FIRED FOR THE FAILINGS OF HIS BOSS?

The Chicago Blackhawks have won three Stanley Cups since the 2009-2010 season.  Last year, they did not make the playoffs, and after a 6-6-3 start to this season, head coach Joel Quenneville has been released.  Chicago Tribune sports pundit Steve Rosenbloom asserts, "Joel Quenneville deserved a better roster and a better shot than Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman gave him."  Northern Star columnist Roland Hacker concurs.

There’s a pretty clear pattern here, [former general manager Joel] Tallon’s fingerprints were all over the Chicago Blackhawks’ championship designs.

Bowman, on the other hand, inherited a championship team with a great second year coach and took all the credit when the Blackhawks started winning titles next season.

First change the general manager, he suggests, then consider changing the coach.

During the historically successful run the ‘Hawks experienced from 2010-15, there can be no argument who coached the teams to victory; it was Quenneville. There can be an argument made of who the architect of the team roster was.

The person in doubt, Bowman, should’ve been the first person out the door. Of all the success the Blackhawks experienced during their championship window, Bowman was responsible for very little while Quenneville was directly linked to all of it.

To protect his job, Bowman fired Quenneville, trying to push blame off of his mediocre roster and onto the most successful coach in franchise history.

Defeat may be an orphan, but in the topsy-turvy world of professional sports, where losing improves your draft position, there's another Chicago sports writer, Joe Knowles, suggesting "The Hawks need to get bad — really bad — and the sooner the better."  Seriously.

To the north, the Green Bay Packers have one Super Bowl appearance, a win in the 2010-2011 game, and a new general manager who is already sending underachieving players elsewhere (many seem to be landing in Cleveland.)

The standard there is still five titles in six appearances over eight years.