UMFan83

Theo was really stressed out from all those high-pressure years in Boston, and Ricketts is a meatball who thinks that good players making too much money was a reason we were bad. And Ricketts paid too much for the Cubs and can't afford a $130 million payroll while he pays off the rest of what he owes.

Soft goal yes, but I'm much more pissed at Leddy being an idiot leading to the breakaway. I have to admit ive been holding back on this because I like Leddy and want him to succeed, but he's been unbelievably pathetic this series. Seriously every minute he's on the ice he [expletive] up somehow. The guys on the score yesterday were ripping him so badly for his play so far that they went so far as to suggest he should be benched despite not really having another option. The team is just a mess right now. The only players that are in the core and aren't disappointing are Toews, Kane and Hossa. Even Sharp has been disappointing to me. Everyone else, Keith, Seabs, Bolland are too inconsistent.

So Bowman took over right before the Cup winning season and oversaw Tallon's team winning the Cup. Don't forget his big acquisition that season was trading Barker for Mr. Concussion himself Kim Johnsson. But the Hawks won it all despite no mid-season help from their GM. Bowman had an admittedly tough task of fitting the Hawks core under the cap, but not many people expected the Hawks to need a miracle in Minnesota to even make the playoffs the next season. The moves he made at the deadline did not work out and their big defensive acquisition turned over the puck which immediately led to the goal that ended the Hawks season. I'm not going to go over every move he made in the offseason, but basically he had a couple of hits I guess (Stalberg for Versteeg was pretty good, at least this year) and more misses. The idea was to get picks and prospects and a few pieces that could help us. The Hawks prospects are known for have a lot of potentially good players in the pipeline but no stars. Overall Hockeysfuture.com has the Hawks around 10th in the league. So ok thats...ok. But I would have expected more for dismantling most of a cup winning team. Then this season he made the decision to trade Campbells contract, and didn't do a very good job of replacing him at all. So the Hawks spend all season near the top of the league in goals allowed and the defense is getting burned constantly (and bad goal tending). What does Bowman do? Decide to get "tougher". Not improve our skill (other than Brunette which was a poor fit from the start), not improve our declining offense, he decides to sign a bunch of 4th liners who can get suspensions for illegal hits or something. And the results? The Hawks are still one of the least physical teams in hockey and are constantly pushed around and consistently have less hits than their opponents every game. Meanwhile the deadline approaches and the Hawks all but announce that they aren't going to mortgage their future to fix their assets. This means 2 things, 1) the Hawks have too many holes to be fixed without multiple moves. This is hard to do in season without completely changing the team. And 2) the Hawks arent putting much emphasis on winning this season. Sure they want to win but they arent willing to make moves to win now. Whatever your views about that, its pretty distressing to see the Hawks in this situation just 1.5 years after winning it all. There were going to be holes created because of what Tallon left him, but who expected the Hawks to be one of the worst defensive teams in the league after being so damn good in 2010? But Bowman does throw the fans a bone and picks up a much needed defenseman. And that defenseman is a turnover machine, fitting right in with the rest of their turnover loving defense. He doesn't provide much help and the Hawks defensive problems continue to this day. At least the Hawks make the playoffs semi-comfortably, but went from the top of the conference to 6th after a horrific 9 game losing streak in the middle of the season highlighted by humiliating defensive lapses, bad goaltending, and lack of adjustments by the coaching staff. The Hawks played better after that but no one really expected much from them in the playoffs. Now they are one loss away from being knocked out of the postseason in the 1st round for the 2nd consecutive season. We should be patient, seeing as how we won the Cup 2 years ago, but it hurts to see such a dominating and entertaining team fall so far so quickly and see every move made by our GM turn to crap. I am not sure we are any better off than we were a year ago at this time, and that falls directly on Bowman's shoulders.

It infuriates me because Phoenix is not that much better than us if at all. The Hawks played really well tonight for a lot of the game, but couldn't finish when it counted. It's been a problem all season for them. I know they were near the top of the league in goals scored, but they were also probably in the top 10 of losing games where you largely outshoot your opponent too. On the radio today they made a good point, the Hawks all want to be the playmaker and make that pass that leads to the goal, but there isn't enough finishing going on. 10 goals in 4 games isnt going to cut it and it didn't. I still think the Hawks can win this series just because all 4 games have been so close, but obviously their chances are on life support at best.

