Blackhawks: How Stan Bowman created a successful retool

In a move that shocked the city of Chicago, the Blackhawks moved on from legendary head coach Joel Quenneville and hired Jeremy Colliton.

To this day, I still do not know how I feel about the Blackhawks firing Joel Quenneville, who is arguably the greatest hockey coach of all time. The start of 2018 was abysmal for the Blackhawks, as the team could not seem to get anything going. Whether Quenneville was to blame for this or not is up to personal opinion, but the blame was ultimately bestowed on him in the end.

The Blackhawks appeared to already have their guy in mind when it came to filling the vacancy left by Q: the young Jeremy Colliton, who was at the time the head coach of Chicago’s AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs. Colliton had received high praise for some time, as the 34-year-old was becoming a serious candidate to become a head coach in the NHL. Perhaps Bowman’s thinking revolved around making Colliton head coach now so that he did not slip through the cracks when Quenneville decided to retire. An energy-change could also be to blame for the change in the head coaching position, but all of this is merely speculation

Whether this move worked out or not is a long-term question that cannot be answered now. Jeremy Colliton could very well become an elite head coach in this league for a very long time, but this was a massive risk to take by letting an established hockey genius walk away.