All this talk about firing Q....I don't know. Three Cups, yeah, but it seems like the players aren't listening to him anymore.

I'm still hesitant though, maybe just because I'm one of the few who remembers Lorne Molleken and Alpo Suhonen behind the bench.

What the hell does that even mean? Not listening to him. So when he says "Score goals", "Keep the puck", "Play good defense" their answer is now "No" where it was once "Sure, coach."

Isn't the new coach gonna say the same thing?

You're not going to find a better coach. Colliton has coached less than twenty games in North America, no one raced to hire Dineen after Florida fired him, Ulf's never been a head coach. The only situation I can think of where you fire Quenneville is if they're well outside the playoff field by Christmas and you can get Darryl Sutter to do everything Bowman tells him to do the way he did for Lombardi.

And ultimately, we're talking about one of the four or five best NHL coaches of all time. You don't fire him in the middle of a losing streak. That's a St. Louis Blues move.

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Not often that CH and I are on the same page, but this is the only answer.

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

I can't stand his constant line shuffling or his traditional issues with letting young players develop. But there is no chance of getting a better coach. It would be change just for changes sake.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I'm a fan of Q but we all remember the Ditka years. He was perfect for the team and era when he came to the Bears but certainly deserved to be let go at the end...the game had passed him by.

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Okay. Then who are the coaches who are keeping current with the game? NHL coaches are not known as a progressive bunch; just about every Quenneville gripe is one that every fanbase has with their coaches: plays the veterans, doesn't trust the rookies, shuffles his lines, runs soft practices. Shit's all the same everywhere you go.

Laviolette has been in the NHL almost as long as Quenneville, having coached the Islanders in the DPE, but he keeps getting fired because he grates on his players far worse than Quenneville, who has traditionally been loved by his players, could dream of. Hitchcock couldn't be more of a relic if he were a piece of the cross. Stat nerds love Bill Peters but his Hurricanes teams haven't done shit. The only name I can come up with for a "smart" young coach with results is Jon Cooper, and the Bolts won't let go of him.

EDIT: if you're asking "where's Mike Babcock?", he's Joel Quenneville with better hair and Detroit/Toronto exposure. Motherfucker was dressing Kirk Maltby as an everyday player as late as 2009, he wasn't on the vanguard of anything.

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I don't have a better name. I'm just saying that it's possible Q's time has come and gone. I certainly wouldn't fire him mid-season but if they miss the play-offs or are a 1st round disappointment I thinks it's a fair consideration.

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Well, I just don't think it has. I think he's struggling to run his system with a blue line that's as depleted as ours is right now, but anyone would. When you replace your proven defensive linchpin with some kid who some three years in has never played in an NHL game with greater ramifications than your average beer-league game, you're going to struggle to start the year. But I don't think things like stressing fundamentals on defense, trying to control possession, and protecting your players from beat writers like you're their dad are principles that will ever age out of professional hockey. The roster is just patched together weirdly, that's all.

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You wanna blame all of this on Hammer not being here? That is ridiculous, Hammer was showing signs of his age. For Q to run his system he needs speed. This team has gotten old, his system is not gonna work with this unit anymore. Something is wrong with our $10.5mill Captain, Seabrook looks like he lives in a retirement home and is making a crazy amount(which if you believe the rumors of mcdonough making bowman sign him, that is concerning). Although I LOVED the trade, you took Kane's line mate away, and now it appears he doesn't give a shit.

This team needs the 2013 Hammer not what he is today. I don't watch much Arizona hockey, but a quick glimpse at the NHL's website shows Hammer's possession numbers and other fancy stats are poor in comparison to the other dmen in Arizona this season.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

I don't watch enough non-Blackhawks hockey to have a feel for good alternatives to Q. In thinking about this, I wouldn't mind if they picked a recently retired player and give him a shot behind the bench. The Power Play has been terrible for many years. And overall scoring has been inconsistent. The team needs a new philosophy.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I am tired of people using Hammer being traded as an excuse. I wasn't good last year, and having him this year and letting him walk for nothing, didn't make sense.

Hammer looks to be about as done as Seabrook. Connor Murphy today is better than Hammer today, which just tells you how bad Hammer has been for the last year plus.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Agreed! They acquired an asset for a fading one. The thing is, it is not just 1 player fixes this. We have scoring issues and atleast 1 D issue.

I would. This isn't baseball; the head coach of an NHL team that matters should, at the very least, have logged some flight miles as either an NHL assistant or a head coach at a lower level. If plucking Danny Briere or Brad Richards out of idle retirement is such a great idea, let some team like the Panthers try it. McDonough's not going to let the Hawks hire their own Vinny Del Negro anyway.

