From the Trib's Chris Kuc:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/hockey/blackhawks/ct-nick-leddy-trade-reaction-blackhawks-spt-1007-20141007-story.html

"You look at your teammates and great memories, things you'll always share," Quenneville said. "That's part of the game. Nick's still young, and we expect him to grow his game. Hopefully he progresses and becomes a top defenseman. The potential's there, and he's got a better opportunity there."

I'm sure the benching during the playoffs and apparent frequent visits to the Quenneville doghouse will be great memories. You better hope his game doesn't grow because this will go down as a major loss for this team when Oduya falters this year. And how the hell is it a better opportunity in New York?

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I don't know that Leddy is ever going to be more than he already is. Put another way, if he ever becomes as "good" as Brian Campbell will you be sorry they made the trade?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

He'll be on a top pairing there, and was on no pairing at the end here.

Also, if you're this upset already, next year will not be kind to you.

Hashtag #blamekane

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

This.

If anything, Leddy regressed last year from the previous one. Last season he looked like the 2011-2012 Leddy, not the 2012-2013 version that actually had more confidence and didn't shit his pants after he so masterfully brought the puck up past the center line.

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Not a mult.

It bothers me for the following reasons:

-Q seems to be a weird judge of talent (ice time shows this), and it is odd how certain guys get in the doghouse, while others get a pass. Stalberg was another example albeit a lesser player.
-Our power play puck handling (entry mainly) was poor last year, and only Leddy seemed to have the skills to effectively bring the puck up to start a rush.
-The decision to overpay Crow and Bickell, which I criticized before and throughout last season is the reason the team is over the cap. The Bickell signing specifically is the reason Leddy is gone.
-Giving up on a young defensemen with obvious skills is a problem. Maybe Leddy will only be a marginal player, and in that case fine. But at this point, I was not ready to write him off.

Oh well.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I was more than ready to write off Leddy. Q & Bowman have brought two cups to the Blackhawks. I will continue to defer to their judgment until proven otherwise.

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Young + defensively irresponsible + not Patrick Kane = Q doghouse. He had no trouble playing Hjalmarsson when he came up for good to replace Wisniewski in '09. He played Kruger, he played Shaw, he played Saad, he played Ben Smith, it appears he'll be playing van Riemsdyk, all for the same reason: they don't routinely get torched going the other way. It's basically an if-you-don't-eat-your-meat-you-can't-have-any-pudding system. And it's not as if Q is turning the Hawks into a mucking, trapping slog of a team by doing this: in goals scored and goal differential, respectively, the Hawks under Quenneville have ranked thus:

2009: 4th, 3rd
^2010: 3rd, 2nd
2011: 4th, 5th
2012: T-5th, 13th
^2013: 2nd, 1st
2014: 2nd, 4th

I hadn't crunched these numbers in this way before so seeing it is really kind of amazing. The only outlier is Crawford/Emery's 2012 fire drill of a season. Despite a demandingly defense-oriented coach, they've never ranked worse than fifth in scoring and have routinely outpaced their goals allowed by a wide margin except for the year Crawford couldn't stop a beach ball. And what's more impressive is that it's balanced by keeping the puck out of the net almost as well:

2009: 5th
^2010: 5th
2011: 12th
2012: 22nd :/
^2013: 1st
2014: 12th

It's frustrating that Q won't play the rookies we like (Pirri, Morin) the way we want him to, but his reasoning isn't faulty: there needs to be a solid foundation of fundamentals and hockey IQ before you're allowed to do the fun scoring stuff, especially in the bottom half of the roster -- not to mention the top includes Toews, Hossa, Keith, and even a vastly improved Kane, showing that even the guys on scoring units have to be two-way players. It's a vexing system at times, but the system has served us well.

The real issue, then, isn't with Quenneville himself so much as with organizational development. Look: Q is probably gonna be here for a while longer. Despite the power struggles, he gets results, his players play for him, he's a good hockey lifer. We all know what he wants. That means it's on the Rockford coaches to give them to him. I don't think everyone is on the same page. It seems as if they're more concerned with having big brawls and showing "team toughness" than making sure everyone learns to play solid defense. From the 2008-2009 batch of Rockford guys, we have an all-time bust in Beach, washouts in Hayes, Pirri, and Olsen, and Morin hanging by a thread. Let's hope these next guys learn what they need to learn to crack Q's roster. It's not an outlandish sports concept: it's the exact same thing the Orioles, Braves, and Twins all preached in their developmental systems.

