October 27, 2021: Bowman Out

Well, it’s been a long time coming… Stan Bowman should have been shown the door way before now for individual performance based reasons. His track record, even though he was the active GM for all 3 of the Cups, wasn’t great IMO. Of course he had his hits, and had the no brainer extension decisions to make, but overall, I don’t think he personally did a very good job, especially since that final Cup was hoisted. Yeah, he should have been long gone, but no… he was still here. He was here as the Blackhawks were investigated for a now well known incident from that 1st Cup year. And now, after the results have been made public, now, only now, does he excuse himself because of not wanting to be a distraction… and oh yeah, absolves himself of any wrong doing in the whole thing… what a scumbag. It sucks to have happened this way, but I’m definitely happy that Stan Bowman is no longer the GM of the Blackhawks.

But that’s only part of it, of course. There were many leaders of the organization that were part of this botched handling of a very serious situation. After yesterday, not one of them is currently employed by the Hawks. Curious to see what is going to happen to Coach Q, now the coach of the Panthers; he knew about it too. Should he shoulder some of the blame? Yeah, I think so. By no means is it his and only his fault, but he is certainly part of the problem; how much of the blame falls on him, which will subsequently lead to whatever the repercussions are for him, time will tell. Looking back at what happened during that time and since then, the best route is owning up to being part of that horrible decision, NOT washing your hands of it completely like good old Stan did.

When these accusations first surfaced, it was in the middle of the magical 1st Cup run in my lifetime. “This is the last thing we need”, I’m sure, was part of the seriously flawed thinking. Sure, a ton of work was put in to bring the Hawks from the gutter to a first class organization; unfortunately, the Hawks failed to live up to that reputation with how this all went down. By handling it the right way, a better way, the Hawks WOULD have shown how first class they were. If the concern was avoiding a distraction, a public investigation at the time, fine; both the parties should have been removed from the team indefinitely, until which time, (a month later after the Cup was won?) the proper investigation was done; certainly not 11 years later… Yeah, this guy was allowed to stay around the team, while also being given the option to resign or be investigated after the season. Uh, duh, yeah, I’ll volunteer to be investigated… he was out, quick; he knew he was F-d up. But the F-d up part was, that he wasn’t done… he went other places and did the same thing. The Hawks certainly could not control what this guy would eventually do in his new career choice, but by investigating, and finding him guilty as sin, they could have prevented this from happening in another hockey setting. They failed, miserably, not only the victim of this specific situation, but the future victims. Just horrible.

Does it taint that Stanley Cup, and this entire Stanley Cup era for the Blackhawks? I don’t know… I don’t think so… maybe it should. But, unfortunately or fortunately, the beat goes on. The most important result is that somehow maybe this concluded investigation will help the victim get back to some kind of normal, and secondly, that this will help ensure that the correct protocols are followed in any future incidents, not only in the NHL, but other sports, heck, any and all settings. It’s some F-d up shit… it needs to be taken seriously, and looked into timely. Did the Blackhawks organization learn its lesson? We can only hope…