Friday news and links, Dudley, Bergevin promotion

Written by Chris Block

Friday, 17 July 2009 05:06

-- John McDonough might want to get back on a line with Barry Rozner and someone else who'll wax his ego and promote the 'McDonough Factor.' In an interview on the Fan590 in Toronto earlier this week, former Blackhawks assistant GM Rick Dudley, who left the organization to take the same job with the Atlanta Thrashers last month, told The Fan that in recent months McDonough had been getting more and more involved on hockey operations side. You can grab the interview here. Dudley is a stand-up guy; highly-respected around the league and as the guy now in Atlanta who'll be doing a lot of Don Waddell's legwork and networking with other general managers, I can't imagine he'd risk burning a bridge in telling lies or half-truths about the Hawks. McDonough probably has a different take on that though.

Marc Bergevin promoted to Director of Player Personnel

-- Not sure when the Marc Bergevin"promotion" deal went down. Last fall, Bergevin, who'd been Director of Pro Scouting for the Hawks since 2007 and served as a pro scout since the lockout, upped and moved his family from San Diego to Chicago when Joel Quenneville was brought into the organization and then quizzically was named assistant coach after the Denis Savard firing and Quenneville appointment. Since only two assistant or associate coaches are permitted on the bench, Bergevin performed his duties from the skies, feeding info to the bench via two-way communication. Apparently Quenneville is happy with his two bench assistants, John Torchetti and Mike Haviland, because the feeling at the time was Quenneville would act out the season with those two and Bergevin would replace one or the other going into 2009-10. Bergevin was watching scrimmages at prospect camp last week with video coach Brad Aldrich and not with the brain-trust in the bar loft at Johnny's so we can probably assume this is something that came about after the Dale Tallon firing/reassignment.

Dale Tallon teleconference chat transcript

Tallon's take on demotion: 'It's about the team'

Tallon: "It was a decision were we both agreed that this was best for the franchise. We had a cordial discussion, John and I. He wanted to take the team in a different direction and I was fine with it. We feel this is the best strategy."

- And Dale wants his checks to clear too. I would ask exactly which direction McDonough wants to take this team? In the past two seasons the Hawks improved their point totals by 17 and 16 points respectively with Tallon at the helm and visited the Western Conference Finals in their first postseason appearance in seven seasons and second in twelve. Dale and John need to come up with a better explanation because if this is it, they're going to come off as dishonest. Oh wait.

The only real surprise: Tallon's exit didn't come sooner Barry Rozner, Daily Herald

Rozner's team source feeding him more Patrick Sharp movement rumors

Stan Bowman in nor rust to 'make a splash' or add defenseman Tim Sassone, Daily Herald

Sassone covering the Havlat McDonough bashing

Tallon just a victim of the process Mike Imrem, Daily Herald

-- It's looking like episode two of the radio show will go down Monday or Tuesday evening. As I said on Wednesday's show, most-often the radio show will be done at night. It streams live and we'll be taking listener phone calls, if not on the next show, soon after that. First things first, I need to learn to set the open properly. Baby steps. Superstar will be along once again as co-host as long as he can endure the censure in the forums.

This weekend I hope to finish site set up and get all of my archives saved from the old version, which has taken the majority of my time this week. Once I get those secured, I'll begin the process of loading them here. If you go to the archives page, you'll notice we go back to the beginning of June at this point. I don't know how long this will take me but I want to get as much of the last three years as I can. It may come down to getting the entirety of the last year and then doing a 'best of' catalog or something along those lines. It's been a long week and unfortunately much of the work done has been off site and things you can't see. Once I get everything set, and I pick up all the bells and whistles, I can focus on getting back to writing and planning for new features we'll discuss once the season approaches. That was the entire reason for the re-launch after all.

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