Join us live tonight at BlogTalkRadio.com for our latest in not-to-be-missed radio. "Superstar" and I return at 8pm (central time) sharp to discuss all the latest news and rumors surrounding the Chicago Blackhawks organization.
Tonight we'll be discussing the Blackhawks' situation in goal, Cristobal Huet's past, present and future and why this is a burgeoning issue.
We'll be taking your phone calls on anything you'd like to talk about concerning the Hawks or NHL in general. The phone number to call in will be listed on your screen for those who will be streaming with us live.
Also potentially on the docket tonight; my irritably foul language; TTMI update and concerns; Tony Amonte in the Hall of Fame; Trent Yawney; the Rubber Ducky Derby~! and the Rockford IceHogs in peril.
Head on over to HockeeNight.com to hear last night's show. Over 80 minutes of Blackhawks discussion. Thanks as always to CT and "Forklift" for having me on. We'll get them on our radio show as the 2009-10 season looms closer. We'll return later today with a news update.
Join me live Sunday night at 7pm central for the next edition of The Third Man In ~ Radio. Solo this time around, I'll be doing the first audio-edition of TheThirdManIn.com Mailbag.
You can listen to the show live by heading over to our show page at BlogTalkRadio.com, or by going to Sunday night's direct link. For those who'd like to phone in questions of their own, the number to dial in is (347) 857-3781.
Tonight went a lot better. We knocked out episode two (or three or four depending on how much of a stickler you are for details) with minimal difficulty technically. You can listen to Wednesday's show in The Third Man In ~ Radio archives over at BlogTalkRadio.com or by using the player in this update.
Find and click the radio player after the jump......
For a few different reasons, one having to do with numerous technical difficulties, the other not, we're going to re-record Episode 2 of The Third Man In~Radio on Wednesday night at 8pm on BlogTalkRadio.com.
We'll take your calls live on the air at (347) 857-3781 starting at around 8:15 or so. You can join us live at 8pm central time by going to our page at BlogTalkRadio.com or directly at Wednesday's show page.
Usually I'd agree with the notion 'you can't promise anything' but in this case I'm certain I can promise a better experience than the thirty or so who streamed with us live Tuesday night had. We had a couple of callers tonight. One dropped off before we could get them on but hopefully we'll get a full bank tomorrow.
And if my co-host ever uses Skype again he's off the show for good.
Just a reminder. Third Man In ~ Radio returns tonight. We'll be streaming live tonight from 8 to 9pm on BlogTalkRadio.com. For those who can't listen live, the show will be available for download both in the archives on our Blog Talk page and here on TheThirdManIn.com in both the Radio Show player at top-right of our front page and in the podcast section accessible from the top menu bar. Those latter options will be ready to roll within an hour after we go off the air.
You can add the show to your ITunes via the option on the show player at Blog Talk. It should also be ready for you to subscribe to in the podcast section of the ITunes store later this evening as well.
“Think about that,’’ said one GM. “Bowman screws it up, they fire Dale, and then they make [Bowman] the boss. Does that make any sense?’’An anonymous NHL general manager to Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe
Another GM to Dupont on Tallon's 2-year contract extension: “Nothing more than hush money.’’
Meanwhile, and this is brand-new scuttle, Larry Brooks of the New York Post reported on Sunday that various front office types around the league believed Tallon had been operating as a lame-duck GM since just after Thanksgiving when he tried to trade Nikolai Khabibulin to the Capitals for Michael Nylander. According to Brooks' sources, it was John McDonough who vetoed that deal. If true, that would be an incident of indiscretion and warranted precautionary measures on McDonough's part. After he talked to Scotty of course.
''Today was very, very subdued,'' McDonough said. ''Last night was the forum [for the boos]. The amazing thing is that, individually, only two people mentioned [the firing] to me.''
McDonough, former president of the Cubs, said it wasn't the first time he'd been booed.
''The Cubs prepare you well for things like this,'' he said, ''and I have very, very thick skin. You just have to keep going if you believe you did the right thing.''
-- The transformation from Blackhawks fans to near west side Cubdumb is almost complete. Boo the hell out of the guy Friday; He's your buddy 20 hours later when he tells you what he thinks you want to hear and yet still without satisfying any of your questions or concerns.
