Bowman's biggest problem are trades, He makes awful trade or sometimes really good trades, but the bad trades overshadows the good ones.
Bowman's best ability is scouting/draft, which I believe he's one of the best GMs in that category.
Pros
Drafting, Scouting Europeans, and FA pickups

Cons
Trading and resigning players

But he's learned on the signing...IMO. no Seabs and Bickell deals anymore. Kubalik and Strome got good deals, no?

The trades are also a bit of a misnomer. There's a ton of context that no one remembers years later.

I think its a two way street. He has the right ideas with the trades, the execution was just poor. Trading from a position of strength in RD from Joki to a position of need a young winger was a good idea, but to trade for a struggling prospect in Nylander was bad execution. To trade a star player who you probably cant afford in a couple years with Panarin to try and regain cost control with Saad and get your goalie of the future in Forsberg was a good idea, Saad just never put up 30 goals again and Forsberg topped out as an NHL backup goalie. he has the right ideas, which is why I want to keep him as president, but his execution is pretty poor recently. Idk whether thats a fault of his or if he has an NHL talent evaluator in his ear telling him these are the guys to target, but his trades of recent are a little off the mark. That said, we need him for his scouting. This team would be nowhere without the connections he has in Europe.

Very fair. You can go back to the discussion board for that Joki trade and I'm likely the guy most harsh on Bowman. I was PISSED! The whole Panarin thing has context to it. At the time (certainly not any more) there were SERIOUS doubts Panarin could produce away from Kane. Obviously, time has gone by and maybe picks might have been the better route...IDK, but Panarin was also free.

Panarin and Debrincat's contracts weren't/aren't bad but he should've done a long term deal, Bowman admitted he traded Panarin because once his contracts up they couldn't resign him, so it was best to trade him. Since Debrincat is looking like himself again I could see the same thing happening.

Other fan bases like to claim Toews and Kane deal are bad but I don't agree with that, so I thought I would add their name.

Seabrook is one of the worst deals in the league, and will haunt Chicago unless he goes on LTIR or traded.

So Bowman's giving good players short term deals are very bad and haunts Chicago: Lehner (Traded), Panarin (Traded), and now we'll have to wait to see what happens with Cat, Strome, and Kubs

I have ZERO complaints on Toews Kane contacts. Those guys make everyone else around them better. Both Toews/Kane also had 2 levels of bridge deals before these massive contracts.

There's certainly some debate on bridge vs long term. Seabs got a long term deal. I think Bowman learned from that mistake. It's hard to say...only ever make good moves. I'm ok with the bridge deal to the Cat. Well see is right, BUT this will allow the younger guys to develop too. So maybe the Cat turns into a guy that can help train other kids? IDK, but the Cat is also getting a lot of feeds from Kane right now too. I could argue that some of his success is because of Kane right now.

I don't have any complaints with the Toews and Kane either, just other fan bases like to claim their bad.

Debrincat has thrived either playing with Kane or Strome, so I don't think it's fair claiming his success is from Kane, when he's also thrived with Strome. Debrincat played a lot with Kane last year but struggled still until the Dach Cat and Kane line

Bowman hater reporting sir.

My anger for bowman will always stem from how he mishandled the end of the dynasty. As others have said, he’s still awful at trades, something he’ll never not do, and can’t sign a good long term contract to save his life. That last one scares me to death when it comes to Dach btw. Messed up his own wrist and people still think he’s getting 6-7 mil first post elc. Yikes. But back to bowman. A lot of what he did is hindsight being 20/20, and it just never looks any better with age. It’s not like bowman is magically gonna be better at trades or contracts considering he’s still making those mistakes. Anyone else tired of the name Brandon saad?

As for European recruitment, again, that’s a two way street. Sure he can get them here, but he isn’t the discovering them. Our euro scouts, if anything deserve ALLLLLLLLL that credit. Full marks to them. I’m just glad Stan isn’t stupid enough to not listen. As for the few names you listed at the end, they could and should be names to be excited about. But again, I don’t trust bowman to make stupid trades for each of them for the sake of competing.

He’s far from the best GM in the game. The only thing that gets him close is overseeing someone else’s work to three cups. Nothing can convince me of his class till this new generation actually does something worth while. Keep in mind, I don’t mind losing, I just wanna lose with a clear purpose and direction in mind.

Love it!

Dach's contract I view as an opportunity for Bowman to prove he's past the Bickell / Seabs days. Gus was a good extension despite everyone (including myself) being wrong on capfriendly. Kubalik and Strome are good extensions in my mind.

So you're tired of hearing Saad? Does that mean you like or dislike the Zadorov trade? I'm in the middle as of now. The future will determine how that plays out.

Its true that Panarin was free, which definitely makes it easier to swallow than the Teuvo trade. I wasn't necessarily pissed about the Joki trade and I've defended Nylander quite a bit because Bowman's head was in the right place, Nylander has so much skill and at times we've seen him produce like it, but he needs to figure it out. For Panarin, I think the concept of the trade was trying to fill a future need without losing production in the one area. I think whether or not Panarin could have produced away from Kane wasn't our problem, because when he was with Kane, he was a top 10 scorer. I think the big loss on that trade was Forsberg losing it. Just came off a Calder Cup win with CBJs minor team and was looking like he could have challenged Korpisalo for the backup spot, but he didn't realize his potential either. If Forsberg had become the heir to Crawford's throne, I think we would be hearing a lot less about it. The fact that he went and turned Saad into Zadorov, again, right idea, poor execution. There's definitely a world where if you retain a little more, Bowman could get Graves out of Colorado instead, which would have been far more beneficial for our future and Graves is still younger than Z. It's just a shame the trades didn't fully pan out.

