Hawks have holes, but don’t expect Bowman to rush into anything
While there are some who might be ready to shake things up after a loss like the Blackhawks suffered through Tuesday, their fourth in the last six games, don’t expect general manager Stan Bowman to overreact to anything that has happened in the last few weeks.
Without a doubt Bowman is looking to improve a team that has shown some cracks lately, particularly defensively. Bowman said so in a chat with reporters on the recent road trip.
Be sure Bowman is looking, but there certainly is no rush to make a trade. The Hawks have more than $5 million in cap space, money that only stretches the longer Bowman waits to find what he wants.
The trade deadline isn’t until Feb. 28, and we don’t even know who is going to be available before then.
How many teams can even be considered sellers at this early point? Few, if any, outside of possibly the Islanders, Carolina and Columbus, three clubs that don’t figure to make the playoffs.
The Hawks have holes, but who doesn’t? Check out the standings in both conferences. There are no dominant teams in the NHL entering December.
Pittsburgh and Boston are very good, but they are not head and shoulders better than San Jose, Philadelphia, the Rangers, Detroit, Vancouver or the Hawks.
As Hawks coach Joel Quenneville pointed out this week, even the better teams in the league have had stretches when they’ve been very good and stretches when they’ve been ordinary.
More and more it appears as if the Hawks’ biggest need is going to be another defenseman, someone to challenge Niklas Hjalmarsson and Nick Leddy to play in the top four.
The Hawks presently are carrying eight defensemen, but more than a quarter into the season it seems Sean O’Donnell, John Scott and Sami Lepisto are going to be more situational players than guys who are going to be counted on to play significant minutes in the top six in the playoffs.
If you look at the defensemen who are going to be unrestricted free agents after the season — and they’re the ones likely to become available before Feb. 28 — there really is nobody on the list who gets you excited about possibly coming to the Hawks.
That list includes names such as Filip Kuba, Scott Hannan, Francois Beauchemin, Cory Sarich, Joni Pitkanen, Tim Gleason, Bryan Allen and Bryce Salvador.
It will be interesting to see if Bowman believes he needs two players down the stretch — a top-five defenseman and another center.
The Patrick Kane-to-center experiment has worked well for the most part, but lately Kane hasn’t been as noticeable — particularly in those road games where Quenneville can’t get him on the ice in favorable matchup situations.
Kane at center in the regular season is one thing. Kane at center in the playoffs could be more of a challenge to work. The Hawks are small down the middle after Jonathan Toews.
Between now and the all-star break in late January, the Hawks play 18 of their 25 games at the United Center. That should give everyone a pretty good indication of where this team stands.
It’s a good roster, but there are places it needs to be even better.
tsassone@dailyherald.com