If they do, they deserve to lose. Here's hoping Bednar does his coaching thing and learns from it--much like Q and the "fresh legs" debacle.
Gotcha,
If you thought that was bad, see Calgary. They really blew that series, including last night (2 goal lead).
Byram was a no brainer pick. Bowman hold my drink lol
The tragic summer of '19' will haunt the team long after Mattaa's retained $$$ is gone and long after Shaw's LTIR $$$ is gone and long after the untradable deHAAN-job is gone because that's also the summer Jokiharju was shipped off for NOlander.
Oh, I remember.
I wasn't here then, but on the Blackhawks official boards, it was between, Byram, Dach, and a lot of people wanted Cozens too.
I can see your point, but I still think defensemen were a more pressing need because we had/have exactly zero top-end d-men in the pipeline and they take longer than centers to develop.
Maybe my memory is wrong, but we really didn't have 1 center in the pipeline when Dach was drafted, so I'd disagree that center wasn't a more pressing need over D, at that time, necessarily. Hayden was a bust by then and couldn't crack the top-six. Schmaltz was gone (for Strome) before that draft at the deadline. You pretty much had Kahun and Kampf, who were never slated to be anything special. On D, at the time, you at least had the Joker and Forsling, over just Strome; and Strome was 22 at the time (as was Forsling, but I digress). Bowman, in his great powerful wisdom, would trade Joker a few weeks later, but at the time Dach was drafted, Joker was technically still in the pipeline (and should have been retained).
Goaltending in general has been really weird this playoffs, for almost every team. Smith has had some horrific moments, but overall against Calgary, he was solid (with the exception of getting pulled early in the series and the floater-goal from the opposite end of the ice, which was hilarious). I don't think it's going to be as easy for him to bounce back against the Avs as he did against Calgary.
I don't necessarily agree that C was as-pressing or more than D because the vet D presence of Keith and Seabrook were further into the twilight of their careers than Toews, and even if Joker would have hit we'd still need another D-man. Forsling was nothing special, Boqvist, Beaudin, and Mitchell hadn't seen really any NHL icetime yet, and like you mentioned Wahlstrom >>>>> Boqvist.
This is again where I tend to give Stan a little more leeway than I normally would, because all I ever heard for about the last 7 years now from fans was, "play the kids!" and "Why not put (insert young player) in instead of (insert old player)??" I mean in hindsight, yeah, it's easy to say Dach was rushed -- but at the time, all the majority of fans wanted was to see him in the lineup, so damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
Many of the more seasoned fans will say that the more quality icetime with more responsibilities for a kid developing, the better. Dach, aside from the play-in, wasn't doing much in the top-2 and was pushed to the bottom pair.
