I'd take Toews and Kane over any of those jokers.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Every team in the division would trade places with the Hawks.

The Hawks will be very good for a long time. I really don't understand the never ending doom and gloom pessimism. It is great to be a Hawks fan.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

Some fiddling with capgeek indicates that taking Teravainen off the roster means the Hawks are only about $1.3MM over the cap. Obviously Teuvo will contribute this year, but if he starts the the year on the farm (which I fully expect, he needs the time) and does the Rockford Shuffle when it's time, we can get that cap hit quite a bit down from $894K. Someone still has to go, obviously, probably Rozsival, but the cap crunch may not be quite as dire as we thought.

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Over at The Committed Indian (I have to spell it out because "TCI" makes me think of my old cable company from when I was little), Fels seems to think John McDonough is orchestrating a Patrick Sharp trade to Florida by setting him up on a date with Brian Campbell. It's couched in "sure, they might just be friends in the offseason, but what if they aren't":

I'm just surprised the guys have gone in on the whole Devious Puppetmaster John McDonough trope, which was usually just the province of potbellied dopes who liked fighting and hated that McDonough "can't even skate." Apparently Dat Jon McPimp Guy can get Sharp to be all like "Well, I did want to stay on a contender and win a third championship, but oh, I had the most delightful afternoon with Brian. Think of all other the delightful afternoons we can have together on a team that's really bad!"

The Hawks need to go all in on this season, so trading Sharp would be a terrible mistake, even if he fetched Nick Bjugstad, as some commenters seem to think. Bjugstad will be a very good #3 center in this league, but he'll have to be a very good #3 center for someone else, because I'm not up for punting the last year of Toews and Kane on reasonable contracts.

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Kevin Dineen is the new assistant coach of the Hawks. Played with Quenneville in Hartford, had a decent coaching career in the AHL, flopped as head coach of the Panthers, and then did a great job coaching the Canadian women's team.

I guess I like the move. While Dineen did fail with Florida, you can't blame him too much; the roster construction was awful. Anyone would have gotten fired last year. The guy who replaced him (Peter Horachek) wasn't any better. People raved about his work with the women's team, though. This might be a good signing, but it does bear mentioning that like Kitchen, Dineen is another guy Q played with. Dineen had the better playing career, at least.

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The Blackhawks have a league-leading twenty national telecasts this season. 19 for the Pens, 17 for the Bruins, 16 for the Flyers, 15 for the Wings.

The Flames, Oilers, Panthers, Islanders, Senators, Canucks, and Jets will get zero national games. That leaves only two Leafs games and two Habs games selected for national coverage in the States.

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Michael Leighton's back with the organ-eye-zation, presumably to hold down the fort in Rockford because we don't develop goaltenders.

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Niemi
Crawford
Raanta

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I'll give you Crawford, but Niemi came to North America at age 25 and Raanta at 24, both undrafted, of course. Raanta in particular had to jump almost right into the fire, possibly to his detriment. The point is that while plenty of skaters have come up through Rockford, the goaltending situation has been dicey for years down there, and probably a big part of why the team, despite its considerable talent otherwise, rarely makes the playoffs. I hope Leighton, a tweener if ever there was one, does a good job.

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Nothing's going on, so let me drop a crazy idea:

trade Bickell, replace him with the heretofore unsigned Dustin Penner, who, like Bickell, is a big doofy power forward who gets injured and dogs it until the playoffs start. Thing is, this late in the game you could pay him peanuts. That could free up a lot of money for Teravainen and keeping the blue line intact. I suppose the Habs might take him on. The Habs always need big guys.

If you don't want to do that, you could probably send Oduya to the Red Wings. There's nothing Ken Holland loves more than old Swedes. Well, okay, Dan Cleary, but after Dan Cleary, it's gotta be old Swedes.

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No one had a thought on waiving Brookbank?

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Elections have consequences.

I dunno. He's a solid enough seventh defenseman whose contract expired after his age 33 season. We're deep at his position. So long and thanks for all the fish.

