This roster on paper still looks better than most.
They will be in the playoffs again next year, but need depth on defense and they need their #1 Center to play like a #1 Center.

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I'm gonna go WAY out on a limb and say if we don't win the Cup next year next year no one will be blaming Jonathan Toews.

Well, I mean, there's clearly going to be one ...

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

The roster on paper is a bunch of blank spaces unless you're going ahead and inserting chumps like Viktor Svedberg and Mark McNeill in it, and if you are, it still doesn't look that good.

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Well, that's where the Bickell money goes: to ghosts.

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If the captain continues to slide here is my ideal situation. Hawks win the Cup next year and then don't protect him in the expansion draft along with probably Seabs lazy ass. Salary cap problems no more and you get out of the ass end of both those guys deals.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Nope, you're wrong. Toews and Seabrook both have no-move clauses, which means they're automatically counted as protected players, not guys who are automatically protected in addition to the players you elect to use protection on.

I think Toews has three years left in him, which gives him 12 on the career, and then winds up in LTIR heaven for the last four years of his deal with nasty post-concussion syndrome. I do not see him aging gracefully at all with the way he's sacrificed for the team. He'll go down as the greatest Blackhawk of all time -- hell, he already is -- but we're gonna hit 2019 and it's gonna be like an old-time cartoon where the guy is driving a jalopy that sheds parts and sheds parts until it's just a guy holding a steering wheel and floating in the air, and as soon he acknowledges his levitation, falls to the ground. Whether we get one more championship in before that, who knows? Doesn't look good that we just had to trade a third-year player to move another guy so we could use THAT guy's cap space just to pay penalties incurred in a season spent losing in the first round to a team playing Scottie Upshall.

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Quoted. Just because.

Yeah, I don't get why people won't dig the nuance: I think Toews is a Hall of Famer and the best player in franchise history (love Mikita but he wasn't #1 center and captain of three championship teams in six years), but the game is chewing him up and about to spit him out. Both can be true.

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I love him because of the bolded part. I won't give up on him for a while.

Didn't Sidney Crosby have concussion problems a few years ago? He's still playing at an elite level and I think he's a couple of years older than Toews.

Crosby and Toews don't play the same style, though. Crosby hasn't had to check other teams' scoring lines, and he gets scored on more than Toews does.

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Jonathan Toews: Captain Sex Appeal.

you're either with us or against us, hair. i implore you to choose wisely, which means that i want you to stare directly into those eyes for no less than 3 minutes "straight" and then we'll have a little talk about who's giving who 55 points next season, mmmk?

(and yes, "Jonathan Toews: Captain Sex Appeal" is the actual caption from the webpage i found that picture on)

ALSO



i don't think you can win this one, CH.

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Whoa, had to check the date on that Baffoe piece at the bottom.

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There may be holes, but these names below.....that makes you competitive.
Toews, Kane, Crawford, Hossa, Keith, Seabrook, Hjalmarsson, Kruger, Panarin, Cawford.

I agree with you 100% Toews was down and you can't win a championship with him scoring 55 pts, but I'm not convinced he's done. He could very well bounce back and have a great season and that alone increases their chances in the playoffs.

They have some moves to make and holes to fill, but this is still a great team with multiple elite players.

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To cover the black holes from Hossa, Kruger, and whichever plugs have to fill the roster, I'm guessing we're gonna need at least 40 goals from Kane and Panarin and 30 from Toews, I'd hope around 20 from each of Toews's wings, whoever they turn out to be.

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Zawaski reporting that Teravainen signed his ticket out of Chicago by literally getting a ticket out of Chicago, going back to chill out in Finland over the summer rather than work out under team auspices all offseason. Maybe that was asking a bit much but I disagree. Enjoy Raleigh, where no one will ask anything of you.

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