-- Billy Reay and Lloyd Pettit will be the next honorees this coming season in the Blackhawks Heritage Series, joining Glenn Hall, Tony Amonte, Bob Probert, Steve Larmer, Dennis Hull, Jim Pappin and the late Hubert "Pit" Martin, who were all honored during the 2008-09 season, so said Jay Blunk at the Fan Convention over the weekend. Maybe for those McDonough can send his staff to a senior home with poster board and complimentary t-shirts and roll their contemporaries into the United Center for another carefully orchestrated press conference. Field trips with applause indicators, we didn't have those in my day.
Mark Kiley of Blackhawks Confidential has a bunch of articles up reporting on events of the fan convention.
-- There was a note, but no quote, in the Toronto Sun yesterday (I don't have the link) by columnist Steve Simmons that Steve Yzerman had hoped if the Blackhawks were going to be changing general mangers he'd hoped to be considered. Don't know if I believe that, but also don't think it's too far-fetched. Yzerman is pretty tight with Scotty Bowman and Ken Holland isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so if Yzerman has aspirations of running a team's hockey ops department is the next few years, he'll be looking to get out of Detroit. For the Hawks, Yzerman and Scotty Bowman are pretty tight but for how the Hawks' president looks at things, puffing the Bowman family legacy to Hawks' fans is an easier sell than replacing the popular Tallon with one of the Red Wings all-time great players. The fact Hockey Canada has instilled such trust in Yzerman making him the lead dog for the 2010 Canadian Olympic team for the Games in Vancouver this February shows how highly-regarded Yzerman is even at this early point in his second career, but when you understand how McDonough wants the process pieced, Stan Bowman was his better option. Not that there ever was any other option.
Time is set for our next radio show. We'll be streaming live over at BlogTalkRadio.com on Tuesday night, July 21st beginning at 8pm central time. You can listen live by going directly to our show page on the BlogTalk web site. As will be the case for every episode, for those who can't join us live, the show will be available in the archives over there or you can simply come to this site approximately 45 minutes to an hour after the show goes off the air to listen to it in the "ThirdManIn ~ Radio ~ Latest Show" player module underneath the ad space on the top right of our front page. All of our shows will be archived and available to listen or download at any time on the podcast page listed on the top menu bar.
In case you missed our first episode, "The Pilot," on Wednesday it is loaded and ready for listening both in our show player module and here.
On this week's show, barring any major news breaks between now and Tuesday night, the plan is to discuss the Hawks summer moves and whether or not, despite the organizational hoopla and off season ballyhoo from a fandom anxious to see their team get a redux versus the Red Wings, the Blackhawks are any better today than they were in April and May.
Also, we'll get to the bottom of the Marian Hossa-Martin Havlat debate; why a healthy Havlat may be the better fit; who Hossa should skate with and how his presence could ruin the Hawks' chemistry. In addition, our plate is full with Havlat's Twittering escapades; who put him up to it; the reason and why athletes unfiltered on the net is a terrible idea.
I'll also be delving into the new web site quite a bit more. Explain how pushing the re-launch up a day in the wake of the Dale Tallon demotion, in hindsight, was an awful decision on my part. We'll talk about the week that was, everything I have planned for this site and what you can expect from the radio show. Lastly, I will address the adding of a message forum, my personal detest for them in general and what I'd like to see from ours.
If time permits and I'm comfortable using the switchboard during the show, we'll try to take some listener phone calls. I suppose if we get phone calls I will try to take them. We'll have our first guest on-board in a few shows.
My co-host Superstar, whose received a mixed reaction so far in the comment sections and forums, will be alongside on Tuesday.
Also, since I've been so busy with getting this site up and going and transferring archives from the old site, I haven't had a chance to do a mailbag. I think what I may end up doing instead is devote a show later this week entirely to answering mailbag and email questions. When I figure out the date and time I will let you know.
-- 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.
-- 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.
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.
-- 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.
Stu Hackel over at SlapShot, the NY Times blog I've contributed to in the past, has a great article up now about this week's Blackhawks debacle. Not so much in breaking new ground as much as he puts everything together and presents some interesting points of his own. Great read.
You can listen to the John McDonough interview from the Score I referenced on yesterday's radio show here. It's 670theScore.com.
This morning on the score, TSN writer Darren Dreger joined Zach Zaidman and Bruce Wolf to discuss the shock over Dale Tallon's removal, Hossa vs. Havlat, if the Hawks made themselves a better team and the interview Dreger conducted with Martin Havlat yesterday. Dreger interview audio here. Dreger's article with the juicy Havlat quotes can be read here.
The press conference to introduce new Blackhawks' "stars" Marian Hossa (a great player and star) and Tomas Kopecky (neither) gets underway at 3:30 this afternoon at the United Center. It should stream live on blackhawks.nhl.com.
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