So the Hawks have decided not to re-sign Assistant Coach Bruce Cassidy... absolutely shocking; only not.Ya see, this is why nobody who hasn't played for the team and is a loyal member of The Blackhawk Family would ever get themselves invovled with this sorry ass organization; because in the end you have to answer to Good Ole Dollar Bill Wirtz' Bottomline. And even if you are a GM who wants to improve the team you end up having to say stupid rubbish like this to the media:
I think everyone in creation can read between those lines to see "He wanted to be compensated monetarily according to his level of experience and that is just crazy talk."Blackhawks GM Dale Tallon wrote:"Bruce has been a head coach in the East Coast League, the International Hockey League, the American Hockey League and the NHL," Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon said in a release. "We feel he is better suited to being a head coach rather than an assistant. We thank Bruce for all he has done for the Blackhawks and wish him the best of luck for the future."
They'd brought in Cassidy on an interim basis on terms that were just above 'you give me somethin to put on my NHL resume and I'll show up since I'm still being paid under my last team's contract when they let me go' which is of course how the team likes it. While that was the right move at that time I'm sure that part two of the unwritten agreement was that he'd be brought back and paid a normal AC's salary for 2007. Which is what any team not run by an old billionaire fool like it's still 1960 would have done. Instead they've chosen not to renew his contract now that he isn't being paid the majority of his salary by another team.
This has been a major point of contention with Hawk fans as the last head coach with any amount of experience brought in behind the bench and who didn't play for the team at some point was Mike Keenan in the freakin' 80s. He wanted silly things like good players and a winning team though so that mistake has yet to be made again.
The larger question that gets me off onto the following rant though isn't "Why not pay for an experienced Assistant Coach?" it's "Why pay any coach for his experience?" This is simply something that is not believed in by this OrganIzation. Our coaching history is an absolute joke.
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I personally agree that Yawney was the best man for the job as this year was to be the first supposed 'Play The Kids' year but once again after they still half-assed it by bringing in/retaining overpaid loser veterans like Jim Dowd, Curtis Brown, Matthew Barnaby and the still shockingly overpaid and underproducing Martin LePaycheck.
In concept however he was the right call as he's done an amazing job making anything out of the schlubs the Hawks call draftees (don't get me started on Hawk drafting) as coached in Norfolk for years.Guess what? They wouldn't even hire an assistant coach to work with him! He was as far as I know the only sole coach of an AHL team. So that makes it even more impressive. His only assitant was his head scout who guess what? Was also responsible for the Blackhawks' scouting of North America
(times 1,000).We still have Denis Savard waiting to be promoted to Coach for when they decide to scapegoat Trent Yawney; and Savard's area of emphasis? The powerplay. A powerplay that has been the worst most inept piece of rubbish you've ever seen for years now without a whiff of improvement. Savard of course had no coaching experience before taking the assistant's job beside being a former player and Proud Memeber of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢.
Our other assistant coaches? Well... there aren't any really. The most experienced and respected man behind the Hawks bench over the past decade continues to be the head trainer.
Since back in the early days of Ed Belfour's time here their hasn't been a full-time Goaltending coach for the Hawks, again to my knowledge the only professional team without one. Tretiak has been the 'Goaltending Consultant' to the tune of a few one to two week stints a year ever since. Surpisingly the goaltenders have miraculously played better and rid themselves of slumps and bad habits during those times though! Stephane Waite, a career minor league coach with about 12 teams for a yer or two, was brought in to the postion this year. A few key portions of his bio: "Waite has coached many of today's NHL goaltenders, including Jocelyn Thibault, Brian Boucher, Felix Potvin and Jean-Sebastien Aubin" impressive listing eh? It goes on to explain why he was brought in for fill-in-for-Tretiak duty in the first place later by saying that the name might be familiar to fans because the Hawks drafted his brother in 1987. Yup; he's a Pround Member of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢!!!
