Buckle up, Blackhawks fans. As Chicago prepares to begin interviews this week for their current vacancy at General Manager, at least one big name has been confirmed as a candidate. TSN’s Darren Dreger reports that former Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli will interview for the Blackhawks’ GM job. In fact, the club sought out the experienced executive, currently the Vice President of Hockey Operations with the St. Louis Blues, and requested that he apply. Dreger adds that the interview process could move quickly with the NHL Trade Deadline approaching next month. If Chiarelli is deemed to be Chicago’s top option, he could be named leader of the front office within weeks.
Even after more than three years removed from his last GM job, Chiarelli remains a polarizing figure in the hockey community. As a young GM, he built a Stanley Cup winner (and shortly thereafter a finalist again) in Boston – and that is something that can’t be taken from him. Chiarelli built the core of that championship team from scratch and his fingerprints are still all over the current Bruins. His efforts included signing Zdeno Chara, Marc Savard, Andrew Ference, and Torey Krug; trading for Tuukka Rask, Adam McQuaid, Johnny Boychuk, Mark Recchi, Dennis Seidenberg, and Nathan Horton; and drafting Phil Kessel, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Matt Grzelcyk, Tyler Seguin, Dougie Hamilton, and David Pastrnak. However, in building a winner he also made some questionable deals that cost the Bruins Blake Wheeler, Kris Versteeg, Boychuk, and most notably Kessel and later his return, top-ten picks Seguin and Hamilton. High-value picks he dealt away turned into the likes of Rickard Rakell, Jason Dickinson, current Bruin Derek Forbort and more. Chiarelli was also wrong more often than he was right in the draft, which wasn’t helped by his willingness to give up picks.
When Chiarelli arrived in Edmonton with plans on turning the historically bad club into contenders, he walked right in to drafting Connor McDavid first overall in 2015. While the book is still out on some of Chiarelli’s later draft picks, the obvious McDavid selection was one of his few hits, with Jesse Puljujarvi, Kailer Yamamoto, and Tyler Benson hardly living up to their draft billing. Chiarelli also struggled in free agency, giving too much to old friend Lucic and unproven Mikko Koskinen while failing to provide McDavid and Leon Draisaitl with suitable wingers. Yet, what Chiarelli is most infamous for are his trades in Edmonton, with none more talked about than the Taylor Hall–Adam Larsson swap. He also sent away Justin Schultz, Jordan Eberle, and Ryan Strome in lopsided deals and gave away a first-round pick (Mathew Barzal) for Griffin Reinhart. Yet, the Oilers did improve under Chiarelli and his extensions for McDavid and Draisaitl now look like bargains. If he had just avoided a few of his mistakes, the Oilers might have made a run to the Cup just like Boston.
So is it time for another chance? Dreger notes that the Blackhawks do have many candidates and by no means does he insinuate that Chiarelli is already the front-runner. Current interim Kyle Davidson will get a look, as could Seattle Assistant GM Jason Botterill, who was reportedly the runner-up for the Anaheim job. Displaced interim Ducks GM Jeff Solomon could also be in consideration, as could a number of others who were in the mix for the recently-filled jobs in Montreal and Vancouver. However, there is no doubt that for entertainment’s sake, having Chiarelli back in the GM chair would be fun to watch.
LOL.
Ahahahahahaha!
Technically it was Jeff Gorton who made the Rask trade. He was acting GM at the time.
Agreed on your last line though re: entertainment’s sake. lol
I guess that deal the Hawks made with the Devil for those three Cups has come due.
Why would you interview Chiarelli, the guy who lost the Hall for Larsson deal, when Ray Shero, the guy who won the Hall for Larsson, is also available?
And finally, who gets to make the hire? Rocky Wirtz? The guy who somehow found a way to author the Blackhawks lowest moment of the Aldrich scandal just last night at an event designed to move them past it?
OK.
Sad how far this organization has fallen in such a short period of time. You fired a coach and GM with absolutely no plan in place to replace them just a few games into the season. You are capped out with a bunch of bad contracts and the Old Chicago Cubs stupidity of giving out No Movement deals. You have the owner calling a town hall and idiotically fighting with reporters who asked him honest questions about how they will handle future problems like Kyle Beach. Why call a town hall and then completely shut down the discussion? Was he so stupid that he didn’t prepare for the question? If so, You can completely see what the problem is and it starts at the top with the Wirtz’s being ill prepared to go forward. To his credit Danny Wirtz saw what was happening and tried to answer the question and was immediately shut down by his brother. This is sadly a crap organization now and losing fans at a record pace and the TV ratings must be terrible. I know they aren’t really worth watching anymore, and won’t be for awhile.
True – Toews has quit on the team. Saw him on a breakaway earlier in the year and he held the puck at the goal with 1 minute to play. Didn’t score his first goal many games into the season.
Cant quite blame Wirtz for the outburst – probably advised by lawyers to protect the organization. THough the media failed to mention any other points from the town hall.
Game I went to I sat in the nosebleeds and seats were $200 – who wants to pay that for a losing team that wont be in the playoffs and doesn’t compete.
The hawks are in their lean years. Just trade toews and kane NOW and rebuild.
That’s the problem. You couldn’t trade Kane or Toews even if you wanted to because they have no movement clauses in their deals so unless they agree to go you need to let them run you into the ground. Bowman the idiot that he was gave those contracts to them when the league signed the new TV deal before figuring out the deal was in Canadian Dollars and was actually worth far less money when it was converted. Even though the money was supposed to be greater, The Cap actually hasn’t really risen in all those years. So kudos to the Bowmans for sinking the franchise for burying a sexual assault and giving huge raises and no movement clauses like they were candy on Halloween. Kane,Toews, Keith and Seabrook’s contracts were killing the team long before now. It’s also no coincidence that McDonough was also there for the Cubs dumb contracts as well as the Hawks fiasco.
Then the hawks would have to ask Kane and tower to waive the no trade clause.
Apart from burying the HR issue, the Bowmans built this into a Stanley cup from their days in Detroit.
The long term contracts were discounts, build the players and compete but they could never sustain it.
Their contracts are off the books in 23, so terrible, unless they trade them until ’25.
I’d make the same deal with the devil for 3 cups #canucks minus the sexual assault obviously
In case it escaped you the deal with the Devil WAS the sexual assault so your post makes no sense.
Why, he is awful?
This is like the Titanic asking for more icebergs.
As a blues fan this is great news!
Ugh. People are STILL hanging the Boychuk deal over Chiarelli’s neck? Ummm … for the record, the pick they acquired for Boychuk turned into Brandon Carlo. That’s a deal in the Bruins’ favor *right now*, even if you don’t figure that Carlo’s only 27 and signed for five more years. Eeeesh.
Holy crap, is no one else out there?!
It’s All-Star week, everyone is busy doing something else.
Him and the Blackhawks seem like a perfect fit together.
They’d be far better off hiring Peter Piper and having him pick a peck of pickled peppers. That would do far less damage to the Hawks than Peter C will
I miss Chiarelli. Sweeney has been a disaster for the Bruins.
The great thing about being a former anything in sports is that you always get a new job somewhere. And all while collecting a salary from the previous job you got fired from!