this team continues to make outstanding moves...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Hockey Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman is joining the Chicago Blackhawks as a senior adviser for hockey operations.

Bowman has won nine Stanley Cup championships as a coach. He's to be introduced at an afternoon news conference at the United Center.

The 74-year-old Bowman has been a special consultant with the Detroit Red Wings, a team he coached to three Stanley Cup titles.

He also won five championships with the Montreal Canadiens and another with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Red Wings general manager Ken Holland says he's going to miss Bowman "personally and professionally" but that he's "earned the right to pursue whatever opportunities he thinks will make him happy."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/hock...n.ap/index.html

I'm not a big hockey follower, but even i know that this ^^^^ is a really great move on the Hawks part. This team is going to be pretty exciting this year, eh?

Speaking of this year, any idea when these Wrigley tickets go on sale or what teh deal is with them? This would be the perfect gift for my dad, as he's a HUUUUGE Hawks fan.

thnx for the info

i'm pretty much going to fight tooth 'n nail for those things partly because i really want to go and moreover because my dad really really wants to go

The off season moves I read about make me think they might actually be a contender this year. Bravo.

ESPN reporting that that Blackhawks have fired Denis Savard. WTF?

seriously wtf...there musta been some serious behind the scenes bullshit goin on...

Could Scotty Bowman now be the coach?

???

theyve named queneville...but man wouldnt be surprised if sometime down the road....

I will leave it to far greater hockey minds than me to determine whether Denis Savard deserved to be fired as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks after just four games into the NHL season -- although, as Clint Eastwood said in Unforgiven, "deserves got nuthin to do with it" – but the one thing we should all be able to agree on is that it comes as no surprise.

None at all.

The writing was on the wall for this in so many ways they are almost too numerous to mention, but let's try:

1. Expectations. The buzz over Blackhawk hockey in Chicago this off-season has been off the scale. From the fans to the media to ownership and management, the expectation for this exciting young team that just missed the playoffs last season was nothing less than to be a playoff team and perform on the ice to the same level as the marketing department had done off it.

That, and that alone, has been more than enough to derail career coaches with a lot more experience and track record than Savard. So three losses off the hop this season didn't help any. After the third loss, the Chicago papers were full of critical comments saying this Hawk resurgence seemed to be a lot more sizzle than steak.

2. New hierarchy. A lot of this buzz and expectation level has been driven by the front-office team led by new president John McDonough, who amongst other things was instrumental in bringing Scotty Bowman into the fold as a senior advisor.

The mandate of this new group headed by chairman Rocky Wirtz and McDonough is to take the Hawks to another level. They didn't hire Savard per se, the new guys were not fully invested and when they started to wonder if Savard fit the mold of a coach to take them to the next level, it didn't take long for them to act.

3. The relationship with Bowman. He was brought in to be a mentor for Savard and GM Dale Tallon, but it was becoming fairly clear fairly quickly that Savard and Bowman were not engaging in the same positive relationship that, for example, Red Wing coach Mike Babcock enjoyed with Bowman in Detroit. Those close to McDonough say he was miffed that a young, learning coach like Savard wouldn't take greater advantage of a resource such as Bowman.

4. The hiring of Joel Quenneville as a pro scout. The Blackhawks might as well have put up a billboard on the Magnificent Mile saying Quenneville would be the next coach of the Hawks, as soon as Savard stumbled. And he is. Sometimes in this business, appearances are not deceiving.

5. Savard's handling of netminder Cristobal Huet. It didn't get a lot of publicity because it happened in the pre-season, but on Sept. 29, Huet was lit up 7-1 in a game against the Columbus Blue Jackets and left in for all seven goals.

What made it even worse is that the Hawks, outside of Huet, were basically going with their B team lineup that night. No Toews, Kane, Sharp, Havlat, Byfuglien, Campbell, Keith or Seabrook in that game. But the No. 1 goalie, the big free-agent signing of the off-season, plays, gets torched for seven and doesn't get any relief. Suffice to say that was not well received in the front office.

6. Savard's handling of forward Marty Havlat: The two were clearly at odds. Now, Havlat's detractors will suggest he's a one-dimensional player with a selfish streak. His supporters will tell you he's a dynamic offensive talent who only needs to be in a primetime role to be an NHL offensive superstar.

Whichever way you slice it, Havlat was, until the summer, the Hawks' highest-paid skater and was struggling mightily to get a few scraps of power-play time. Whatever you think of Havlat, the PP is what he was born to do. Now, the decision to fire Savard was made on Wednesday – before last night's win over the Coyotes – but take a look at the Blackhawks' PP minutes amongst forwards from last night's game. Six forwards – Toews, Kane, Sharp, Byfuglien, Versteeg and Bolland – played more PP minutes than Havlat, who finished with a mere 1:55 of man-advantage minutes.

If you add all of them up, presto, there's your changing of the coach four games into the season.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is that the Blackhawk hierarchy simply decided that they didn't have full confidence in Savard to take them to the next level and that they needed a more polished, experienced hand behind the bench.

Enter Quenneville. Exit Savard.

Deserved? You decide.

Surprised? Not a chance.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Gotta be patient during the rebuilding process. Look at the Habs, they've taken baby steps over the last five years, and now not only are they the class of the Eastern conference, but they are absolutely loaded with prospects.

