Nothing You're Saying Is Making Me Feel Better

Hawks unveil Jeff Blashill, in a very non-inspiring fashion.

There's no getting out of it now. They've had the press conference, he's held up the jersey, so Jeff Blashill is the coach of the Hawks. I'm not sure it's in the same category where anyone putting on the Cubs or Bears "C" cap automatically gets dumber upon doffing it, because the Hawks seem to hire people who are already morons. We'll reserve judgement on it until Blashill is actually pointing at people on the ice in a sweatsuit.

Blashill read from the usual script about playing fast, pressuring teams all over the ice, defensive responsibility, and that's all well and good. That's what we want. We don't want the conservative horseshit we had to slog through with both Luke Richardson and Anders Sorensen (we'll get to him in a second) as they chased points that didn't matter.

Blashill also carried the company line about wanting to win, but not being all that particular about when that winning might actually arrive here on the shores of Lake Michigan. That's been the story here for three years now, the promise of some far off date that no one is going to nail down as to when the Hawks will play games that matter. That's couched in not wanting to pressure the young players into having to develop quicker than they should. But really what it is is job-saving ass-covering, Kyle Davidson's best skill.

We've done that show, though. No need to rehash it. What is worth studying is how the Hawks got to Blashill, and what they're saddling him with, and why he's so eager to accept it.

The Hawks were only, somewhat, public about two candidates. One was David Carle, who told the Hawks to do one. The other was Blashill. They certainly whispered that they were talking to other candidates, though we never heard any other names. Under the weeds, talking to some people I know, Caps assistant Mitch Love was also interviewed. He also told the Hawks to get stuffed.

When a team is in the position the Hawks are in, there are only two kinds of candidates that are going to take their coaching job. It's the ol' Dan Bernstein "young and hungry, or old and desperate." Blashill may blanch at being called old, he's only 51 after all, but that's the category he would certainly be closer to. Considering how his time in Detroit went and what it did to his rep around the league, it would be hard to think that desperation wouldn't be part of his psyche.

Blashill moves even closer to the "old and desperate" category when two "young and hungry" coaches, if indeed Love turned them down, wanted nothing to do with the Hawks. We know they really pursued Carle, and yet he still wasn't interested. Carle certainly has built a rep that allows him to pick his perfect spot when he does make the jump to the NHL. But the Hawks think they're that. They have, what they think, is a young, up-and-coming team that is ready to explode on the scene in the next two years. It's Chicago. It's also a city where there's almost zero internal or external pressure. A young coach could implement whatever he wants until 2027 and not really face any scrutiny.

And Carle, and possibly Love, still waved them off.

So one, neither of these guys think the Hawks are as poised to leap up the standings anytime soon because the talent just isn't as good as the Hawks think/sell. Two, there's something else. Neither of these aspects are ones that Blashill can consider as closely, because he's been out of a head coaching job for three seasons and there's a limit on how much bigger that gap can get before the door closes for good.

It's the latter that I'm curious about. The latter being Anders Sorensen, as Kyle Davidson is carrying on the Hawks tradition of force-feeding an assistant onto a new coach's staff. It was Denis Savard, then it was Derek King, and now it's Sorensen. One has to ask why.

With King and a new coach in Richardson, if one squinted one could see the argument. It was a first-time coach, perhaps he didn't have the connections a veteran coach would have, needed something of a veteran hand familiar with the roster around, etc. It's a weak fucking argument, but it's there.

Blashill, however, has been around the league for a long time now. He assuredly had an idea of assistants he wanted, and he got one in Michael Peca. He doesn't need a liaison to this roster, because he's already done the new team thing at this level a couple times. He doesn't need a chaperone, or shouldn't.

Carle and Love, who will get multiple offers to coach in the league in the coming years, could have easily surveyed the scene, saw the Hawks forcing Sorensen upon them, and wondered just why they would take a job where the front office is forcing an assistant on them who is clearly the front office's guy onto their staff when he's already done the interim thing once. Why would a coach put up with that if they had other choices? Blashill might not have other choices, so he has to take it on.

It's worth asking what the endgame is for the Hawks and forcing Sorensen onto the staff. Do they really think this guy is going to go from interim to assistant and back to head coach with the same team? That would be highly asinine. Is he so good at development that he just has to be around? Where's the evidence of that? Does Blashill really know no one else who can serve the same purpose? Sorensen reeks of a front office stooge on the coaching staff, and you can guess how that always ends.

If Sorensen really is some hotshot coaching prospect that the Hawks wanted to groom into a head coach one day, that ship sailed when they decided to not give him the job full-time. If he was that important, then he should have been left in Rockford to continue to ply his trade and not rush the timeline/get exposed. Again, why is he here? You want it to be one way, but it's the other way. Just fucking accept that, Kyle.

It feels like he's just here to take over as interim coach again, be that in '26-'27 or the following season should Blashill not work out. The Hawks are hoping that by some hail mary that interim stint goes better and they can give him the full-time job they just couldn't find any way to justify giving to him now. Blashill, having little choice, gets to run this guantlet.

Does any of that sound like what a competent organization would do?