Who will do the rebuild better? Guess you could throw the Cubs in there, but have not watched a game all year, and they haven't fired coaches/GM's, so really can't call it a rebuild.

The Hawks seem to be in total collapse, even launched the only two reasons to watch Pat and Eddie, has to be a minimum 3-5 years before they are relevant.

Bears at least seem to have a plan, and if Fields is good the process should be significantly quicker.

Seems like the Hawks are definitely tanking deeper, not necessarily better.

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Yeah, rarely see a rebuild where you trade any young player with promise and get rid of the voices of the franchise. Must be a lot of money in the booze business because the Wirtz family will lose a ton of money on the Hawks this year.

I would say the Hawks are tanking WIDER not deeper. Both have dropped their rosters to the same level of garbage and both are operating under new GM / Coach combos.

The Hawks have spread wider in that even the broadcast booth has ran away screming.

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i believe the hawks would have gladly spent over a soft cap and paid the luxury tax - in essence, throw money at stan's cap problem. alas, they couldn't, nhl has a hard cap. the hawks' rebuild will likely take longer, it can't take off due to nearly 30% of their money tied to two players.

no doubt, the bears' ownership loves the nfl hard cap. they have room, will they spend? my take on today's football is to load up on offensive players and be chintzy on defense. offensive stars are more expensive than defensive stars, so, i think that explains why the bears appeared to be defensive-orientated in building their teams through the decades.

given all that, it's easy to understand the anger towards the cubs - no actual cap, but a 'luxury tax' that pays for itself in spades if you get far in the post season. cubs wanted nothing to do with that.

Interesting to hear speculation that the Hawks did not offer Edzo the terms he wanted because the team doesn't know if they will have a local TV outlet in a few years due to the possible demise of NBC Sports Chicago.

Edzo also said they should have started the rebuild two years ago, which seemed to indicate they should have launched Bowman much sooner than they did, and that makes perfect sense given his poor draft results.

Odd that Wirtz and McKaskey not only kept obviously incompetent GM's way longer than anyone else would have, but that they also allowed those GM's to frequently trade away draft capital in attempts to paper over poor draft/FA signings. Then they both magically realized they had been idiots and brought in guys to clean up the mess that the owners themselves had created.

It really does not give you much confidence that either team will get it right, there is too much evidence of incompetence at the top and you can't fire the owner.

How did they get it so right in 08-09 just after Bill Wirtz died until 2015ish and can't tell their elbow from their asshole since say 2017?

they already had keith and seabrook and had drafted bolland and brouwer - who were 3rd line guys, but would have been 2nd line players with most other clubs. add toews & kane & saad, a hossa signing and you really couldn't go wrong, even if you tried. very strong core.

the stars aligned.

Didn't hurt that Stan had a lot of help from Scotty.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Nepotism sucks unless it doesn’t.

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What's up? If the RSN model fails eventually, it's going to fail in smaller markets before NY/LA/Chicago go down (though the idea of the Dodgers having their own channel, the Lakers having their own channel, and the other four having another always seemed like one channel too many). Do you think the Bulls are thinking "uh oh, we might not be able to put Chicago Bulls games on TV in three years"? I don't.

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not sure who botched the bickell resigning ($4 million per year), which then forced them to trade saad the next season - as there was no way they could afford saad and he was going to be a free agent. saad signed for $6 million per year the next season with columbus. if they didn't resign bickell, saad likely would have taken $5 million per year with the hawks the year before. that trade broke saad and it hurt toews. those two had a great partnership. at that time, the hawks also gave an obvious rapidly declining (skating-wise) seabrook an additional $55 million for 7 years, i believe.

a few years after those mistakes - they then gambled on not paying panarin more than saad and hoping they would produce the same offensive stats by trading panarin to get the cheaper saad back. they only made a bigger hole in the boat.

was stan watching the game show channel during those years?