Blackhawks: Stan Bowman promotion shouldn’t come as a surprise

The Chicago Blackhawks elevated Stan Bowman today, and while fans can be upset, they shouldn’t be surprised by the move.

Over the past few years, the Blackhawks have shown they trust Stan Bowman over other pieces within their organization. First, the team decided to fire Joel Quenneville, and then it was when they released John Mcdonough and kept Bowman around.

The Blackhawks organization has put their faith in Bowman, and today’s move continues to show that. It is important to note that while Bowman has made some bad moves in the past, he has had some good trades throughout the years, plus this past offseason was arguably one of his best.

Bowman is the fourth longest-tenured general manager in the NHL, only behind David Poile in Nashville, Doug Wilson in San Jose, and Bob Murray in Anaheim. Changing GMs is a very drastic thing to do in the NHL and is usually something that takes a long time to see work out for the organization’s better.

Keeping Bowman around and elevating him to the President of Hockey Operations should allow him to run the hockey side of things without any interference from outside sources. Maybe Bowman wanted to start a rebuild sooner, but John McDonough kept turning down that idea. Either way, there is no one else to blame now besides Bowman,

I am not happy about the move the Blackhawks made today, but I can’t say I am surprised either. However, I can confidently say many other Blackhawks fans are not happy right now, check out the replies to our tweet to see how people are feeling.

No matter how you feel about the Bowman decision, the team also announced Jaime Faulkner would be serving as the President of Business Operations. I think this is a cool move for the organization. If you want to read up a little about her, check out Ben Pope‘s latest piece with the Sun-Times for a little profile on her.

Danny Wirtz, now moving to Chief Executive Officer within the Blackhawks organization, is another exciting move as I believe he was a big part of the team’s decision to be more open within the past few months.

What do you think about the Blackhawks move today? Hopefully, these three people can right the Blackhawks organization and help make the team one of the best in the NHL again. If not, we could be seeing another face in the President of Hockey Operations and General Manager position within the next few seasons.