OK, so let me see if I have this right. The Chicago Blackhawks fired — excuse me, demoted — GM Dave Tallon yesterday after a season in which they posted 103 points the most the franchise has had since 1993, their first playoff appearance since 2002 and their first playoff series win (two of them, in fact) since 1996. And Tallon, for all intents and purposes, was the architect of this team since his appointment to GM in June 2005. A team that was one series away from the Finals and is absolutely bursting at the seams with young talent that should hang around for years to come and steadily make this team a perennial contender.
So, excuse me for being blunt but what the fuck happened?
Over the last week or so, the Hawks had some contract issues. There was a big mishap you may have heard about that where the Hawks may have misfiled some paper work to five of their RFAs which would have made all the players all UFAs. That would have been a huge error, but it seems that all will workout. And then there was the odd departure of Martin Havlat — a fan favorite — who was reportedly only offered a one-year extension and said that the franchise gave up on him. In fact Havlat, who signed with the Wild earlier this month, defended Tallon and went after other administrative members of the organization.
And now, after all of this, Stan Bowman — the son of one of the senior advisors of the Hawks — is now the GM. Sure, giving Tallon the axe after the loss of Havlat and the mix up with their RFAs is easy. But he filled holes by singing Marian Hossa to a long-term deal. And for a guy that put together a team of this calibre out of what was literally nothing it’s hard to not cut the guy some slack. So what’s going on and why was the fix in on Tallon in Chicago? Is this a Bowman family takeover? I, for one, will drink the conspiracy kool aid.
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