It’s the first week of May and Hawks fans are, for the most part, right where they wanted to be. That place of course is in a second round series with a very legitimate shot to win the Cup. For some reason though, the only question running through my mind is, “How much of this success can we attribute to the brilliant minds of the Bowman family?” For me, I say little to none. In fact, I feel like our new GM and his father have caused this path to Lord Stanley to be much rockier than any Hawks fan pictured it being. Let me explain…
As a fan I’m not fully aware of the efforts being made, but my first big question is why did the Hawk’s not make a very serious push for Ilya Kovalchuk? Everyone is aware of the fact that the Hawks need to shed some salary to stay under the cap for next season. What’s the best way to do this you ask? How about a rental player? And not just any rental player, how about a former number 1 draft pick who is at his prime and also top ten in points for the past ten seasons?
Big swing and miss here by the Hawk’s brass if you ask me. All it would have taken to land Ilya was Barker (who I will get to in a moment), Versteeg, and Skille. In my mind you’re absolutely insane not to think the Hawk’s would have been exponentially better with Hossa and Kovy on the second line and Kris Versteeg golfing somewhere in Atlanta.
So your next thought is, “Yea, that seems okay, but we would have had to give up Barker too.” But guess what, we lost him too!!! For nothing!!! In another genius move (although this one is a move and not a non-move that I’m complaining about), Bowman traded Barker for an injured Kim Johnsson. I will admit that if Johnsson was in the lineup right now I would have little beef with this decision. But the fact of the matter is that Johnsson is nowhere to be found. What is his injury even? In the few games he did suit up I never saw him take an injury that would sideline him for a substantial period of time. He had to have come over hurt from Minnesota.
All things considered, it leaves the Hawks in the playoffs minus a top 4 d-man. This has put extra pressure on the offense to perform because the back end is not capable of playing as well as it did in the first 50 games of the season.
So I leave you with this simple food for thought. As the Blackhawks head into Vancouver tied at 1, whose team would you rather have taking the ice Wednesday night? My team with Ilya Kovalchuk and no Cam Barker, or the Bowman Brain Trust’s with simply no Cam Barker???
7 comments:
I would take the Hawks plus Mike Modano
Haha I would too, maybe next year.
Allow me to dive right into the Hawkey Talk here. As I understand it, and my sources - while great - are not always perfect, Kim Johnsson's career may very well be over. While they continue to list his injury as an "upper body injury", I understand it to be a very serious concussion which, when coupled with past injuries such as this, may very well spell "The End" for this talented Blackhawk.
Back to the much bigger issues surrounding the Bowmans though. After Dale Tallon was shown the door, how could they not put him back into the broadcast booth? Ahhhh thinking back of the ol' Pat Foley / Dale Tallon broadcasts of games from the Ol' Chicago Stadium - they almost erased the memory of when WGN Televison Channel Nine tried to replace the irreplacable Lloyd Petit with Mr. Lame Ass himself - Jim West. Yes folks - here we had a legend of Chicago broadcasting who decided to marry the sole heir to the Joseph Schlitz Estate and move to Milwaukee (and almost landed the Milwaukee Admirals as an NHL franchise) being replaced by some dopey ex-Baltimore Oriole play by play guy who would drone on and on in the following manner:
"There's Nesterenko with the puck, he headmans it over to Maki, Maki headmans it over to Hull, Hull shoots - OOOOOOOOOOH he didn't get enough mustard behind that one - Brad Park comes up with the rebound and headmans it to Pete Stemkowski who tried to headman it over to Walt Tzchuk but put too much mustard behind it..."
After listening to that guy for five minutes you couldn't figure out if you were listening to a Blackhawks game, or if this was some sort of reality radio show involving a "Head Man" putting mustard on eveyone's behind.
He was terrible, but possibly still not the worst. In the mid to late 1960's The Great One - Lloyd Petit - was saddled with none other than "The Good Kid" himself - Lou Boudreau. Now what Lou Boudreau was doing in a radio booth at a hockey game is anybody's guess, and they then replaced Boudreau with "The Commander" Bob Elston, who could never quite figure out how the hell to tell how much time was left in the period, or penalty - or anything for that matter. You see - if his infinite frugal wisdom, Arthur M. Wirtz (father of William, grandfather of Rocky) decided that it would be better to keep the ol' analog clocks in service until such point as absolutely nobody in the Ol' Stadium could tell how much time was left. Honestly I don't think they had a digital clock (the kind that counts down using numbers as opposed to dials moving upon a face) until around 1975 or so (I bet they couldn't locate replacement parts anymore) - but by that time it was too late. Petit had left, and Jim West was slinging mustard all over everyone's behind.
Now I know this next paragraph my be a little off target, but when Jim West invaded the Cubs broadcast booth, he would sometimes need a fillin because of his hockey committments. His replacement? Possibly the most boring, nasally broadcaster in Chicago sports history - Lynn Johnson. The man even admitted he was horrible - ON THE AIR.
But that's a story for anotehr day.
Maybe me and you should team up King Xerxes, then we could have a better team and a better broadcast! We wouldn't have to listen to Olczyk say "Now for all you young hockey players out there, I want you to take a look at...." Every time they put a video on the telestrator.
Not a bad idea at all.
Maybe we could start by broadcasting the Perfectos on KMOX. Nobody listens to them anyway - and we certainly couldn't be worse than the rasping Mike Shannon.
Fox should hire Hawk and DJ, Mike Shannon, and team them up with Joe Buck and we could see how quickly baseball becomes the least popular sport in America!
Actually a better idea might be to have the ineffective Obama Administration create a position known as "Mr. Know It All". Now unlike Mr. Know It All from Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons, this Mr. Know It All would be none other than Ken "The Hawk" Harrelson himself.
Mr. Know It All would be given a 12 hour per day television time slot over all the networks (the FCC could force this upon us), and from 8am to 8pm every single day of the year, we'd be treated to the down home, folksy wisdom of Ol' Hawk as he covered such topics as:
1. "Mercy, the new 58% tax rate is reasonable"
2. "I love Barack Obama"
3. "Ol' Frank Howard Sure Could Hit"
4. "Why Those Books Needed to be Burned"
5. "The Western North Dakota Re-Education Camps"
6. "These Kids Were Only a Drag on Society"
7. "We Have to Step in When Old People Get Sick"
8. "Worship Me - I Am the All Seeing Hawk"
Mike Shannon could be his sidekick spitting out such great Shannonisms as "Uhhhh", "Ugh", "Eeh" until he himself mysterously dissappears during the seventeenth year of the Obama presidency.
Yep - Ol' Hawk would just keep dishin' out a heapin' helpin' of that good ol' country corn.
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