Chicago Blackhawks: Stan Bowman is “stepping aside” as GM

There is a lot of turmoil surrounding the Chicago Blackhawks right now. They are a bad hockey team at 0-5-1 and that doesn’t even slightly tell the story of the issues within the organization right now. They have had a sexual assault investigation from events that happened during their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2010. A briefing on their findings went down on Monday and heads are rolling.

The biggest piece of news that came from it is that Stan Bowman is out as the general manager. He has been with the team for a very long time. It seems as if the investigation is what led to him leaving and not the issues that the Blackhawks have been facing from a hockey ops point of view.

It was Danny Wirtz that announced the news during the call with his father Rocky Wirtz sitting right next to him. It was strange to hear it even though there had been rumors of it all morning long. There have been various mistakes made about this over the last decade that have led to this but this sexual assault case is by far the worst.

Now that Bowman is out, Kyle Davidson will assume the duties as the interim general manager. They announced that they will begin a search for the right person to be the next full-time general manager.

The Chicago Blackhawks made some major changes to the organization on Tuesday.

Stan Bowman wasn’t the only one announced to be out on Tuesday afternoon. Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations Al MacIsaac will be departing as part of the investigation findings as well. The entire front office is getting a makeover as a result of this.

Where will the Blackhawks take this moving forward? Well, the first step is to make sure that their organization is run by the right people who live their life the right way. The second step is to also make sure that the people running Hockey Ops actually know a thing or two about hockey.

The direction of this franchise is frightening but this is a step in the right direction in many different ways. It is sad that all of this happened but it sounds like it is being handled now. We can only hope that things like this don’t ever happen again.