The decision has been made, and both Joel Quenneville and Stan Bowman will return to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2018-19 according to team president John McDonough (via Mark Lazerus of the Chicag0 Sun-Times).
Quenneville has faced rumors over his future all season as the Blackhawks struggled, and he was even included in TSN’s latest list of coaches that could be fired on Monday. That speculation can end now that McDonough has made it clear he’ll keep the same group in place.
Chicago played spoiler to the St. Louis Blues last night, and now sit 23rd in the league with 76 points on the season. That’s easily bad enough to miss the playoffs, but won’t give them a huge chance at winning the draft lottery in a few weeks. Still, the Blackhawks haven’t picked in the top-15 of the first round in a decade, selecting Kyle Beach 11th-overall a year after taking Patrick Kane with the first-overall pick.
The question is how patient Bowman and Quenneville will be, and how patient can they even afford to be. Kane and Jonathan Toews are no longer young ascending players, and core members of their Stanley Cup teams like Brent Seabrook and Patrick Sharp are a shadow of what they once were. There is a new young wave of players in the form of Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat, but it’s not clear if they’ll be enough to crack the championship window back open in the coming years. A return to health for Corey Crawford would help, but there are problems on the Chicago blue line that would cause struggles for any goaltender.
Obviously this isn’t a rebuild situation, not with players like Toews and Kane still on monster contracts and still on the right side of 30. With that in mind, it is understandable to stick with the group that has brought you success in recent years, even if this season was a disappointing hiccup. Whether or not they’ll be able to navigate another tricky offseason and bring glory back to Chicago is unclear, but they certainly have enough experience to do so.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
So the blame is going completely on the players and assistant coaches, as usual. Wonder how this plays out over the summer?! Maybe a big trade or two coming.
Bowman is the one who needs to go
Agreed. He’s the equivalent of a trust fund kid who had his bright future all secured and handed to him on a silver platter. He didn’t draft the core, and the vast majority of his moves have been beyond questionable. The guy just seems to lack any sort of forethought, and isn’t a very good negotiator. All these guys pretty much named their price, and he accommodated. You can’t do that in hockey. Not with that pinhole-sized salary cap.
If Crawford can stay healthy and their defense actually defends, they could have a chance. But one more season like this and it’s time to clean house.
It’s easy to say “clean house” when in actuality it’s the players that need to be moved. Ironically, most can’t since they have a NMC. So until Seabrook can be moved or we somehow move Hossa’s contract…we’re kinda screwed.
Hossa’s contract doesn’t hurt that much since it can be put on LTIR when the season starts. Granted it handicaps them from making any big offseason signing/trade but it’s less of an albatross than Seabrook’s contract.
Then Hossa will have to be on LTIR for the remainder of this contract. If I’m not mistaken, even if he retires, we are still on the hook for the remainder of his amount. That whole circumventing the cap BS is what is killing us. I think it’s a dumb rule.
The problem is you have the worst of both worlds. Overpaid Vets and young talent. Bowman got burned by the new TV contract not making the cap rise as much as it should have. Seabrooks contract is horrible. Plus, the guys you have to move have no movement deals. Not expecting much to change until some deals end, sad to say