As Dick Jauron and his out-of-work coaching brethren know all too well, professional sports is a results-driven industry with a simple evaluation process: win much more than you lose.
The Blackhawks, though, want to be judged on different criteria.
“Everything is judged by wins and losses and that’s not the way it works,” Hawks coach Brian Sutter said again Tuesday. “If you played any sport or built any business, [you know] this is a process and it’s not fun on some days.”
After Monday’s 1-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Hawks have three victories in their last 24 games and have lost 12 straight games on the road.
Their nine victories are an NHL-low and their fewest on New Year’s Eve since 1956-57. That season, the Hawks finished 16-39-15 for 47 points.
But Sutter said fans can’t get hung up on winning and losing.
“If I lose focus and jump up and down and go crazy over the results . . . regarding wins and losses, our team is going to totally lose focus,” he said.
This is only Sutter’s third season directing the Hawks’ seemingly continuous rebuilding effort. For most die-hards, however, the Hawks have been rebuilding since Aug. 16, 1996–the day they traded Jeremy Roenick for Alex Zhamnov.
From Roenick’s first full season in 1989-90 until that date in ’96, the Hawks played in one Stanley Cup final, three conference finals and won a President’s Trophy. Since trading Roenick, they have played a total of 11 playoff games, winning three.
“If people want to talk about Jeremy Roenick and the four years or five years they didn’t make the playoffs before I got here, then they don’t understand what it takes to build a team,” Sutter said.
Still, some long-time Hawk watchers wonder whether this season’s Igor Radulov is just a later version of Dmitri Nabokov and whether Tuomo Ruutu is an updated Dan Cleary. They also shudder to think Anton Babchuk might be a younger Boris Mironov.
An argument can be made that the Hawks’ problems have more to do with their collection of veterans, who are supposed to be leading the rookies.
Though none of the rookies has shown “franchise-player” ability so far, Ruutu has had three solid games in a row and rookie goaltender Michael Leighton was named NHL defensive player of the week after shutting out St. Louis and Detroit.
In training camp, the Hawks said they would go as far as their veterans took them. Steve Sullivan, counted on to provide offense, is on pace to score the fewest goals since his first full season in the NHL. And no other veteran has taken charge.
“We don’t get rewarded because we don’t have the finishers,” Sutter said.
The record is a reflection of that.
“I’m not going to jump off the bridge,” Sutter said. “I know what we have here and the key is we have to compete hard. If fans don’t understand that, then they don’t understand what is going on here and what we decided to do.”
