Let me start off by saying, I don't get it.

I am not surprised that Dale Tallon was fired reassigned and replaced as Blackhawks GM, but I am surprised by the timing.  The move seemed inevitable since the day Scotty Bowman showed up in the front office, and if the Hawks were looking for any excuse to move Dale out, they had plenty of chances early last season.  Tallon's inability to move Khabibulin after signing Cristobal Huet to a big contract seemed like it would cripple the Hawks' cap situation and the big extensions he handed to Brent Sopel and Dustin Byfuglien didn't look good when both players got off to bad starts.  John McDonough held off though, and Tallon seemingly got lucky, as Huet and Khabi responded to the platoon situation by having very good years, while Byfuglien played well in the first two rounds of the playoffs, and Sopel, uh, cooked stuff at Meijer while on IR.

The Hawks could have moved Tallon out after the season, but instead allowed him to run the draft and the free agent period.  If anybody from the executive suite wants to claim that Tallon lost his job over the RFA fiasco, well that's stupid.  If the Blackhawks though Tallon was so incompetent, why the hell didn't they replace him immediately instead of allowing him to negotiate contracts with those players?  While time was of the essence, Tallon's replacement Stan Bowman was the Assistant GM, and could have easily stepped in pretty seamlessly.  The whole thing is just weird.

Anyway, I have to say, I think Tallon did a good job as GM.  No, he wasn't great, but he built the current team with good drafting, some savvy trades and a gigantic free agent contract here and there.  So, while it's not an original idea by any means, I can't sit still for this turd that Barry Rozner dropped in the Daily Herald today.

As was the case with Denis Savard, Dale Tallon should have never had the job.

Yeah, Tallon was exactly like Savard.  Denis had a couple of seasons as an assistant coach before getting an NHL head coaching job on the basis of being nearby when Trent Yawney was fired.  Tallon spent 4 years as director of player personnel and 2 years as assistant general manager before getting the GM job.  What an unqualified hack.

And as was the case with Savard, John McDonough had only so much patience with so much incompetence.

I can see your lips moving, Mr. McDonough.  And evidentially, so can Mike Kiley.

What's shocking is that he got this far to begin with, considering how he began his management career.  Tallon became close friends with Peter Wirtz, and so Tallon got whatever he wanted.

Yes, I am also shocked that Tallon thought that befriending someone in ownership might help him advance his management career.  Hey, you know who else used to be good friends with Peter Wirtz?  Barry Rozner.  He used to write about how he would sit in Wirtz's office and shoot the shit with he and Tallon and how these guys were going to really change everything.

That's the way it worked in those days.

Yes, in those days.  These days, you just get your father hired as a high up consultant and get him to convince the President of the team to give you the job.  Much better.

Tallon wanted to leave the broadcast booth and become an executive, so Wirtz made it happen.

They brought Billy Gardner in from Carolina to take Tallon's place in the booth, but when Tallon decided he didn't want to work for the very bizarre Mike Smith, the Hawks fired Gardner, and Tallon went back to broadcasting.

And to this day, no one, including Tallon, has apologized to Gardner.

Oh for cripes sake, Billy Gardner?  I mean what the fuck?  Look, if Billy Gardner is reading this (and you know he is), on behalf of the Chicago Blackhawks organization, fans and the City of Chicago, I apologize.  No one in the history of the universe has suffered such an unfair fate.  Please, forgive me and my brethren for allowing this to happen.  We should have risen up as one and demanded your return to your rightful place in the booth. 

Actually, if it rids us of Olczyk, I'm willing to try this.

Once Smith was gone, Tallon was back in the front office and on the fast track to becoming GM.

Peter Wirtz handed him the job and they hired Trent Yawney to be the coach, a smart move since Yawney had developed the Hawks' best young players, including a few still with the team today.

But when the coach wouldn't play the GM's favorite players, high draft picks or expensive free agents, choosing instead to play those who had earned their playing time, Tallon panicked and fired one of the best young coaches in the game, who had given 15 years of his life to the sweater he loved.

Hooray!  Trent Yawney!  He developed the Hawks best young players, I guess.  I can only assume Rozner means Keith and Seabrook, who were never favorites of Dale Tallon.  I can't believe Tallon panicked and fired a guy who was 22 games below .500 as coach.  Yawney was just beginning to get through to Tyler Aarnason!  And then Yawney went and showed everyone how dumb the Hawks were by not getting another head coaching job.  Well done.

Tallon was effective in scouting and drafting, though as high as the Hawks were picking - because they were so bad - they should have been getting good players and improving the product.

They did, but then Tallon unwisely wasted huge sums of money on big free agents Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet.

Effective at scouting and drafting?  Who needs a GM like that?  I'm not going to talk about Campbell's effect on the power play, because Rozner simply chooses to ignore it.  Campbell makes a lot of money, but on the ice he's not even as good as Trent Yawney.  So fuck him.  And the blunder wasn't spending on Huet, it was being unable to move Khabibulin after spending on Huet.  Although that ended up working out in the end too.

He butchered the cap situation to the point where the Hawks have already spent $43 million in 2010-11 when the cap is expected to fall to about $50 million, and it doesn't include new contracts for Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith, which will put the Hawks at about $60 million for roughly half a roster.

I have to say, this is a pretty good point.  No matter how people try to spin it, the Hawks cap situation looks extremely precarious for 2010-11 season.  It's just too bad the Hawks didn't hire somebody to help out Tallon with cap management.  Someone like Stan Bowman.

It didn't help that Tallon has been telling people around the league - or having ex-Hawks employee Rick Dudley, a Tallon pal, tell people around the league - that McDonough was a nightmare to work for and blaming the team president for the signings of Campbell and Huet.

That kind of stuff gets around fast, and people all around the league have been talking about how dysfunctional the Hawks' front office had become, with so many voices pulling in so many different directions.

So, the truth comes out.  Rick Dudley was dispatched to Tampa Bay as part of Dale Tallon's PR campaign against John McDonough.

Those days are now officially over, as are the ways of the past.

Rocky Wirtz doesn't work like his father or his brother, and there are no more handouts on West Madison Street.

Clearly, there will be no more handouts.

Tallon was reassigned and named a senior advisor of hockey operations.

Well, maybe not.