You know the dating ritual, right? First date, you talk about movies and books. Second date is a little more romantic, hand-holding and whatnot. Third date is when the fucking comes in.

Last night, Dale Tallon was taken on his third date, and got fucked.

Dale Tallon is a sharp guy. He had to know the fix was in last summer when Scotty Bowman was brought in as a "special consultant", and he and his son Stan kept being profiled in the media together.

That being said, virtually every player currently wearing the Indian Head is there because Dale Tallon thought they'd be a welcome addition to the team.

Are the Hawks between a rock and a hard place due to cap constraints? Sure, but I'm also pretty sure Scotty signed off on the moves the Hawks made. Was the whole qualifying offer screwup an embarassment to the franchise? Sure, but despite what anyone says, both Cam Barker and Kris VERSTEEG! would have gotten more on the open market than they got from the Hawks, believe that shit.

So what does Tallon get for his hard work? He's got a guy working for him, Stan Bowman, whose dad Scotty, is his boss. As I said, Dale knew this fucking was coming, it was just a matter of when. Last year when the Hawks took out the Canucks to move into the Western Conference Finals, nobody looked more happy and relieved than Tallon, and nobody looked more pissed than Stan Bowman.

Then after the success of last season, Tallon never got a contract extension. Rather than do the thing that would have shown the Hawks as the classy organization they pretend to be, which would be letting Tallon resign and get a soft landing with a young team like Florida, this saga drew itself out.

Maybe they made Tallon that offer. Maybe the qualifying offers were the Bowmans' method of sabotage. Maybe Tallon saw this coming and intentionally fucked the Hawks for the next few years. I personally doubt all that - hockey is not a sport of intrigue.

What it did do was provide John McDonough and Scotty enough plausible cover to remove Tallon and install Stan as GM, which was obviously the game plan all along.

On the bright side, the Hawks' braintrust is now Stan and Scotty Bowman. Not sure how Stan's hockey acumen is, but Scotty's been around a few rinks in his day, and he'll keep the team on track. As for Tallon, everyone in professional hockey sees the job he's done here and would hire him in a second. Dale will go back to work whenever he wants. (On a personal note, how much fun would it be to see him replace Glen Sather at Madison Square Garden, just to see Mark Messier's head explode?)

Still, after the mishandling of Denis Savard last summer, and now this, the Hawks are really looking bush league.

I'm pretty sure that's not what John McDonough wanted.