Meet the new boss.

For some reason, the Blackhawks just fired their general manager, and former Blackhawk great, Dale Tallon. I don't have all the information yet, as it seems to just be leaking out of the fortress that is the Blackhawks home office. Despite being somewhat in the dark, I gotta say I'm pretty pissed off right now. Dale Tallon may not have been the perfect GM, and I've criticized him on more than one occasion. That being said, you can't possibly argue with results, and DT single-handedly put together a team that reached the Western Conference Finals last season, arguably a few years ahead of schedule.

This is still the guy who brought Patrick Sharp here for Matt Ellison. Who got us Kris Versteeg for Brandon Bochenski. Who got us Jesus Christ Havlat for Mark Bell. Who drafted Toews, Kane, Barker, Bolland, Hjalmarsson, Seabrook, Keith, and everyone else who's going to take the ice in October. Is he Ken Holland? No, he is not. But he certainly has earned the right to see this through, and the Hawks took that away.

Dale was by no means perfect. He leaves us with a salary cap situation that is going to be messy next year when Johnny Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith all have new contracts due. But it's not unsalvageable. The Huet signing was a bit off, but at that point what had Khabibulin done to justify his salary and #1 status? Campbell was paid his market value, and Byfuglien and Sopel's contracts were ridiculous, but once again...WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS. If you compare some other GM's performances around the league (most notably Glen Sather, who is a complete and utter lunatic), Tallon has to rank in the top 10. And now who takes over? Stan Bowman, the son of the legendary hockey coach Scotty Bowman.

The exact same Scotty Bowman the Blackhawks hired a year ago to "advise" John Mcdonough in the ways of the hockey world. At the time, I thought it was bloody brilliant. We just stole the greatest coach the Scum Wings ever had, and now he's working for us! The more I heard about it, the worse it started to stink. After numerous reports of his daily tea with Mike Babcock (Scumwings Coach) I've completely soured on this. If your main advisor has his own son poised to assume the throne, just how objective is he going to be? I also said that though Scotty Bowman has no peer as a coach, his record as a GM was spotty at best, and we're trusting his talent evaluation? Ugh.

Now this “snafu” with the RFA signings now has to be put under the spotlight. I can’t believe I’m saying this about my hockey team, but was Tallon essentially framed by a management that needed an excuse to show him the door? This is fairly disgusting to me, and it smacks of the worst kind of disloyalty. How much longer until we 300 level season ticket holders are sent out to pasture by an organization that prices us out of the picture?

What’s next?