Bulls lose big game, Hawks lose a humongous game, Cubs lose like usual in the same day. Not a great day for Chicago sports.

[expletive] you Crawford, how do you play awesome all series except when it matters most? I realize it was a lot more then him that contributed to that but still

another softie Good season...not Stupid hockey infuriates me

True, although the continuation of that trend over 7 games won't be good. :P Nor would adding game 6 and 7 of the Vancouver series to that (Hawks, Opponent, Opponent, Hawks, Opponent, ....)

Game 1 Phoenix scores Game 2 Chicago scores Game 3 Phoenix scores Game 4 ....... Come on trends

So that's the 3rd time this series where the Hawks scored with the goalie pulled. How are they able to score so well 6 on 5 but are embarrassingly pathetic 5 on 4? 3 goals scored 6 on 5, 1 scored 5 on 4 and only 5 scored full strength this series.

Wow more late game magic. Lets win this!

Son of a bitch. I am shocked that a Blackhawks player turned the puck over in his defensive zone leading to a breakaway

standing on head

The only time I get excited for PP's anymore is when we have the lead because the benefit is 2 minutes where the other team probably won't score. Otherwise its just a waste of 2 minutes for both teams.

Of course the whistle blows before the puck goes in

I would guess that it has everything to do with the opponent. The Senators are not a high profile team, the casual fan doesnt know much about them or any players on the team. And New York is expected to romp them so its not getting the attention it normally would if it was a tougher opponent. Oh and they are Canadian and they are not one of the sexy Canadian teams (like the Habs, Leafs, Canucks), so that immediately turns off some American fans. I would expect to see the attention to ramp up for them next round. The series itself is quietly interesting. Some of the time, NYR clearly looks like the much more dominant team, but at other times, for whatever reason they struggle. I don't know if its NY taking them lightly or what, but if they lose this game (about to go into OT), it could get interesting.

wow 10-3 Penguins. They could have used some of those goals in the previous 3 games. Or at least the next 3 games.

Remember guys, each year is an opportunity to win a championship and every year is sacred. I'm starting to think part of Theo's plan is to bottom out this year and get the #1 pick. There were a ton of short term things he could have done to build at least a respectable team without harming the long term plan or blocking prospects from playing in the bigs. I guess if you aren't gonna win the title, you might as well suck terribly and get the #1 pick. Theo also knew that this year is pretty much the only chance he has to completely suck in a major market and not get crucified, so given the new draft rules, etc he figured the best way improve was to suck.

I'm right there with you but good luck getting them all to move back to Europe with the economic problems they are having now. 9.7 from someone who is 50% polish

I wish there was a way that the refs would be allowed to go back and review all situations where a hard check injures a player to determine if the hit was illegal. On paper it seems like a good idea, but its pretty obvious player would feign injuries in order to make sure illegal hits got called, or sketchy ones get looked at closer. It just makes me so mad that we had to go on the PP immediately after one of our best players was unable to move for several minutes and carted off the ice in a stretcher because of a blatently illegal hit. That should not happen and I wish there was a way to prevent that in the future.

In an unrelated but still depressing note, is anyone else worried that with all the talk about the Hawks not being physical enough, Bowman goes into his second offseason planning to 'toughen up' the Hawks? Hopefully he will blame most of it on Carcillo's injury and actually address improving the team this summer.

I completely agree that Shanahan deserves a big chunk of the blame here. The Blackhawks have really gotten shafted by his decisions this playoffs, from giving Shaw a 5 minute major and essentially a 4 game suspension, to not suspending Weber, which led to the type of intentional injury that Hossa received, to the ref somehow missing a malicious illegal hit right in front of him and not penalizing him. So far the Hawks have lost 3.5 games of Shaw, at the very minimum 3 games from Hossa (including him missing most of game 3) and 10 minutes of power play time against them (5 minutes that Shaw served, and 5 minutes not given for Torres) Is that an acceptable penalty for what Shaw did? Since Shanahan is all about using outside factors in his rulings, maybe he should take into account that his rulings made this happen, and that Torres was able to play the rest of the game unpenalized. It sickens me that goon was allowed to continue playing in the game.

I'm afriad we're gonna need to FDB for the sake of learning more about this guy from a Niners fan. Get on it mods.

no, it's just crazy. You don't say