General Manager Mike Smith surveyed the wreckage wrought by the Blackhawks’ 2000-01 season and promised Monday that there will be some major changes made by next season.
“There’s somewhat a sense of urgency,” Smith said. “We need to do some things that are exciting. We’re going to have to put a stamp on our team.”
Smith is looking for a new coach “who has had success in the league–a 100-point season or something like that, the sense of a track record. The new coach will be different than Alpo [Suhonen].”
How will he be different?
“Since I don’t know who it’ll be it’s hard to say,” Smith said.
“But in our business players make the difference. I’d be kidding myself, the people I work for and the fans if I said we only had to make two or three changes. We’ll turn over a third of our roster–six to eight players. I don’t know who those players are. I just know we have to be fairly aggressive in retooling our team.
“Come July 1 there will be some free agents out there we’ll be looking at. In the off-season we’ll have some opportunities to make trades. We need stronger leadership. It’s very difficult for anybody to coach if you don’t have a strong locker room. We have to address the inner fiber of our team.”
The Hawks were winless in their last 11 games (0-8-1-2).
“Certainly, the word I would use for this season is disturbing,” Smith said.
“In January, I thought we’d turned the corner. Instead, we ended up making a U-turn. Once we lost our focus on the playoffs after [winning only once on] that three-game trip [from March 7-10] we fell apart. It turned out to be a disastrous end to a so-so season.”
Suhonen was put on a medical leave of absence with seven games remaining in the season after he was diagnosed with a heart condition. The move also could be interpreted as a firing because, in making the announcement, Smith said that Suhonen wouldn’t get his job back next season.
Smith wouldn’t speculate on the fate of the assistant coaches–Denis Savard, who directed the team during the final seven games, and Al McAdam.
In looking at the roster, Smith cited “five good offensive players.”
They are the three 30-plus goal scorers working on the wings–Tony Amonte, Steve Sullivan and Eric Daze–and centers Michael Nylander and Alex Zhamnov.
“Then there’s a huge drop,” Smith said. “We go from 60-plus [point-producers] to 20-plus. When a 60-plus player gets hurt, he gets replaced by a 20-plus player.
“I still think we improved our defense [by acquiring Stephane Quintal, Alexander Karpovtsev and Jaroslav Spacek]. We improved our personnel, but our defensive play was lousy. They have to play to their ability, and the coaches have to find ways to get ’em going.”
“[Defenseman] Boris Mironov is a highly talented player, but this was a bad year for Boris. He has very little trade value after the kind of year he has had. Forget [lack of] conditioning. Boris lost his confidence. We’re in the player business, and it’s our responsibility to work with Boris and make him a better player.”