VCs won't be a top 4 seed in the playoffs if they're going to be without Luongo much longer. Sanford's been okay but he's no top-flight goaltender by a long shot. Calgary should win that division

Blackhawks big winners on special road trip
Without fanfare, Hawks are there for their GM

Rick Morrissey | In the wake of the news

11:40 PM CST, December 14, 2008

It began with the rarest of elements in professional sports: silence. No press release. No major announcement. No photo opportunity. Just the quiet of people doing a nice thing, the right thing.

Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon was murmuring prayers over his father's casket a half-hour before the wake was to begin. The family was saying its goodbyes to Stan Tallon, a tough, big-hearted guy who liked helping troubled kids. Dale's mother, Julie, was there. So were his wife, Meg, and their two children, Lauren and Kristen.

Dale Tallon looked up and noticed a few members of the Hawks' front office wandering into the funeral home. That's odd, he thought. This is Gravenhurst, Ontario. They're supposed to be in Chicago. In the whirl and clatter of his emotions, Tallon was having trouble connecting thoughts.

Then he saw some Hawks players walking through the door — Adam Burish, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Cristobal Huet. On and on it went, fresh-faced kids and battle-scarred veterans. Coach Joel Quenneville and his staff. The trainers. John McDonough, the team president, too.

"I told my mother, 'Mom, the team's here. The whole team's here,' " Tallon said. "She said, 'You've got to be kidding.' She became 6 feet tall all of a sudden. She went from one emotion to another, a complete 180. She went from distraught to all of a sudden having a little fire in her eye. She was a little excited about it."

Sports sections are filled with stories about angry, greedy, self-absorbed athletes. There's a simple reason for that. There are a lot of angry, greedy, self-absorbed athletes. So you tend to notice when a group of players goes the opposite direction, especially when it's done in a near whisper.

On Nov. 22, the Blackhawks beat the Maple Leafs 5-4 on Dave Bolland's goal in overtime. Rather than take a chartered flight back to Chicago, the team decided to stay in Toronto, practice the next day and then make the 110-mile trip north to Gravenhurst for the wake. That's how it came to be that two busloads of Hawks personnel walked through the doors of a funeral home in the middle of Ontario on a cold night.

No acclaim. No hubbub. Just a nice thing, the right thing.

No one is exactly sure how the story got out. Some of us media members received an e-mail detailing the feel-good story of a professional hockey team going the extra miles for their general manager. It mentioned how one of the buses stopped at a McDonald's after the wake — millionaire athletes stopping for Big Macs! — and how the townsfolk were shocked to see the players walk through the doors. The McDonald's happened to be giving out trading cards, including Toews' and Kane's, with Happy Meals.

Most of the e-mail was accurate. Some of it — like the description of the buses being "rickety" and unheated — wasn't. And the players didn't vote unanimously to go to the wake. They were told they were going by management. Not that it matters.

"You might have expected a lot of complaints from people, but I didn't hear one," wing Patrick Sharp said. "It was the eighth day of a seven-day road trip, so I think a lot of people had that Sunday booked with their family, their kids.

"The obvious reaction would have been complaining and guys upset about it. But it wasn't. Everybody was onboard."

The e-mail spread like wildfire, the way forwarded e-mails are wont to do. Tallon heard from friends in the U.S., Canada and Europe who had seen it. The International Herald Tribune picked up the story about the hockey team with a heart.

Why did it resonate with people? Because it answers a deep desire for our faith to be restored in athletes. Some of us don't like where the sports world has taken us. We don't recognize ourselves in most of the people we root for. We don't see humanity in them. When CC Sabathia signs a $161 million contract with the Yankees, he might as well be from Mars.

The behavior the Hawks exhibited by going to the Tallon wake is behavior that good, normal people exhibit in everyday life. We're surprised when athletes do it.

We're not quite as surprised when hockey players do it. One of the truths in professional sports is that hockey players are different.

"A lot of us are Canadian, from small towns, and even the American boys are from small towns," Tallon said. "We kind of just do our jobs and do our business and stick our nose to the grindstone. That's a Canadian trait. Canadians just do their work.

"Just like this story. No one really came out and talked about it. It just started picking up a life of its own. The players went to the wake. They didn't brag about it. They were happy to do it. They're normal people. They don't think that highly of themselves.

"That's a nice trait to have. This group especially. Don't forget that some of these guys are first overall ( NHL picks), third overall, seventh overall. Some of these kids could have been a little full of themselves, given their draft position and what they've done. We don't have that on our team. It's really nice to see."

Tallon tried talking to the players in a side chapel at the funeral home but got choked up and couldn't finish. He said he still gets teary-eyed thinking about their gesture.

The Hawks bused back to Toronto and flew home that night. Quietly. Kind of hard to picture Terrell Owens going with that flow. Then again, it's kind of hard to picture NHL players putting up with Owens.

Stan Tallon died at 80 of Parkinson's disease. He had been a fine hockey player in his own right, playing briefly in the American Hockey League, and he had continued competing until he was 68. His son said the old man would have been tickled by the Hawks' show of force at his wake.

"He would have had a smile on his face," Dale Tallon said. "He would have been elated. He loved hockey players."

We do too.

rmorrissey@tribune.com

Anyone going to the Wrigley game on New Years?

I've never been into hockey

I think I'm more excited to skate on the ice on Sunday though. Really, how cool will that be!?

Apropos of nothing, I need to say that the Sharks are playing so well this season there's no way they can't go the distance. Nor can I imagine that they'll succeed.

Long way to go, but they are looking solid. Though they were absolutely humbled by the Wings a short while back.

This got shitty fast.