I thought that I could of been writing this post last week when the Canucks were up 3-0 and the Blackhawks held in it extra time in game 7 and only made the playoffs because the Dallas Stars did not show up for a win and get in game.
The down fall for the future of the Blackhawks happened when the team forgot to send out 8 qualifying offers to Restricted Free Agents in the Summer of '08 where the offers needed to mailed by June 30 and the then Blackhawks GM Dale Tallon said that they had been sent out before the deadline but it turned out it had not been so the 8 Restricted Free Agents who were Cam Barker, Kris Versteeg, Corey Crawford, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Troy Brouwer, Aaron Johnson and Bryan Bickell were supposed to become free agents. Which means that all 8 players would of been able to sign with any team and have the chance of max money which is 20% of the salary cap but the Blackhawks quietly signed all 8 Restricted Free Agents including given both Cam Barker and Kris Versteeg to 3 year and 9 million dollar deal which is most likely quite a bit more than a RFA would get because RFAs do not usually get contract offers from other teams because the players current team can match it or the team giving the contract offer has to give up first round draft picks and are scared to give up the draft picks. So all in all signing these players for more than they needed to advance the time that the Blackhawks would be able to keep all their players without going over the salary cap and it created an one and done scenario chasing the cup which they won last season and then had to almost immediately start moving out players to stay under the salary like Kris Versteeg being shipped to Toronto, Dustin Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Brent Sopel to the Atlanta Thrashers, Colin Fraser to Edmonton, and Antti Niemi got a 2.75 million dollar arbitration settlement that the Black Hawks could not afford and had to walk away from the settlement and Niemi became a free agent and signed with San Jose.
The blame has to start the Blackhawks president John McDonough who did not simply get along with Dale Tallon who was there before him as he had been with the organization for more than 30 years but when owner Bill Wirtz pasted away and his sons took over the team and brought in McDonough to become the president of the Blackhawks. McDonough when trying to throw cold water on the idea that he and Tallon did not see eye to eye he said "I think that within a period of time, Dale and I worked very, very effectively together. There were certainly times I would have liked to see smoother and better communications" which means they butted heads a couple of times. Dale Tallon should of made sure the person that was supposed to put the qualifying offers in the mail did it and that person would most likely be the assistant GM Stan Bowman who has a finance background should of known that the contracts needed to be in the mail and should of got it down and made sure the packages had the date on them when he express mailed them. McDonough did explain that it was a communication breakdown and that they will need to have better communication throughout the organization and in the end he said it all his fault because he the one running the team.
The reason that they had to overpay for the players is because the agents would just wait for Free Agency to happen and get the big deal and it is clear that the NHL Players Association filed a grievance basically declaring that all 8 players are unrestricted free agents and should be able to test the free agent market and the signings quieted the NHLPA compliments.
The end result is that it looks like McDonough and Stan Bowman Sabotage the Blackhawks chances to continuously compete for the Stanley Cup like the Pittsburgh Penguins who still have their core of players still even though they started rebuilding their team before the Blackhawks did. The reason for the Sabotage is clear which is that they wanted to have Stan Bowman as the Hawks GM instead of Dale Tallon which is simply crazy as why would u not just wait for Tallon's contract to be up and then replace him with Stan Bowman and more of the core of the hawks would still be with the team.
So in the end sabotaging your own business is not a very smart decision
Tom Mehegan
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