Jeff Greenberg Of The Cubs Has Been Named One Of The Three Finalists For The Blackhawks GM Job
Chicago’s GM finalists appear to be incumbent Kyle Davidson, Tampa Bay director of hockey operations Mathieu Darche and Cubs assistant GM Jeff Greenberg.
Greenberg apparently knocked it onto Waveland Avenue in his interview(s), which, I believe, led to a conversation about what it would really mean if someone with no hockey experience led your hockey operations. How would that work? What would you need around him? Would core players, potential free-agent/trade targets and fans buy in? Davidson was CEO Danny Wirtz’s favourite to begin this process, and Darche clearly impressed, too. Honestly don’t know how to handicap this one.
Well...this is something.
What are we doing here? I am getting so confused because I take statements at their word.
Danny Wirtz said that they settled on a structure that would be just a GM heading the Hockey Ops department and that GM would report to Danny directly. Danny said that he wanted that structure so there would be more accountability. I think he heard feedback on how Stan ran things and how Stan was able to spin, deceive, and blame others around him for a bloated hockey ops department that failed to get results and maintain the Championship Core built by his predecessors. That is great. Flatten the fuck out of those hierarchies. Trim the fat. Walk into your GM's office and give him a paper weight that says "the buck stops here". Love it.
Picture that it is the year 2025 and things are not getting obviously better. Danny walks into his GM's office and says "hey, what the fuck is going on?" and Greenberg simply says "don't look at me. I listened to the hockey guys in the organization. I am just here for admin. Let's fire all the guys under me". He would be justified, in my opinion, with that defense. He might be the brightest guy in the world, but you can't learn everything about hockey overnight. I suppose they could announce Greenberg and another guy or a few guys as a team, but that would contradict earlier statements made publicly. I don't mind going back and changing the dynamics of the hockey ops department and going against what was previously said, but you spent months and months coming up with that strategy and you sold people on that structure. Changing your mind to shoe horn in the baseball guy probably isn't a great look either. And that has nothing to do with Greenberg personally, because, well...I don't know anything about him.
As for Darche...what do we know about that guy? He started with Tampa Bay in 2019. So he had two Cups in two years. He wasn't there for any of the building of that roster. He was VP of Sales and Marketing for a company in Canada before joining the Lightning. Maybe he is great. But his Hockey Ops resume is very light at this point, especially when it comes to rebuilding. He has two Cups, but he might not be in the top 50 most important people in that Organization.
That leaves Davidson. Just hire him. He is his own person. He isn't Stan. He was under Norm's wing which is the place to be. Let's just hire him, win the Shane Wright lottery, and get this thing turned around.
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