Assigning patience the label of a virtue never seemed to make sense in the world of professional sports, because it seems to go against every instinct associated with the sport. We use the word “playmaker” in damn near every sport that exists and the literal translation of it has nothing to do with waiting around for something to happen: it’s about making it happen.
And that may be the hardest part of this whole rebuild/tanking/whatever we’re calling it that the Blackhawks have been doing for the last several seasons, is that we’re constantly told to be patient, that the talent is coming, that the wins are on the way. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s getting harder and harder to locate that patience.
It makes sense on paper, of course. Tear a roster down to the studs, acquire a plethora of young talent, figure out which of those pieces are going to be around for the long haul, and then assemble the puzzle with a few exterior pieces added and see if that collection of talent is worthy of a summer parade or two before they all age past their primes or the salary cap comes calling. It’s simple when summarized in a paragraph using words. It’s substantially less simple when factoring in all of the variables associated with the human beings who comprise that collection of talent — along with the human beings who are putting it all together.
The Blackhawks are somewhere in that stage between acquiring young talent and morphing it into a contending team. That’s an incredibly wide gulf to navigate, and one glance at the standings suggest the Hawks remain miles — if not lightyears — from the latter part of that venture. The eternal question remains how long it’s all going to take, and it doesn’t feel like this season has brought us enough evidence yet to suggest this team is going to get to that final destination at all.
Look, I get it: even this team’s more proven players are still shy of their primes. Bedard’s 20. Kaiser’s 23. Vlasic’s 24. Knight’s 24. The guys who are still finding their NHL footing are in a similar age bracket: Levshunov’s 20. Rinzel’s 21. Moore’s 21. Korchinski’s 21. Greene’s 22. Nazar’s 22. Del Mastro’s 23. Crevier’s 24. All of these players are capable of taking significant steps forward in future seasons, with their prime years still four or five or more seasons away. Then there are all the prospects playing in leagues outside of the NHL, many with an age that still starts with a one. They’re babies, relative to their professional careers.
But there should be a sense of urgency somewhere, right? Bedard’s ELC is gone at the end of the season. Not that salary cap concerns should be an issue with the ceiling surging in seasons ahead, but more as an indication that we’re already three seasons into his career with nothing to show for it but more draft picks. Are we confident he’s not feeling the losses pile up and the lack of aggression in bringing in other talent who can lighten this offensive burden he’s damn near carrying alone? Do we have to reset the clock for another two or three years when Frondell gets here? Do we have to reset it again when whomever the Hawks pick near the top of this summer’s draft gets here? How many more times do we have to be reminded of the necessity for patience before we get sick of it?
It’s fair for this front office to not commit to a firm timeline on this rebuild so it can avoid having that standard be used against them should they feel to meet it, but it also feels like we’re just waiting around for something to happen that gets this project moving forward again. And we’ve been waiting for YEARS.
How many more years are we going to be waiting?
The Week That Was
Thursday, Feb. 26: Predators 4, Blackhawks 2
Nashville: still annoying!
Saturday, Feb. 28: Avalanche 3, Blackhawks 1
Colorado seems to have that 2013 Hawks problem of playing so well in the first half of the season that the final pre-playoff stretch is just utterly boring.
Sunday, March 1: Blackhawks 4, Mammoth 0
Still can’t believe how easy the Hawks made this night for Arvid Soderblom.
Tuesday, March 3: Jets 3, Blackhawks 2
This one stung a bit.
Friday, March 6: Canucks 6, Blackhawks 3
It’ll take some time for the team to adjust after the trades prior to the deadline but losing to the worst team in the league in such ugly fashion still feels unacceptable.
Sunday, March 8: Stars 4, Blackhawks 3
A resounding thud of an overtime.
Monday, March 9: Blackhawks 3, Mammoth 2
Utah’s gotta be sick of losing to the Hawks, right?
Summer Set Fire to the Rain
The end of the Nick Foligno era in Chicago on Friday led to some weekend reflections on what it was about his time with the team that felt so … hollow. We’ll come back to the idea behind that word in a bit but let’s offer some caveats first: by all indications, Foligno seems like a genuinely good guy and that shouldn’t be something outright dismissed because the world at large could use a lot more good guys in it. He seems as involved as with his kids as any professional athlete can be, and any snippets of interviews where he talked about them seemed littered with moments where it was hard to tell if Foligno was actually a pro athlete or just some suburban dad living at the end of any cul-de-sac anywhere in the Midwest. To avoid being too cynical, let’s just accept that all of the players, coaches, teammates and beat reporters who raved about the person Foligno is aren’t lying to us and that he is, in fact, a good guy.
Not to go too far down the Glengarry Glen Ross road, but that does have its limits in the world of pro sports, especially from the perspective of fans who’ll rarely if ever interact with those athletes. And where things started to feel a little inauthentic or forced with regards to Foligno began early in his time here, when he was thrust upon us as the wise old sage for this team, the conjurer who could whip up some of that vaunted veteran leadership and use it to instill that mythological winning culture or create winning habits in a team surely to be loaded with NHL rookies in the seasons ahead. Anyone seeing evidence of those things here?
Yeah, the Hawks are still in the early stages of a rebuild and the roster is still being assembled and young kids are finding their legs and on and on and on with all the excuses which could be offered here but those excuses pale in comparison to the stark reality of a team that’s 29th in the league now after being 31st in the league at the end of the last two seasons. Where’s all that winning culture? Where are all these winning habits that were supposed to be getting developed?
That is why so much of Foligno’s time here felt like empty calories: because for all of the things Foligno would say during media sessions regarding the foundation that was being built behind the scenes, there continues to be minimal evidence of any initial phases of construction actually occurring. Teams like Montreal and San Jose and Anaheim that had been toiling near the bottom of the league standings with Chicago in recent years are now, at a minimum, in playoff contention if not sitting in playoff spots as of this writing. The Hawks have made no so such movement.
There was a captain here for over a decade prior to Foligno who would offer just as many cliches in media scrums before and after games regarding culture and habits and all of those other things, but then the team behind him would go out and actually deliver them. Yes, those were monumentally better teams. But perhaps all the talk about what was happening could have been muted a bit with these present-day Hawks, knowing that the youthful roster was going to have significant struggles as it made its way through their initial NHL seasons.
It all added up to one of the more forgettable captaincy eras in Chicago for Foligno, one driven more by a PR push off the ice then driven by anything that happened on it.
The Week That Will Be
Thursday, March 12: Blackhawks at Mammoth
Given the feistiness of the last game and this being their third meeting in 12 days, a full line brawl feels possible by the end of this one.
Saturday, March 14: Blackhawks at Golden Knights
Just noticed that Vegas has 14 overtime losses this season. Wonder if this team is being propped up by the loser point more than any other playoff contender in the NHL (Pittsburgh also has 14, so maybe them too!).
Tuesday, March 17: Wild at Blackhawks
Someone send the Blackhawks stadium crew a list of songs for this game that is more than just 36 versions of “Shippin’ Up to Boston.”