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Back to my head coaches rant for a moment check out this (non)impressive list of coaches the team has brought in since Darrell Sutter (again a member of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢!) in 1995 decided three years here was enough to know that he had to get out. He ended up leaving to "spend more time with his family" and to coach the Sharks the next season and then GM/Coach the Flames since of course.
Also note that this includes at one point 5 coaches in under 4 seasons:
Craig Hartsburg 1995-1998 (104-102-40)
Dirk Graham (whose only 'Coaching' experience was that he was Hawks Captain in his playing days) lasted all of 58 games in 1998 going 16-35-8.
Lorne Mollekan then took over for him and lasted all of 25 games into his first "full" season as Head Coach going 18-19-8-2 while being subjected to one of the most embarrasing moments in the Wirtz Era to date when Bill Wirtz decided what was needed was that his then 63 year old right-hand-man Bob Puhlford should "Be there for Lorne behind the bench" as Co-Coach. I know... believe me I couldn't make this rubbish up. Molle eventually quit and Bob again took to the bench where he claimed he was "going to build the team just like we had back in 67!" (yes, nineteen sixty seven). Again, sadly, I'm not making that up.
It was after this mess that they decided to makeone of their odd forays into hiring people with experience bringing in Mike Smith as GM giving him the ability to name his own coach which was, regrettably, Alpo Suhonen. Both he and Smith invisioned a euro-heavy team of highly skilled skaters but were left with a bunch of muckers and grinders not much above the AHL in skill level.
As the heat was turned up with losses rolling in Wirtz and Pully put the screws to Smith and Alpo eventually was allowed to finish out the year (going 29-40-8-5) before leaving due to "medical issues" with his heart supposedly
So to get Wirtzford back to their comfort zone ruling their kingdom with their iron fistings, Puhlford was given the right to hire the next coach and unsurprisingly that coach was yet another Proud Member of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢ Brian Sutter. He instantly and predictably butted heads in wanting to make GM Smith's skaters including Tuomo Ruutu into grinders (he made Ruutu 3rd line center giving him around 9 minutes a game in his rookie year and benched him for stretches because he "has to remember that his primary job is to be responsible defensively") while many belive the useless "character" forward muckers and grinders were actually hired by Puhlford not Smith.
Eventually Sutter's well known inability to win in the playoffs, or coach young players, or keep Theo Fleury off the bottle on the road, or control his temper in general (including a drunken incident when he slammed Tyler Arnason into a wall at a restaurant/bar in Nashville and screamed obscenities at him and accused him of being "a pussy who he knew wouldn't fight back") made it time for WirtzPuhlford to make a change.
Sutter though, being Their Boy, was retained and GM Mike Smith instead was fired (and he then sued Wirtz who refused to pay the remaining three years of his contract because Smith was in breach of contract somehow) along with all the scouting system he installed... and guess who officially took his place as GM? Yup... none other than Bob Puhlford with Dale Tallon (himself another Proud Member of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢) being named the Assistant GM just so we know who is still calling the shots
Sutter (91-103-37-15) was not brought back after the lockout eventhough they signed him to a "vote of confidence" extension prior to the lockout
And Tallon was promoted to GM and so now it's Trent Yawney who of course played for the Hawks and coached the AHL team making him, you guessed it, yet another Proud Member of the Blackhawk Familyâ„¢ (currently 26-43-13) who will work for cheap.So it's good that they didn't keep someone with experience like Cassidy around; that certainly would have lead to only bad things. Of course as the team says he's better suited to be a head coach anyhow...
And you wonder why people honestly say this team will never be sucessful until Bill Wirtz is dead (as he won't sell such a prestigious thing as a pro sports franchise to lower his opinion among his fellow billionaires)? The sad thing though is that even then son Peter would be next to take over and he's not shown to be much different from the Old Man; claiming he'd stick to Wirtz' war with the fans keeping home games off of TV (they own the home broadcast rights and refuse to allow home games to be shown locally to "protect the value" of their season ticket holders and because "Newspapers don't give away their product for free.")
It just never ends...
is anyone thought about shooting down Mr Wirtz? 
lol bad joke,i agree...