Let me say that the Bowman hate since firing Q and hiring JC has been a lot more justified than being happy about the first 20 games of a season.

And if they make back to back playoffs with the youngest team in the NHL, both years? At some point credit needs to be given. I've never been a Bowman hater. Talon might have got the 1st cup, but drafting Toews/Kane doesn't mean he got the next two.

My frustration with Bowman is his ability to read the market and act decisively. This leads to some of the contract and trade flack he gets. Just last year Andy Green and another D get traded early and gets a better haul than holding onto Gus till the very end. None of them were top elite guys so not expecting a 1st. Joki seemed to have more value than Nylander at that time. Again not saying elite guys but it seemed the market favored Joki.

I agree with this. My understanding of the gus trade was that CAR was working on a combo Gus Lehner deal that feel through. CAR had a knee jerk response for Skjei...the very last trade of the TDL and a terrible trade overall. With that said. I'm very high on Wyatt Kaiser. So we'll see how that works out in the long run.

One right here baby. He sucks.

You mention that you have to give credit where credit is due, but I would say the Blackhawks are succeeded in spite of Bowman rather than because of him. Let's just look at the last year of decision making. Zadorov's xGF is -0.317, his xGA is -0.26, meaning that the Blackhawks score less goals and allow more goals than they would with with a replacement level player (ie, someone you could conceivably call up out of the minors) on the ice instead of Zadorov. Brandon Saad also has a negative xGF number of -0.06 (because he's just very okay offensively) but has a positive xGA of 0.14, which is crucial because the Blackhawks have trouble defensively, which goes beyond defenseman. If Bowman was building towards the Hawks being a contender this year, why would he trade for an obviously worse player? The answer is because he doesn't know what he's doing, I get he got other stuff for Saad with Zadorov but he made his on ice roster weaker for basically no reason. (also stupid because he actually had a better defenseman already on the roster which he gave up for nothing in Olli Maata, but we don't need to go there).

Look at the goaltending situation, which is really 80% of why Chicago is even picking up points at all this year. Kevin Lankinen has been unreal (so far). Had anyone outside of die hard Hawks fans ever heard of this guy before? Of course not. The Hawks didn't plan for that, that wasn't part of Bowman's genius. He just got lucky. Bowman had a chance to sign Lehner, didn't, had a chance to sign Crawford, didn't. This idiot was going to run with Malcom Subban and Colin Delia- two guys who could generously be called "backup caliber goaltenders"- and yet we're going to say Bowman actually set up his club to succeed?



So okay, let's look at the actual good years of Bowman where the team had success. Dale Tallon gets pushed out of a moving car right as it crossed the finish line for failing to qualify all-star top prospects *checks notes* Cam Barker and Kris Versteeg, and then Bowman is in charge during the 2010 win. And what did he do afterwards? Overpaid Brian Bickell? Traded Teuvo Teravainen because he overpaid Brian Bickell? Got nothing for Philip Danault, got nothing for Patrick Sharp, got nothing for Stephen Johns? Tried to solve a problem he didn't need solve with a Panarin extension and lost another Brandon Saad trade? How much credit can we give Bowman for signing these European guys if he's just going to bungle them in three years? The Hawks probably don't even win that 2015 cup if Kane's injury doesn't allow the Hawks to make a few deadline moves and then magically heal in time for the playoffs so the Hawks can field an over-the-cap roster without consequence. What a miraculous confluence of medical science and salary cap rules. If you give Stan Bowman a bunch of someone else's really good players and a mysterious injury that heals just in time for Game 1 of the first round, he's pretty great I guess.

Some will say the Hawks already were special after winning three cups in five years, and maybe they were. But they had a chance to rival even the great dynasties of the Oilers and the Islanders. The team was stacked and they still could have gotten guys like DeBrincat, who was second round pick, and guys like Kubalik and Suter since they were undrafted. That would have been an unreal and arguably unprecedented changing of the talent guard even if they decided to move on from guys like Panarin and Teravainen later due to cap reasons (assuming they would have actually kept Panarin when he was only making six million like they should have). And like, some of this is hindsight, but people critisized those trades at the time and rightfully so.

Anyway, I'm also not going to be able to give them much credit for beating the Edmonton Oilers in a five game series where they played Mike Smith twice to "make the playoffs" last year. Not only should an AHL team be able to beat that guy in net McDavid or no, it was a COVID postseason and everything that happened should be taken with a massive asterisk and that extends to this season too. If the Hawks have success, good for them and good for you as a fan and you should absolutely enjoy the ride, but it should absolutely not be used as a barometer for future success or evaluating the competency of a clearly incompetent front office. Sometimes the right pieces just come together despite someone trying so hard to make them not to.

Phil Danault and Alexander Romanov for Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann.

Case closed.

Going for a cup and Danault was terrible for both the Hawks and Ice Hogs. You miss 100% of the context...6 years later. A 2nd could be anyone too. Could be a busy. Weise and Fleischmann were bad, but I don't regret going for back to back cups.

I’m sick of Saad simply cuz we didn’t win any of those three trades. Pure and simple. As for zadorov, he’s been worse than Saad and I’m basically settling on him being a one year stop gap till next year when beaudin, Keith, and Carlsson hopefully take over the left side.