Mistake with free agents ends Tallon's days as GM

Blackhawks president John McDonough would have preferred to focus on the positives of Dale Tallon's tenure as general manager at Tuesday's news conference at the United Center.

But that focus went somewhere else.

After all, this was a GM who was being demoted to senior advisor after building one of the best teams in hockey, one that finished the regular season with 104 points and advanced to the Western Conference finals just two months ago.

This was a GM who had just added to an impressive roster by signing the dynamic Marian Hossa as a free agent.

While Tallon did a lot of good things as Hawks GM since 2005, it was the mistake he took blame for - failing to get qualifying contract offers to his restricted free agents on time - that cost him his job.

McDonough, after a long pause, admitted the GM change wouldn't have been made from Tallon to Stan Bowman had there not been that problem with the qualifying offers.

"Probably not," McDonough said.

There were other issues as well.

McDonough pointed to the need for better decision-making from the GM, which could be interpreted in many ways, possibly a reference to either length or expense of contracts given to Brian Campbell, Dustin Byfuglien and Brent Sopel in the past several years.

"Some of the areas I think we need to improve on are the decision-making areas," McDonough said. "How decisions are made, who is involved, timetables that are involved, just the process. I think we will improve that."

Tallon and McDonough also didn't have a warm and fuzzy working relationship.

"People have been talking throughout the last year about some friction between Dale and I," McDonough said. "I would say there have been some style differences. I might be characterized as aggressive and assertive, but at the same time calculated.

"Dale's was every bit as effective; it was just a different approach. I think people would jump to conclusions that there was friction and we weren't getting along."

McDonough also addressed the issue that Tallon was perceived as not being "his guy," as a holdover from the Bill Wirtz regime.

"Anytime a new president comes into an organization he has an idea of the type of people he would like," McDonough said. "I think that within a period of time that Dale and I worked very effectively together.

"There were certainly times that I would have liked to have seen it be a little smoother with better communication.

"I never really felt that I was out of the loop on things. I think Dale did a pretty good job of keeping me in the loop. I may not have done a good enough job about inquiring."

Both McDonough and Bowman, as the former assistant GM to Tallon, accepted their part of the blame for the fiasco with the restricted free agents.

"It was an organizational error," McDonough said. "Ultimately when a mistake like that is made, ultimately it's my mistake. That is on me, but it's also on me to make sure that mistake doesn't happen again, or we have the proper channels in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. We should be better doing our business."

Added Bowman: "As Dale said, we need to be better at that and we will be better at that. I think we will certainly learn a lesson from that and it will never happen again."

Bowman agreed with Tallon, who claimed the Hawks did not have to overpay to keep Kris Versteeg and Cam Barker. "If you look at their performance with other players that had comparable statistics, they're right in line," Bowman said.

McDonough flatly denied any dispute with Tallon approaching July 1, dismissing rumors he wanted to go for Hossa while Tallon remained loyal to Martin Havlat and would have preferred to re-sign last season's leading scorer.

"I find a lot of humor in that," McDonough said. "For anybody to think that I would weigh in on the merits of Martin Havlat over Marian Hossa or vice versa is embarrassing.

"I do know what I don't know. My role is to put great people in decision-making positions and let them make the decisions while we're in a salary-cap world."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=307026">Salary cap key issue in move<span class="date"> [7/14/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=307021">Wirtz sees Tallon as vital in new role<span class="date"> [7/14/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>