He might be right, but I don't think you could get his value back in a trade.

That would be to not know or willfully neglect that Kane, besides being the best playmaker of his generation, is also probably the best at slipping contact. Someone has laid one serious hit on him in the last ten years, and it broke his clavicle and allowed us to loophole our way to a championship. Not only does he have the kind of game that's built to last, his body has taken far less abuse than those of his teammates or his fellow generational players Crosby and Ovechkin. If the Hawks ever get good again in the next six or seven years, Kane will be part of why.

That's not even getting into how there's no way on earth you'd get close to commensurate value in such a trade: look what the Bruins didn't get for Joe Thornton (Kane-level passing talent but ten years older), or what they didn't get for Tyler Seguin, or what the Senators didn't get for Erik Karlsson. Dan read a Faxes From Uncle Dale post that wasn't any better to begin with and thought he could get away with it on the air.

_________________

Agreed.
While it's true Kane is the only one of the giant contracts with any value....you don't trade away that kind of generational dominance.

_________________

A small hidden benefit of Toews is the dynamic with Kane where they're like the Sedins come contract time. They're OK being a package deal and anchor each other.

Toews' contract still sucks but when you look at Kane and Toews as a package deal the numbers are fine.

That was the case up through 2015....he hasn't been close to a $10 Million / year player since that last cup.

_________________

But neither has Kane...in a good way

not sure how to interpret that, but I'll just disagree.

_________________

A significant chunk of both Toews' and Seabrook's contracts have to be based not on production, but on intangibles, like leadership in the clubhouse.

Looking at Toews current pace, he'll be right there points wise with his best seasons. He's never been a point a game guy.

_________________

Kane has played better than his $10M salary and Toews worse. $20M for their combined production is OK. Not great, not horrible but fine.

Dylan Strome NHL 3rd Star Of The Week

Congrats kid!

_________________

In Boston tonight.

Pumping the brakes on my own excitement here...If you add their overtime losses into the mix, they're still 10 games under .500.

Bruins are playing pretty well. Will be a good test.

Hawks get a little lucky. Pastrnak fell on his thumb at home and had to have surgery.

_________________

1st period...NOT GOOD!

Offense has been covering up the poor defense lately. Not tonight. Some of these guys look lost out there tonight.

_________________
Mulli is Howard Stern in his prime compared to Haugh.

Defensive lapses everywhere. Not good when you fail to score on a long 5 on 3.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Where was it, up his asshole?

_________________

Coach Q called the Hawks locker room during the first intermission to recommend some line changes.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Been listening on the radio. What's with all the Hawks penalties?!

_________________

Hawks are chasing all over. It should be 6-1 right now.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Ref gets pelted and then Seabs gets nailed.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Woof. Dog game.

Budgeted for a loss here, but with New Jersey, Ottawa, Columbus, and Detroit coming up, there could be seven of eight there.

_________________

Let's get back to losing. This team will get their ass handed to them by any good team and if they would grind into the playoffs they would end up playing Nashville, Winnipeg, or San Jose. Maybe they win a game. Then they'll end with the 18thish pick in the draft. Or if they keep the course and don't make the playoffs they'll end with a 14-16th pick in the draft. Fuck no. Trade one of Anisimov or Saad and Keith or Gustafson. With the way Gustafson is playing you might be able to trade him for a real asset. Obviously, if you can get anything for Kruger, Kunitz, or Ward you do that too. Start losing again and get a top 10 pick and more cap space.

_________________
Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

lord hep me I watched Blackhawk for the first time in like 25 years. that was horrible. is it always like that?

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

No, the Blackhawks just ran out of luck and Patrice Bergeron is maybe the best two-way center of all time.

_________________

seems like the hawk would have better with the corpse of ray emery in goal last night.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

_________________

Did what they had to and beat a putrid Devils team, but I don't think they gained much ground in the standings, if any. Also, 41 saves for Ward, ouch. Let's not get any misconceptions about Colliton being this great coach who's a vast improvement over Quenneville, because in terms of system play, they're worse than they've ever been. What we have is Kane and Toews deciding to pull their lousy team out of the muck, plus some considerable roster improvements that attended a general manager no longer sabotaging his coach. 43 shots on goal from New Jersey, Jesus Christ.

_________________

2 pts back of the last spot.

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

It's terrible.

How does hockey rebuild or turn itself over? How long does it take? Blackhawks are assholes right now but can they right the ship within 3-5 years?

If they have another draft class like 2011, possibly. Gonna need a lot of cost-controlled talent and fast, and I'm not sure that's coming. But this league is so wacky now with this short-shift dump-and-chase shit that no one can really see the future.

While their future may not necessarily be much brighter than the Bulls', at least their floor is lower because of the more limited revenue streams of the NHL. The NHL is still to this day very much in the live-event business first and foremost, and their big TV deal is subject to the vagaries of the Canadian dollar exchange rate, so there's always money disappearing into thin air unless the banks nuke our economy again and the dollar hits par (THIS IS NOT TO BE RULED OUT). So to let yourself get really bad is to commit financial suicide, because no one will buy tickets to the games, park cars, and buy beer if you suck. The flipside is that it's much harder to tank to get good, especially now with the league smoothing the draft lottery odds to where the worst team only has a 15% shot at first overall. I don't think the Hawks can ever be despair-inducingly bad. There's not enough TV money coming in to allow it.

We better hope like hell this Boquist kid is every bit the Erik Karlsson he's advertised as because I think last year was our one and only shot at a really high draft pick, and we really need a superstar on the blue line. Like I said, it's very hard to see far into the future in this league, but if I had to try, I would say that based on the death of the bridge deal, the future is a big blob of mediocrity, like, really big, with the no-state-income-tax teams (Predators, Golden Knights, Lightning, Stars, nominally the Panthers but I don't trust that shitshow to do anything right) eventually forming the closest facsimile the NHL can manage of the NBA superteams: the Tampa Bay Lightning's deep-discounted player contracts stomping on Canada's face forever.

_________________