Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Offseason Moves

The Blackhawks made a lot of moves this offseason and I decided to talk about them all at once. The July 1st signings were all good in my opinion. Stan Bowman added some maturity to the locker room and added some toughness and grit to the team by adding Dan Carcillo. Granted, he also added penalty minutes to the team by adding Dan Carillo, but if Dave Bolland is healthy all year his badass penalty killing should make that a non-issue. There were other moves besides the initial unrestricted free agent signings that impacted the team.

The first is that Viktor Stalberg was re-signed. I'm not sure how I feel about this. He is a fast and smooth skater, but he doesn't have a great shot and seems to just skate around. I absolutely hated when he was on the top line with Kane and Toews during the playoffs. If he has a good season, I'll be happy about this signing. If he does what I expect him to do, I won't be very happy about this.

The second move is the Hawks re-signing Michael Frolik. Frolik came to the Blackhawks right before the trade deadline when Jack Skille was sent to Florida and the Hawks got Frolik and Alexander Salak who will probably be the backup goalie this year. Frolik started slow with the Blackhawks, but he seemed have the same problems as Skille. He couldn't finish at the net. He had chance after chance and couldn't score. Eventually, he got his first Blackhawks goal and after that he was a pretty good addition to the team. He scored a crucial goal in Game 6 of the playoffs this year and I think he has a lot of potential. I can't wait to see what he does this season.

The third move is the Hawks signing Sami Lepisto. He played for the Coyotes and Blue Jackets last season and was signed to a one year deal by the Blackhawks. From looking at his stats he seems like a good addition to the team. The Hawks have eight good defensemen that will be fighting to fit into the 6 defense positions. Yes, one of those guys is John Scott who probably won't see a lot of ice time this year, but he is still on the roster as a defensemen.

The signing of Lepisto lead to the finally move of the offseason to this point. That move was the decision to not re-sign Chris Campoli. He was acquired from Ottawa for some draft picks before the trade deadline last season. While he was with the Hawks he was a good addition to our defense, but he was going to be asking for too much in Stan Bowman's opinion. Stan decided to let him go and not re-sign him. I don't think this is in any way related to his turnover that lost Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs this year. He was asking for a raise and Bowman didn't want to give it to him.

Overall, I like what Bowman has done this offseason and this team looks very good going into the season. I like that he left cap space in case the Blackhawks needed to sign a center sometime during the season if Kruger or Sharp couldn't do the job. It is always good to have a little cap room and Bowman managed to have that and have a pretty good roster going into the season. Great job by Bowman this offseason.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Carbomb

Remember that idiot that we all laughed at in the Stanley Cup Finals last year? Yeah, now he's on our team.  At first I was very upset about this trade, and then I tried to look at the positives of signing him. 

Stan Bowman did say before the start of free agency that he would be trying to make the 4th line grittier and more aggressive. Maybe he had his eye on Carcillo the whole time and nobody else knew about it. Carcillo is a gritty and aggressive 4th liner, but he is basically the same thing that Ben Eager was for the Hawks. He will do some good things and will be a reason for teams to be a little scared of the Blackhawks, but will do stupid things and commit stupid penalties. 

I have a feeling that the Blackhawks PIM will sky-rocket this year thanks to a lot of dumb penalties from Carcillo. The Blackhawks already have a shaky penalty kill and that penalty kill shouldn't be out on the ice more than it already is. 

I don't think Carcillo is all bad, but the bad certainly outweighs the good. He might score a few goals and add some toughness to our 4th line. That's what we wanted, but the penalty minutes and just flat out stupid play overshadows whatever good he may do in Chicago this year.