I agree that Leddy did a lot of things well, and I'm sad to see him go. I'm hoping that Pokka will turn out and the trade will be, at best, a wash. But he did tend to fade in the playoffs and warrant benchings. If we're going to stop caring about the regular season and focus on the playoffs, then the Hawks have to address that. I don't know if they have addressed that or can address it later, but like you said, Bickell and Crawford put the team in a tight spot. However, I think the Crawford contract is much worse than the Bickell contract. We've had a lack of power forwards; we had to overpay. But when you build a system around dominant puck possession and conscientious defense from top to bottom, then you're supposed to be able to skimp on your goaltending. $6MM a year isn't skimping no matter what the cap is.

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Maybe we will not need Leddy's remarkable PP entries with the new PP coach?

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Elections have consequences.

I'm looking forward to what Dineen can do with them. He had Florida up to 7th and 8th on the power play, and that was with a roster that topped out at Brian Campbell and Tomas Fleischmann. Getting the players' respect shouldn't be an issue; who the hell wouldn't respect Kevin Dineen? I know he had tension with Versteeg, though, so we'll see where that leads. Just being in the top half on the power play would be nice, combined with top five on the kill.

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Well we certainly will not be worse on PP. That would have to take a really bad effort.

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Elections have consequences.

They were still tenth in the league last year with a 19.5% conversion rate. That's ahead of finalists Los Angeles and New York. It was the penalty kill that got us, which finished 19th but was down to 29th at times, and sure enough gave up goal after goal to the Kings.

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CH, tons of great comments above in response to my post. This is what bothers me:

"It's frustrating that Q won't play the rookies we like (Pirri, Morin) the way we want him to, but his reasoning isn't faulty: there needs to be a solid foundation of fundamentals and hockey IQ before you're allowed to do the fun scoring stuff, especially in the bottom half of the roster -- not to mention the top includes Toews, Hossa, Keith, and even a vastly improved Kane, showing that even the guys on scoring units have to be two-way players. It's a vexing system at times, but the system has served us well. "

They shipped Pirri off so darn fast. I understand that Q and Bowman have earned it. It doesn't mean I have to like it.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

He was on his fourth season in the AHL and his fifth season out of the draft. Within in that time, you're right that he never got a fair shake at the NHL level, but he played 238 games for Rockford in that time and either no one saw fit to teach him how to smarten up on defense or he just plain couldn't do it. That, in all likelihood, falls on minor-league coaching. Again, you can't say that no one knew what Q wanted. If you can, then there's either poor communication from above or Bill Peters (now HC of the Hurricanes) and Ted Dent are both retarded.

What really gets me is that Rockford is tailor-made to be a lab environment for the Hawks. They don't face the same sorts of fan-service demands that the Wolves have, or some of the other AHL teams that play in NBA arenas and can't just scrimmage up the joint. It's Rockford! The arena is small and people just want an escape from their lives in shitty dying Rockford! All emphasis should be on building NHL players who can plug in and play.

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Well we seem to share the same frustration as it respects the Hawks. Any other frustrations you may be having, well I assure you I am well taken care of.

BTW, Sini was giving me crap about you in the Bears chat last Sunday. I think it was jealousy.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Good thoughts CH. I liked Leddy, not always sure why. When he was with hjalmarsson it was ugly at times.

Do you guys know much about guys we got for him?

Ville Pokka - only trade piece of consequence. Went 34th in the 2012 draft and has been already become a standout defenseman in the Finnish league at age 20. The Hawks are already fast-tracking him to Rockford, which seems risky because he had gone on the record saying, like many European players do, that if he's not going to play in the NHL, he'd prefer to play in his domestic league than in the AHL. That league has been a morale-buster for lots of Euros, but it's to be hoped that he and Teravainen will stick it out together. His ceiling is probably the same as Leddy's, but we've gotten happily crowded at defense and that he makes it here is no guarantee at all.

T.J. Brennan - Puck-moving defenseman, textbook tweener who lights up the American but can't get it done in the National. He had a breakout year with the Toronto Marlies but was a non-factor with the Sabres. Already this offseason, he's cleared waivers for Long Island and Chicago, so it doesn't seem like anyone else wants to take a flyer on him. At best, he'll anchor the Rockford blue line all year while Johns and Clendening get the cups of coffee up here.

Anders Nilsson - Former #3 goalie for the Islanders who had no clear path to a starting job or even backup job with Jaroslav Halak and No Not That Chad Johnson locked in. He chose to defect to the KHL rather than trudge away in Bridgeport, the anus of Connecticut. As a result, we hold his rights, but his service clock isn't running nor are the Hawks paying him anything. He'll never enter our lives or even our continent.

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I don't know either. He just seemed really young and might have evolved his defensive side given some time. If he becomes Brian Campbell, I don't think I'd be sorry they made the trade.

I was directing this more towards Q. He could have easily just said that they felt that they needed to take a different direction. Instead he says the guy has potential, he says he expects Leddy's game to grow and hope he progresses to become a top defenseman. All of that is bullshit. If Q felt he had that kind of potential, he wouldn't have been benched as often as he was and would have been given a more prominent role.

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