Ever since they moved him to wing, he's been completely invisible. At least when he was a center, he was getting his chances. But yeah, he definitely has a confidence issue, and I think the move to wing only exacerbated it. I honestly thought he was a healthy scratch last night, but I guess it was an injury that kept him out.
My best guess is that Bowman started believing his own hype when the teams were winning cups and all he had to do was navigating the cap and accounting. Once he had to start actually building a team, He was so far out of his depth he needed water wings and didn't really consult with anyone who was any good at prospect scouting and development. He kept looking for some wunderkinder that would be the magic pill to allow the old core to win once more, as opposed to following the blueprint of what worked--and that was that the old core (outside of Kane) had at least *some* development at lower levels after they were drafted. The older the old core got, the more the rush was on and it felt like Stan was getting less and less patient.
With the state of the goaltending, 2022-23 may be even worse than this season. But at age 23 come September, Hawks may let Soderblom compete for a spot and sign a free-agent as primary to carry the load. To borrow from Ben Pope in the Sun-Times today, Lankinin has been below average and is a free agent; most likely, he will not be back. A strong final month (resembling his early 2021 form) would be fool's gold more than genuine improvement.
Yeah.
That bad......so their drafts really have sucked! No Bueno!
My take is pretty much the same as @KBIB's. I think Beaudin and Mitchell have an absolute ceiling as a #3 (and I'm being generous here), but are most likely a 5-6. That's the main problem with how the previous gen ran things; because Bowman the Lesser spent so much effort to try and get one more win for the old core, he completely neglected the succession plan. So that puts us where we are now: We have a single possible top-pair defender who will be very overpaid next year unless his game increases by an order of magnitude...and a bunch of 4-5 D-men who would not break into the top-4 on ANY of our cup-winning teams.
I'm kinda hoping it is worse. The 2023 draft is supposed to be very deep and if the 'hawks finish out the season without taking out they will have their 1st rounder next season and a late 1st rounder next season unless Tampa completely shits the bed.
Basically yes. All drafts are a crapshoot, but it seems like Stan's hit to miss Ratio was very low vs. Smith or Tallon's--especially higher in the draft rounds. It's why I feel like we're in year zero of the rebuild.
It was even worse in Tampa......
Well, Colonton had him on the fourth line and a year ago suctioned to Kampf. I’m not making excuses for Kubalik but that’s a gross mismanage of one of the best shots in the league. Love me some Toews, but he’s washed up, Dach is a bust, there’s nobody on this team that can line up his strength when it comes to centers.
Other than the two goalies who in a best case scenario, are nothing but backups.....they are playing on a regular basis at least 5 to 6 players who are for the most part useless. Why? The majority of these guys are 30ish. Why? The trade deadline has passed. If you're not gonna re-sign these guys why not just cut them now, pay them what you owe them and let some kids finish out the season. And if the the FO is planning to re-sign any of them....please give a heads up to your season ticket holders so they can shove their tickets up your asses.
This has been the Hawks D for a few years now...Crawford, Lehner, and Fleury have been covering up how awful it is for a while.
(Points finger)
Kane skates with two very effective linemates who are producing at close to a point a game and JT gets the leftovers but Kane's nonphysical,less demanding style of play has indeed left more thread on his tires than JT has on his.
I just think Toews saw a 23yro with talent,a set of balls and a kid who went harder than anyone....every shift get moved out and wondered why this isn't the type of player a rebuild would require. He also knew he'd miss him on his line.
You could have had a top four of Seider, Joker, Seth, and Dobson.
