Tony

I just pre-ordered OOTP 21, I'm really pumped. The Sox should be one of the best franchises to start with.

Prove it, and an angry quote from Havlat doesn’t count.

Except there is no actual evidence of this, and Dale Tallon was the GM when Hossa was signed.

1. I knew you couldn’t stay away. But good effort. You lasted a whole 7 hours. 2. You realize the point of all of this “sports stuff” is to win, right? You keep hammering the point of the Hawks drafting abilities, but what has it gotten them the last 5 seasons, seasons that should have seen them make runs in the playoffs? You’ve had 3 HOF players in their primes on the roster and continued to fail to surround them with talent to win. 3. The Hawks have never been “rebuilding” under Bowman but even if they were...isn’t that an even bigger knock against his performance as GM? You have to rebuild this thing with the core you have? For real? As always, you have all these ideas in your head that aren’t based on any actual evidence, and performance from this team over the last 5 seasons says you are absolutely in the wrong, as does pretty much everyone else in this thread.

5 years! 5 years with Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, Corey Crawford (Hossa was even still around for some of it). I’ll never forget 2010-2015 and we’ll probably never see another run like that in our lifetimes. And thank God they won 3 and and really cashed in during their prime. But the window could have, and should have lasted way longer.

We all know you aren’t done with this thread, because you can’t help yourself. In your last sentence, you said you don’t think there was much he could do to avoid this drop off. How about drafting and developing an NHL defenseman and actually having them be part of the lineup? For the all the roses you throw Stan’s way, blue line seems fairly important and he’s been a massive failure in that area. Again, they haven’t won a playoff series in 5 years. That hasn’t happened to teams like the Bruins, Penguins, Capitals, Sharks, etc. Don’t try and spin this is just what happens to good teams. This window should NOT have closed this early, they have done a tremendously poor job of managing resources and assets.

So one quote, with John McDonough paraphrased and not even directly mentioned, is what you are basing this entire premise on? It’s amazing the lengths you will go to when trying to defend one of your “takes”

Please, state your evidence. And rumors from Twitter and HFBoards don’t count.

This core really seems to like each other, and seems like they want to win something together. Incredible to see.

It's all about expectations. This team has been trying to win (and rightfully so) for the last 5 years, and have zero postseason series victories to show for it. For some teams that may be acceptable, but not after the run they had from 2010-2015. Expectations are rightfully high. With that said, and to your point, if last season they said "This isn't working with Q anymore, the foundation needs to be reset" I think you have some initial backlash but fans can at least see a plan. What they are doing now just doesn't make sense, and hasn't for a while. Like you said, they have fallen into this weird middle ground, that same middle ground the Bulls have been in. Something drastic needs to change.

No, I’m looking at my data...I can now confirm it is indeed the most ever.