I woke up on Friday morning feeling pretty good. Yeah, the weather is pretty terrible, and my dog is showing signs of her age, but all things considered, I was ready to welcome the weekend. There’s a Blackhawks game on tonight, after all, and a new episode of “The Knick,” too. Right now, those are arguably my two favorite things to watch on TV.
So things were looking pretty solid this morning. That is, until I saw this:
The Blackhawks have added Daniel Carcillo to their training camp roster.
— Jay Zawaski (@JayZawaski670) October 3, 2014
Yeah. Carcillo’s back.
And while he’s not on an actual contract, and should be considered the most extreme of long shots to actually make the roster, this is dumbfounding. There are six days left until the regular season, and the team just shuttled most of its best young players downstate to Rockford. Other teams are cutting guys from tryouts right now, not adding them.
There are low-risk moves that are worthwhile because the possibility of value exists. That’s not really what this is. Frankly, I have no idea how to make sense of this, because the old talk of physicality and punching dudes and rah rah rah rah, well, we already have Brandon Mashinter. Are Carilllo and Mashinter supposed to punch each other at the exact same time and create a black hole of grittiness for science to study?
I haven’t been as critical of the whole enforcer thing on the site recently, because I’ve pretty much accepted it as part of this team. Until there’s new leadership in place, there’s going to be a misguided desire to have a guy on the roster whose priority isn’t scoring goals, but defending the guys who do. However, bringing in Carcillo goes beyond that, because it sends a bizarre message to the young players and has almost indiscernible benefits.
Seriously, how do you explain to Joakim Nordstrom that he couldn’t get any more minutes with the big boys this preseason because the team wanted a look at Carcillo?
Most likely, Car Bomb will be gone in a few days, and this will mostly be for nothing. But in that case, why even bring him in at all?