Hawks GM knows what he wants, but finding it not easy

The NHL trade deadline is only a month away, but Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman feels he is no closer to getting what he wants than he was in November when he first starting making phone calls.

“It’s an enormous waiting game,” Bowman said.

With 32 days until the Feb. 27 deadline, only a handful of those teams considered to be sellers are open for business, most notably the Carolina Hurricanes.

Even clubs such as Buffalo (14th in the Eastern Conference), Montreal (12th in the East), and Anaheim (13th in the West), still believe they can make the playoffs.

“We’ve been trying, honestly, since November, looking essentially for the same thing,” Bowman said, referring to a defenseman and second-line center. “There have only been a couple small trades, but nobody we’ve spoken to that has interested us in the role that we need has even been dealt. I think once the dam is broken and couple trades are made it will open it up for other things to happen.”

Bowman feels no urgency to make a trade even though the Hawks have reached the all-star break having dropped to sixth in the West.

“I wouldn’t say we’re impatient,” Bowman said. “We have a strong team; it’s not like we’ve got gaping holes that we need to plug. Any time you have a good team you want to try to add to it and give yourself the best chance to make a run. That’s what we’re pushing for.”

Bowman wants to strengthen his top six on defense but contends he is not unhappy with his third pair of Steve Montador and Sean O’Donnell.

“Our top four defensemen have been as good as any top four defensemen,” Bowman said, pointing to Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Nick Leddy. “I guess they’ve all had their moments during the season when they’ve played really well or not so well, but I think for the most part if you take our top four against any other team’s top four, it’s fine.

“And I think our five and six compare favorable to anyone else’s five and six, but if we could get an even better version of somebody on that third set we would be superior to other teams.

“I’m talking maybe a guy who is on someone else’s top four that we could use in our third pair to make us that much stronger,” Bowman said. “I don’t point to (Montador and O’Donnell) as being weaknesses at all. I’m looking for a way to give us an advantage over other teams. There’s probably going to be four 100-point teams in our division. It’s a competitive thing we’re in and we’re looking for an advantage.”

The Hawks have allowed 144 goals, the second-most in the West. Bowman knows that is too many goals against for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.

“We talk about it a lot,” Bowman said. “It’s an area we’ve got to improve on. If you could pinpoint one thing, then you could fix that one thing. I don’t think you could just say it’s just goaltending, or it’s just penalty killing, or it’s just defensemen, or it’s just your fourth line.

“The flip side of it is we do score a lot of goals and in some ways it’s hard to be the highest scoring team and the best goals-against team. Maybe you do take more chances than other teams do, and that helps you win games.”

Bowman admits he would like to add two players and if not a center to go with a defenseman, then a top-six winger.

“Center is a position we would like to add, but your pool of wingers is a lot more,” Bowman said. “We’re just not going to get stuck on center and then not get anybody.

“We definitely have the money. It’s more finding players that are available. There just aren’t a lot of teams that are trading their players. There are a lot of teams looking for the same thing and only a couple teams that are trading.”

Certainly some impact players are going to become available in the next month — there always are — and Bowman plans to be in on the bidding up to a point.

“I wouldn’t want to trade away a core guy to get an impact player, but if there’s a guy a team would trade for prospects or draft picks, sure, that would interest us,” he said.

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