(Associated Press July 14, 2009)
Another eventful week for the Blackhawks, but I’m starting to get tired of the offseason, let’s just drop the puck already.
Front Office Politics - Tallon out as GM, Bowman Jr. in
Straight out of some Shakespearean tragedy, it seems like the Chicago front office has had its share of politics lately. On Tuesday the Blackhawks relieved Dale Tallon of his GM duties and replaced him with Stan Bowman. Tallon still has a position in the organization, that of Senior Advisor of Hockey Operations.
It’s taken myself a while to wrap my head around all of this as I’ve long had the belief that Tallon was in over his head, but at the same time, the way this all went down just smells bad in my opinion.
As a GM, Tallon has had his good and bad moments. He’s made some very shrewd moves such as bringing in Marty Havlat, Kris Versteeg and Patrick Sharp for Mark Bell, Brandon Bochenski and Matt Ellison (on an aggregate basis). While having the number 1 and 3 picks is a nice luxury to have, he made the right selections with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. He’s also been a major factor in creating the strong team chemistry that the Blackhawks have. If there’s any doubt of that, the story of the Blackhawks taking a bus to attend Tallon’s father’s wake in the middle of a long road trip should alleviate any doubts. Tallon is in my opinion, a solid hockey man.
On the flip side, Tallon just was not qualified for the business aspect of being a GM. The signings of Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet were just brutal and have handcuffed the Hawks a little here going forward. Stories of faxing out a list of players to other GMs available for trade, not necessarily handling the media well and capitulating a little too easily in contract negotiations were also factors that led to his demise. The final straw might have been the whole RFA-UFA fiasco that happened right after the UFA deadline and that was outlined in my previous State of the Blackhawks entry.
The writing was on the wall for Tallon the moment that Scotty Bowman joined the Blackhawks last September. This, and the apparent meddling in hockey operations of team president John McDonough was leading to a situation where there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the Blackhawks front office. It’s clear that McDonough has wanted to bring in his guy, and according to some (Marty Havlat) didn’t want to see Tallon get all the credit for turning the Hawks into a legitimate upper echelon team in the NHL.
I’ve given credit to McDonough for turning the Hawks around from a business perspective, but there is absolutely no way that he should be involved in any hockey decisions. I am more qualified to make a hockey decision than he is. And if it becomes apparent that he’s sticking his fingers in that aspect of the front office too much, it’s up to Rocky to do something about it.
There have been rumors of a front office divide between Tallon and McDonough for some time now. My question is, why wait until after the UFA period, the draft, etc, if you know that you’re going to let the guy go? The way this all was handled is not how a first-class organization does things.
Bottom line, it’s obvious McDonough is a snake. While I believe that relieving Tallon of his GM duties and placing him in a Hockey Operations position (word is that his main focus will be the draft) is a good idea, the way it was done makes me a little sick to my stomach.
The other concern I have is that Tallon was very well respected and loved in the Blackhawks dressing room. It’s great that he’s still in the organization for this reason. I’m still unsure of how the players will react to this news and hopefully it’s not too much of a distraction. If the Blackhawks were a veteran team I wouldn’t be too worried, but when you have a young team, their reaction to something like this is not so cut and dry. I don’t think it’s a huge concern, but something to keep in mind.
Regarding the Blackhawks new GM, Stan Bowman, the jury is out. I would have preferred someone with a little more experience but I will give Bowman the benefit of the doubt. By all accounts, Bowman’s expertise is on the business side of things and that might be a good thing for where the Hawks are right now. Someone is going to have to figure out the cap problem and that is concern number 1 right now. There’s no doubt he’ll have his fathers input and assistance as well, and that helps appease a few of my doubts as well.
So at the end of the day, the Hawks have the business and numbers guy (albeit inexperienced) in the GM role, they have one of the greatest hockey minds of all time as the GM’s right hand man, they have a very good hockey guy who is good at drafting and finding talent as a key component of their draft and scouting operations. Makes sense right? Looking at this now, I would have to say yes, but like I said, I don’t like how it came about.
The X-factor in all of this is John McDonough. I just pray that he keeps his grubby fingers out of the hockey operations side of things because he has no clue there, and lets people do their jobs. I also pray he doesn’t let his ego get in the way of things either. So long as that happens, the Hawks should be alright.
We’ll see how this all plays out, but man, this offseason has not lacked for intrigue and excitement, that’s for sure.
Marty Havlat
A lot of us follow major sports news outlets like TSN or ESPN, etc. Nowadays, social networking mediums such as Facebook or Twitter are starting to play a bigger role in the amount of information a fan can get regarding their team.
Marty Havlat has a Twitter account and throughout his negotiations was using it to keep Hawks fans updated of how negotiations were going, and how much he really wanted to stay in Chicago. When July 1st rolled around and Havlat was not re-signed, he was pretty pissed off and his “tweets” reflected that. He promised something of “the real story of what happened in Chicago” but nothing more was really said about that.
That is until Dale Tallon was fired. Marty tweeted a few times on the subject, calling Tallon a “second father” to him and how this negotiation was not between himself and Dale, but moreso between Tallon and McDonough. He then decided to spill the beans to TSN on what the real story was, and how McDonough was a “phony”, how Tallon was a dead man walking for sometime now, and how McDonough was jealous of what Tallon had accomplished.
First off, I’m going to thank Marty for his time as a Blackhawk and he was in my opinion the Hawks best player this past season. He is extremely talented and I wish him the best in Minnesota. Also, I want to thank Marty for telling the story, because rarely as fans do we get to hear something like that about internal organizational workings. The most we usually get is rumor or innuendo. So it was fascinating to hear about this.
I do have some issue with Marty though and he’s also to blame for him not being a Blackhawk right now. My version of how events went down goes something like this:
Right after the season Tallon and Marty were negotiating a long term deal, probably something like what Hossa got in order to keep the cap hit down. Probably for less money because of Havlat’s past injury history. If Marty really wants to stay with the Hawks, they could have gotten something done then, of that I have no doubt.
But Havlat and his agent Allan Walsh get greedy and try to get even more out of Tallon. Knowing that Tallon has overpaid “his guys” in the past, Havlat thinks he can use his friendship with his “second father” to his advantage in getting more money. So they don’t sign anything and think that on July 1st, under the gun of Havlat being a UFA, Tallon would capitulate like he has in the past and they would get more money. Bit of a gamble by Havlat and Walsh, but one can see the logic in it.
What Havlat and Walsh fail to account for is that the Hawks have been working on a backup plan seeing that they were getting nowhere in their negotiations with Havlat prior to the deadline. (What would you do if you’re the Hawks? Doesn’t look like they’re going to sign Marty so you sit there with no backup plan? Good for the Hawks to have a Plan B). July 1st rolls around, and the Hawks sign Hossa meaning there’s no room for Havlat anymore.
Bottom line Marty, you got a little greedy and gambled, and you lost. Again, I appreciate your contributions to the Hawks these last 3 years and wish you the best of luck, but now it’s time to stop acting like the jilted ex-girlfriend and move on.
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