Tuesday, July 14, 2009

We feel kinda bad now: Chicago fires Tallon

Mirtle used this photo first, but we had to use it because of the obvious foreshadowing.

So far, we've seen posts from Second City Hockey, St. Louis Game Time, Puck Daddy and James Mirtle regarding the firing of Dale Tallon. After waking up from a profoundly bizarre nightmare, let's leave it at that right now. Perhaps we'll update this with a more extensive round-up/link dump if the hockey blogosphere justifies it.

Obviously, the excuse for firing him was the QO debacle (perhaps we should call it FedEx-gate?), but next season is one of the most pivotal in Blackhawks' history and the decisions they make will have an impact on the next decade. They might as well go with the guy(s) many assumed were inevitably going to be in charge anyway.

It will be an interesting story to follow and no doubt about it: the Blackhawks are, at the moment, the story of this summer.

For the hell of it, here are our posts regarding Chicago's salary cap situation:

Losing Kane, Keith or Toews: a crushing inevitability.
Bashing the Hossa signing.
The Blackhawks' salary cap situation looked worrisome as early as mid-March

4 comments:

Chris Kontos said...

Well firing Savard a few games into the season worked out pretty well for the Hawks last year... maybe this will be the same but with a little lead time before the season starts. I'd have to think that it wasn't Tallon signing all those crazy contracts 2 weeks ago but rather the Bowman Braintrust?

Joe said...

If the Bowmans were actually the ones signing Hossa and Bolland and causing the QO issue, then they shouldn't be in charge of the team. I'm guessing the QO's probably had a lot to do with internal issues in the front office, but that at least a decent portion of Bolland/Hossa was Tallon wanting to make big moves to save his job.

Everyone forgets that while Scotty Bowman was a great coach, his tenure as GM of the Buffalo Sabres was definitely up to the bar set by his coaching. Maybe he's older and wiser now, and its actually his son in the driver's seat, but I wouldn't be ready to crown them yet. Especially with the upcoming cap situation for next year.

jamestobrien said...

What a mess.

Dominik said...

@Joe Everyone forgets that while Scotty Bowman was a great coach, his tenure as GM of the Buffalo Sabres was definitely [not] up to the bar set by his coaching.

Great point. This could be fun.

The personnel move itself might make sense, but the way they've pretended this wasn't happening for a year and how they've gone about it is downright silly.