Hawks' lack of size a short story

You have to love the short series.

There's nothing like it to bring out the ups and downs and flips and flops of emotion.

Lose one game, like the Blackhawks did Wednesday night in Vancouver, and everyone should be fired. Win the next game and parade routes will be planned and bus fuel tanks topped off.

With that in mind, it's worth noting that in October 2009 — at the start of the Stanley Cup-winning season for the team Dale Tallon built — there were cries of the Hawks playing too small when Jonathan Toews nearly had his head taken off by the Canucks' Willie Mitchell.

Who took up the cause? Credit little Kris Versteeg with being the only one to stick up for his teammate.

As Toews missed several games with a concussion, there was anger about the soft Hawks roster, and now that's the team everyone points to as tough.

Seriously.

When opposing players take liberties with your stars, you do something about it.

Not so, said Tallon at the GM meetings in March 2009, when he railed against the kind of deterrent that everyone now wants, saying, “You've got to take a hit like a man.”

While there's no love lost here for Bob Pulford, I've always respected his desire to protect his stars with the likes of Al Secord, Behn Wilson, Curt Fraser and Dave Manson, to name just a few.

Granted, he knew those guys had his back, but Denis Savard would have never taken the garbage some Hawks did Wednesday night in Vancouver without at least pushing back — bless his heart.

If that makes me old school, guilty as charged.

The Hawks' lack of size has been a problem for years, and even in today's NHL ballet, teams still need someone willing to hit, intimidate and protect, but there were few complaints about it when the Hawks were winning in February — and talk of a repeat was rampant.

Suddenly, the Hawks are guilty of not keeping Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Adam Burish and Ben Eager for their size and grit, as though anyone was willing last summer to dump a big star in order to keep them.

Really, after one playoff game the panic is so great and the emotion so raw that we're having this conversation again?

Short memories are in long supply after 60 minutes of hockey.

Dale Tallon built a great team and won a Cup. He should be and will always be praised for that, but he failed to plan for the tens of millions he was over the cap, and the purge that took place last summer was inevitable and obvious to anyone with a calculator and the tiniest bit of vision.

And this is still a point of confusion? How can anyone be so obtuse?

Tallon, while a great talent evaluator, just wasn't much for the details of money and CBA rules, as evidenced by the qualifying offer blunder of 2009.

And on the penultimate weekend of the season just ended, the Florida Panthers had to play a man short in a loss to Pittsburgh because of a rules snafu.

The Panthers sent winger Patrick Rissmiller to the minors and brought in Tim Kennedy, but Florida failed to put Kennedy on re-entry waivers and he was unable to play.

Since the Panthers had to dress 20 per NHL rules, they sat injured forward Shawn Matthias on the bench in uniform.

But Oliver Stone and friends probably will blame Stan Bowman for that, too.

And while the Tallon lackeys will read this as a defense of Bowman instead of what's actually written, it's hardly such.

I don't like soft teams. I don't like small teams. And the reality is both the current and former GM share in the success, failure and toughness of the current group.

When the Blackhawks were winning eight straight games, Bowman was a genius unparalleled in NHL history, and now that the Hawks have lost Game 1, and looked incredibly soft in the process, Bowman is a fool for putting the Hawks in this position, even though the roster is largely a result of his predecessor's failure to plan.

Bowman's return on the deals isn't good, but when you have no leverage it's fatuous to expect much, especially a player who can skate, chew gum and enforce at the same time.

Yet, the mere mention of deficit reduction before the trade deadline in 2010 was met with shrieks of terror, and who can forget the wailing when the great Cameron Barker was dealt in February.

Yes, the Hawks are small and timid and I blame Bowman and Tallon and many GMs in today's game who insist you don't need size and toughness in the “new'' NHL.

Some still believe in it, like Anaheim, which won a Cup in 2007 by beating everyone on the scoreboard and along the boards.

It can still be done that way, but Tallon doesn't like that style and the Bowman family has never subscribed to it, whether in Detroit or Chicago.

Count me among those who disagree.

brozner@dailyherald.com

ŸListen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's “Hit and Run” show at WSCR 670-AM.