I even expected this to occur last winter but, no sooner had the thought seriously crossed my mind, Hawks GM Stan Bowman suddenly appeared in front of microphones, doubling down on the team's commitment to Q.
I think that Q received the benefit of the doubt at that time, being that their free-fall coincided with Crawford's injury, but his challenges went beyond which goalkeepers were available. His player deployment became increasingly strange. As most coaches do, Q had his favourites, it's just been infuriating that some of his favourites happen to be bad at hockey. In recent years it's been Oesterle and Van Riemsdyk but, if you want a little longer list of guys who were given a little more rope than they deserved and a lot more responsibility than they could handle, let me mention Bollig, Carcillo, and Shaw, his spell as 2C being the most glaring example of a player being ridiculously miscast.
On the flip side of that are players like Kempny, Rutta and Teravainen, all of whom Q either didn't hit it off with or simply had no trust in. Well, Kemps and Teuvo are both just fine where they are now, and Rutta will perhaps have the opportunity to reestablish himself under Jeremy Colliton and his staff. Brandon Manning should be worried.
Of greater concern, though, have been The Hawks' special teams, both of which have been awful for at least three seasons. Things had gotten stale and, no matter how long they'd go with their PP and PK strategies failing to work, they just kept on trying the same stuff, night in and night out. Only occasionally would something change and those units would experience some success, but it never lasted and things would become all too familiar, soon enough.
Quenneville is almost certainly a good coach. He's won four Stanley Cups, admittedly with some stacked teams but, in the case of The Hawks, he was given a lot of great parts but it was he who made them into a cup winning machine. Maybe anyone could have done that with the players he's had at his disposal, maybe not, and we'll never know anyway. Regardless, a shake-up of some sort was desperately needed and, even if the old chestnut about "It's easier to replace one coach than twenty players" is crap, The Hawks have so many guys with no-movement contracts they couldn't have seriously retooled at that level, even if they wanted to.
Oh well, it was great for awhile but now it's time to move on, and hopefully up.
Maserati - Bye, M'Friend, Goodbye
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