So what gives?? The first and most obvious culprit is the salary cap. The Blackhawks, thanks to now deposed talent guru, Dale Tallon, (I agreed with the move to elevate Stan Bowman, it was just too bad Dale didn't get a ring for all his amazing work!) were loaded with young and veteran talent alike. After a season like the Hawks put together last year there was going to be a pressing need to dump some 'talent' ie. Dustin Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg and Andrew Ladd. (I am definitely missing Brent Sopel's sacrificing body parts to block shots ) There just wasn't enough cash to go around to keep everyone the Hawks wanted due to the salary cap limit. The question of 'being cheap' has long since been buried with "Dollar Bill" Wirtz. After he passed in September of 2007, his son Rocky took the reins of the club, one with an entrenched losing culture, and reversed it so nimbly and effectively heads are still spinning. Rocky fearlessly spent money on locking up talent both on the ice and off.(The more Bowmans the better!!) He repaired relationships with Blackhawk legends that his father so easily cut ties with years before. He expanded the marketing group bringing in Chicago Cubs expert, John McDonough. He did everything exactly the opposite of his father and it paid off in spades. Maybe a little too well. The downside of winning the Stanley Cup is that everyone wants to get paid and there just wasn't enough green to go around. So, their hand forced by this circumstance, Stan Bowman, the Blackhawks GM. wasted no time in making a dizzying amount of trades in a very short time. Gone were Byfuglien, Ladd,and Versteeg in a flash. In all, 10 players were traded or allowed to walk away as free agents! Granted the Hawks gained some very promising young talent in return; Viktor Stalberg, Jeremy Morin and Nick Leddy, but there was just too much turnover to maintain the vital chemistry last years squad had. The Aanti Niemi situation, unique in it's own right, going to arbitration, forced the Hawks to look elsewhere for a replacement. We got a superb backstopper in Marty Turco, but as we saw last year, the guy who begins the season in net does not always finish as the starter. (Corey Crawford starts now) We were lucky enough to be able to match the offer sheet from San Jose for Niklas Hjalmarsson, (14m over 4 years) avoiding another key loss of talent. All this being said, the Blackhawks are still loaded but with so many roster changes from last season the 'chemistry' needs to be re-established. This takes time. The Hawks have shown more 'cohesion' as of late but the effect is still being felt.
Secondly, one can argue injuries as a factor. Patrick Kane, Johnathin Toews and Marian Hossa, who seems to have missed more time than he's played, have all spent time away healing up. All in all though the Hawks cannot attribute much of their slide to injury time. Possibly a few games?? But not as many as they have lost this year to date.
A larger contributor to the Hawks current situation is the the sheer amount of hockey most of these guys have squeezed into a short amount of time; a full season last year,(82 games) with 7 Blackhawks putting forth a full effort on their respective Olympic teams, then a marathon post season (22 more games) extending to June 9th, then all the celebration before returning to work a mere 100 days later for training camp!! add to that the blistering pace the schedulemakers put the Hawks through the first half of the season. Until they caught a schedule break two weeks ago with 5 days off, 3 more games and then another 6 day gap over the All Star weekend, the Blackhawks had played a very rigorous schedule with sometime 5,6 or 7 more games played than many of their counterparts. To this point, the Blackhawks have played 50 games this season add that to last years 82 plus the 22 playoff games as well as a handful of Olympic games. Not adding in preseason contests, since October 2009, they have played up to 160 games a piece!! That's alot of hockey in a relatively short amount of time and took toll on their overall performance. Shouldn't the team that wins the Cup benefit from next year's schedule?? The Blackhawks were seemingly punished for winning by playing more games in a sorter time frame!
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