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Well, let's be fair here, he has not been put in a position to succeed. I can't imagine anyone has good fancy stats on that shitshow. The Coyotes are mired in an all-time awful start wherein they've made it almost to Thanksgiving without a regulation win. Rick Tocchet is a dope whose only prior head coaching experience was running the Lightning when they were still owned by Oren Koules and were a top-to-bottom mess; that's the guy the Coyotes scraped off a shoe to coach their team. Hjalmarsson has spent all but a few games of his NHL career with one of the best coaches of all time, now he plays for someone who's decidedly not. Moreover, the team acquired Hjalmarsson at Ekman-Larsson's personal behest as someone who would hang back and clean up his messes, then they've failed to play him with the guy they got him to play for.

Hjalmarsson wouldn't solve every problem the Hawks have, of course not, but I'm confident he'd be better with us and we'd be better with him.

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This team needs the 2013 Kane, 2013 Toews, 2013 Hossa, 2013 Seabrook etc too.

If I am reading you correctly in this thread- There is no one currently coaching or who has coached at the NHL level that could reasonably replace Q. And there is no one who has yet to coach in the NHL that could replace Q. Pretty hard for me to believe.

The NFL is starting to show that younger coaches bring a lot to the table. I was bewildered by the Tomlin hire at the time, but now that looks like the wave of the future.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

While there is a lot of truth to what you're saying, how do you explain Hjalmarsson having close to the worst possession stats of all the dmen on the Coyotes?

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Dry air

I didn't say that, I said that I was apprehensive about the Blackhawks hiring a head coach with no coaching experience at any level, which is a fair sentiment in this town after Vinny Del Negro and Robin Ventura. There are plenty of guys who could coach this team: Darryl Sutter if he wants it, Bob Hartley, Craig Ramsay, Ted Nolan, I could sit and rattle off retreads all day. But in the long run I don't think you're better off. As for up-and-comers, they're out there, and I hope like hell that Jeremy Colliton in Rockford is one of them. So far he seems to be doing a pretty good job turning things around in Rockford. But right now, I don't feel like any coach would be an upgrade.

I suspect that if there's a head-coach-in-waiting on this staff, it's Don Granato, the only coach of the main four who never played for the Hartford Whalers. But he's still pretty unproven at the NHL level, mostly an AHL or NCAA guy. We'll see.

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Probably gets deployed in his own end a lot to block shots? He leads in blocked shots.

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Yes- I looked at zone starts and while it is low, it didn't look like it was the whole answer. Like I said, I don't watch any Arizona hockey so I am just looking at stats. Everything I saw suggests the decline in his game is continuing.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

I am far from a hockey expert, but it seems like in the NHL who the fuck cares about the regular season as long as you get into the playoffs. Didn't the Hawks lead the West in points and then get swept in the 1st round??

Just sayin'

While it's only 19 games into a 82-game season, as of right now the Hawks are out of the playoff 8 in the west.

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Not a mult.

This seems to be the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom is also that once you're past Thanksgiving, three-point outcomes proliferate such that no one can truly gain ground in the standings and the playoff field is more or less set. Soooo the regular season doesn't matter because the playoffs are totally different, but the regular season also doesn't matter because the standings can't shift for two-thirds of the season, so apparently the first ~24 games matter very very much and then you're playing out the string either set or fucked. WHAT A GREAT LEAGUE!

EDIT: As for the West this year, of the teams in front of the Hawks, there actually aren't too many the Hawks can't catch if they get their shit together. San Jose is basically the same team, some old guys and some kids and no one fits together right. Vegas can suck my dick, no team whose best forwards are Neal and Marchessault can be taken seriously, they're every bit the shitty expansion team we thought they'd be when they're on the road and can't beat up on guys who got fucked up the night before. Calgary's okay, Vancouver really isn't, Minnesota can't put the puck in the net, Dallas can't keep it out, the Avs are still awful. Probably too much ground to gain on the Blues, the Predators are unfortunately really good, and the Jets are way overdue for being legit. That's about it. So you're looking at a wild card, basically.

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It’s hard to find a great available or even young coach to replace your coach mid season. It’s rare to really make a great turn around and long run.

It can be done. The Penguins did it in the 2016 run and didn’t look back. Playing young guys and winning back to back cups. They found their guy coaching their minor league team in Wilkes Barre.

I will give you new guys a guess to where this great hockey coach was the year before that and he was “expendable”.

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Elections have consequences.

It also helped the Penguins that they got 250-goal-scorer Phil Kessel at half his cap hit for crap on a stick because the Maple Leafs were dynamically reinventing tanking that year or something. Sullivan is a good coach (or maybe Johnston was just profoundly bad), but a lot of good fortune came together for the Pens.

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Same thing their GM said.


They won in regulation eight hours after that post. I'm Curious Mush.

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