruined my day so now I am ruining yours by sharing. This though...this right here is why the Blackhawks shouldn't go down the path of trading everyone if they don't have to because what is behind door #2 isn't going to be a carbon copy of what we just had. I think we have a generation of fans who grew up on Toews, Kane, Keith, Sharp, Hossa, etc and they think that by pushing those guys out the door the Blackhawks will find their replacements. That is just NOT the case. It doesn't work that way and I think that is part of the divide in the fanbase and specifically my fanbase which might skew a little younger. They don't remember walking in the desert for a decade. They were born in the land of milk and honey. I don't look down at them for that, but there are no guarantees that the future will be better than the present and there is a virtually ZERO % chance that this team will rebuild around names we currently don't know and win 3 Cups in 6 years. 

A little history lesson...The Blackhawks were one of the best teams in the league in the early 90s. Won a President's Trophy. Went to a Stanley Cup Final. They were built around some GREAT players. Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, Tony Amonte, Gary Suter, Ed Belfour, Eric Daze, Bernie Nicholls, etc. The Hawks went to the conference final in 1995 and lost to an AWESOME Red Wings team that would win back to back Cups later in the decade. They lost in the semi-final in 1996 to eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche. Then that team was dismantled. Piece by piece the stars that had carried the group to a great run of success were sold off and 10 years after they lost to Colorado, years of rebuilding, netted them the roster above. Keith, Seabs, and Sharp turned out to be huge parts of the run, but they weren't acquired to be building block guys. The building block guys were supposed to be Mark Bell, Tuomo Ruutu, Cam Barker, and a dozen other guys who disappointed us. 

Time is undefeated, but that doesn't mean we should be in a hurry to walk into the dark ages again. Ride it out, retool on the fly, try to make the playoffs with a better coach, a better roster, and a revamped Hockey Ops department. We talked about this at length on Redline this week. Full Ep below