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Fair deal of rumbling about sending one of our defensemen to Long Island. Gotta be Oduya or Rozsival. Oduya might bring some value back, but I feel that a second-pairing D is worth more to us here than gone. There are better people to move.

Brookbank took a tryout with Calgary, by the way.

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any idea who we would be getting in a trade?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Picks or prospects (but not any blue chips unless maybe Leddy moved). We're more than accounted for at the NHL level.

I'm still mad the Isles took Ho-Sang and we didn't.

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Yes, the Ho-Sang thing stings. Maybe the Beach experience soured the Hawks management on knuckleheads?

Islanders are going to go all-out to make sure they don't suck so the Vanek trade doesn't bite them in the ass. Snow is a dope so maybe he can be taken advantage of even moreso than usual?

Isles also have new ownership a year in advance of the move to Brooklyn. Snow's living on borrowed time.


Well, I hope Kevin Hayes didn't sour them on the four-year signing clock, because that's like every dude the Hawks drafted this summer.

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Stephen Johns better be good otherwise the 2010 draft can be labeled a catastrophe. Right now I have it at disaster with chance to go either way but that's not a good baseline.

Looking at the Hawks' previous drafts the 2011 draft saved Bowmans ass. 2009 and 2010 were brutal.

2009 was Tallon's last draft, I believe, and that went sideways largely because Dylan Olsen flunked out of college, rushing him to the AHL and NHL years before he was ready. He's looking okay with Florida.

I think Johns will be a good player. I don't know if he'll stick all year but he deserves to be in the third-pair rotation.

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17th of September, still over the cap. The Committed Indian guys have been pretty confident that it'll be Versteeg going with such negative trade value that they'll have to add Morin to swing the deal. I hope this doesn't happen. After all this time that we've been waiting on Jeremy Morin, to lose him for nothing as the inducement to take on a Kris Versteeg cap hit that REALLY ISN'T EVEN THAT BAD would suck a lot.

Dustin Penner is still out there. Seriously, replacing Bickell with Penner at league minimum might not be the worst thing ever if he's willing to take that.

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Quenneville's buddy Ray Ferraro saying that Q is digging his heels in on keeping Johnny Oduya because he wants a veteran on the second pair and doesn't want to break up a good thing with Hjalmarsson. I respect that, but Ferraro is also saying the Hawks feel pretty confident they can name their price on Leddy and slot Clendening in. That I don't like so much. Clendening is still an unknown quantity, I do believe in Leddy, and a cost-controlled puck-moving #4/#5 D is hard to part with. Anything less than 2015's first from a lottery team (I'm looking at you, San Jose) will be a disappointment.

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What is the penalty if they don't off Versteeg or whatever and get under by the start of games?

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Elections have consequences.

They'd have to dress fewer than 20 players or forfeit the game. New Jersey had a game a few years ago where they could only dress like 15 skaters, but that was in the middle of the season. No one's ever come out of the gate over the cap, though. You just don't.

EDIT: I suppose I'd better add now that you can't be over the cap to start the year with the promise of getting under it later. The salary cap is tabulated by the day, so any space you have left over each day is banked for future use, but it doesn't work in the other direction.

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Can't they go an stash Rosi on long term IR until either someone else gets hurt or they get a deal they like?

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

Leddy has been made available, but the taker has to swallow Versteeg as well.

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Not a mult.

Jordan Staal just broke his leg and I'm not entirely sure the Hurricanes are a team that likes to tank given the tenuousness of their market. I mean, they often do finish in the bottom third of the league, it's just that they do so in spite of themselves. If only Versteeg could play center.

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Sounds like Leddy to Long Island will be confirmed soon. Newsday reporting it. No word on Morin yet. Send Rundblad along. He sucks.

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So in the past day, CarBomb has made the team, Tevo has been sent to RockVegas and Leddy shipped somewhere.

Anybody still want to argue that we may as well just call Q the General Manager?

Carcillo signed, Peter Regin on waivers, THIS IS BULLSHIT. I'm irate.

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