Blackhawks: Another bad Stan Bowman decision comes to light

There has been a lot of good across Chicago sports for the past few months. Both baseball teams are making a push for division titles and the Chicago Bears have the quarterback of the future in Justin Fields. On the west side of town, however, the Chicago Blackhawks continue to look like clowns. The season looked like a good year from some people’s perspective but it was a colossal failure. The lack of depth reared its ugly head once the season started to unfold.

When you look at the 2021 NHL Draft Lottery, the Chicago Blackhawks are the only team from the traditional Central Division that participated. The only two teams that finished below them in the one-year COVID 2021 Central Division are the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings who normally play in other divisions.

A lot of bad decisions have put the Chicago Blackhawks where they are.

There are a lot of decisions that have to do with players. There has been a lot of mistakes made by Stan Bowman and his staff on that front. However, Friday put a different kind of bad decision in the light as Joel Quenneville was named as a nominee for the Jack Adams Award as the Coach of the Year. The Florida Panthers hired him not long after he was fired in Chicago.

That was a terrible mistake by Stan Bowman. He is one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport and you can argue he is number one. Jeremy Colliton has been good and bad but it isn’t his fault that he was the guy who replaced Quenneville. Now, Coach Q is in Florida showing everyone why he is the best.

Joel’s Panthers were bounced in the first round but there is a catch. The Tampa Bay Lightning has a payroll of about 100 million which is about 20 million over the cap. They got it that way because of the way they manipulated it using long-term injured reserve this year. A lot of great teams lost to that team and are going to continue to lose to that team. They are trying to win the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row.

Quenneville has been hard on younger players in his coaching tenure which might not be right for the Hawks here in 2021 but at the time of his firing, it didn’t need to be done. We also don’t know what this team would look like if they didn’t make horrible player decisions since winning the Stanley Cup in2015. Seeing Joel be a Jack Adams nominee is gut-wrenching because he should still be with the Hawks. Stan’s time to be fired should have come a long time ago.