Questionable Moves by Stan Bowman During his Time with the Chicago Blackhawks


2016-17 Season
June 23rd, 2017 CHI receives Connor Murphy and Laurent Dauphin from Arizona for Niklas Hjalmarsson
June 23rd, 2017 CHI receives Brandon Saad and Anton Forsberg and a 2018 5th round pick from CBJ for Artemi Panarin, Tyler Motte, and a 2017 6th round pick
I am going to talk about these two trades together considering they happened on the same day. Chicago opted to trade away two of the better pieces on the team for basically less talented longer contract players.
The moves Stan Bowman made on June 23rd are big reasons the team missed the playoffs the next season. Although the reasoning for bringing Brandon Saad back and trading away Artemi Panarin made sense a little it still does not validate the move completely.
The thought process was that if Chicago brought back Brandon Saad Toews’s play would improve. While Kane would continue to thrive with anyone you put him with. To me, you just can’t trade away a player like Artemi Panarin no matter the reason.
Niklas Hjalmarsson was Joel Quenneville’s best defenseman for years, and the frustration and anger in trading away Hjalmarsson was shown when Quenneville left the UC during the draft. Personally I do not understand why Chicago would make a long term commitment to Brent Seabrook when Hjalmarsson was a better defenseman with more skill then Seabs. If the team did not have such a big contract to worry about for Brent Seabrook maybe the team would still have Hjalmarsson.
July 1st, 2017 Patrick Sharp signs one year deal with Chicago
Another homecoming deal Bowman made to honestly distract fans from the bad play on the ice. The Blackhawks are a team that continued to look to the past to try and fix their present problems, but that doesn’t work.