If you go to other cities and put on a local sports radio....they talk about their local NHL team. There's still plenty of airtime for all the other teams. Fucking Dallas of all cities.....no issue balancing Stars, Mavericks, amongst talk on the Cowboys and Rangers.

This isn't complicated...but WSCR sure has to fuck it up.

My biggest point of contention.....WSCR has never had an issue talking Golf. If you can fucking chat about golf, you can talk Blackhawks.

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Haugh said he talked to some Hawks people and Rocky decided it was time for a change. No one specific incident caused it.

Mac and the morning show always talked hockey. You can tell why the rest don't and why. They simply do not want to watch it enough to have good takes. Its the same as Mac not watching NBA. But don't give me this shit that there are only 22k Hawks fans. Also, I have said this before and maybe it has to do with no NBA team here but Pens talk on the radio all the time and many fans of color.

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$1M a year for hawks broadcasts in 2002 and 2003. Plus, they had to pay broadcasters and production costs on top of that.

Thanks Lorna Gladstone.

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That says a lot: the Flyers and Devils were like the only Eastern teams they'd ever show (Stars/Wings/Avs in the West).

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It sounds like the executive version of the PK Subban trades: once the team stops winning, everyone gets really tired of your shit.

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You don't remember the days of the producers blowing the hockey horn for Mac to stop talking hockey??

As already explained....this has gone on for 20+ years in different shapes / form.

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Dan's description of John McDonough being a personal friend and a friend of the station for many years does not jibe with my experience of listening to the Score. I think there were show threads where we singled out McDonough and Bowman as the only execs in town he didn't fawn over.

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I do now that you mention it.

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I'm with pittmike on this one. Hosts should primarily talk about sports they have some expertise in. Besides Zawaski and to a lesser degree Mac, no one on the Score speaks intelligently about the Hawks. Mac does not follow the Hawks closely which is fine. I was listening to the morning show yesterday and I don't know if it was Haugh or someone else (I don't listen enough to know who is who) but they were speaking about the Hawks going for another Cup with this core and that it was a possible reason why McDonough was launched since he wanted to rebuild. That is completely wrong on several levels and it just struck me as someone sharing ideas that didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about.

And while I don't follow golf, I enjoyed Rozner talking golf. I never have the thought "talk about my sport!" I listen to podcasts where the hosts know what they are talking about. Zawaski's podcasts and the Powers and Laz podcasts on the Athletic are enough for me.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

I always pictured Mc Donough being the kind of exec who made everyone feel like he was a personal friend even if he didn't consider them to be. Add Bernstein's thirst to be validated by any kind of business management and you get the idea he might be an untrustworthy narrator.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I believe he finally bought Dan's favor through his son at some point after the Kane issue. But to say that Dan always admired McDonough's marketing savvy is a falsehood. He hated that marketing savvy when it would get in the way of him perseverating over a Vinny Del Negro press conference for four whole hours.

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Bernstein kept saying the team loses money every year. Had heard somewhere that NHL teams need playoff games to break even. It would seem that all McDonough's micromanaging may have made sense when they are winning Cups, but were more about putting on a good show around the game and not only did nothing to help the on ice product.

McDonough was brought in when the Hawk's were a mess and bring them into modern times. Marketing, home games on tv, treating media nice etc etc. That is not a hard job especially when you are about to go on an historic cup run. Now is the harder job of maintaining and find growth where there isn't great obvious opportunities.

As for money Wirtz always played games but I heard long ago not much was made on the regular season and they needed a playoff series or two as profits because the players get no salary then. I am sure they did not lose many years but the profit in the old days was the playoffs.

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NHL teams would seem more dependent on attendance due to the lack of national TV money, wonder how much the team makes from a home playoff game and how many games do they need to break even. The "One Goal" ad campaign made little sense when the team is 10-15 points out of the playoff for most of the year, and if Bernstein was any near accurate when he said that the Hawks changed to a much cheaper ad agency, McDonough had to see that his days of blowing through money to hand out the most expensive tchotchkes were likely numbered.

Isn't the story always that the Wirtz family intentionally "loses" money on the Blackhawks every year because it props up the alcohol business? It's like how most "movies" lose money but they keep on making them.

If the Blackhawks truly lose money every year I would be happy to buy the team from them for $1 and see if I can make it work.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Bernsie is not as smart as his vocabulary would have you believe. Blowing maximum marketing dollars on a team presently on a 531 game sell out streak is not smart. Bernsie should have learned at Duke the law of diminishing returns.

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The liquor and real estate making more from the Hawks than the Hawks make from hockey was th story since I was a kid. The thing as with most sports teams is they do not operate at big or any annual profits all the time. They gain giant equity though and the Hawks are at just under $1B and the 4th in the NHL. I would guess 15 years ago it was less.

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When the Blackhawks were at their absolute nadir in 2006-2007, they had lost so much money that the Wirtzes were very close to walking away from the franchise and letting the league take it over (which happened to the Coyotes and the Stars a few years later). There was just so little coming in that they couldn't prop it up with the other businesses anymore. That's a team losing money, as opposed to the "losing money" of the last ten years. Bill dying was a real deus ex machina.

EDIT: If you want to play alternative history, the most likely outcome is that Reinsdorf scoops 'em up for well under 100 and runs them in a relatively hands-off but cheap and half-assed manner. They wouldn't have moved to Kansas City, if that's what you were thinking.

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I do think that they will go to the model the Cubs and other teams use of duel Presidents - one for team operations and one for business operations. Peter can be the nominal head a la Michael Reinsdorf of the business side. I'm not thrilled with the idea of Eddie as the head of hockey ops, but he seems well regarded in league circles so I can see Rocky pulling the trigger on McDonough before Eddie got hired somewhere else. Especially if Eddie has been privately critical of Bowman to Rocky.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Jerry with 11 rings would be pretty awesome.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Do you mean Danny Wirtz? Peter was excommunicated for loving his dad too much.

Eddie Olczyk seems like an awful idea unless he's there to be a figurehead and do all the public appearances while a real GM has all the power and works in the background. You may remember Eddie was the coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins for a brief spell and could scarcely win a game. In fairness, there was a year where his leading scorer was Dick Tarnstrom or something, but he was also Crosby's first coach, and they threw his ass out the door as soon as the stakes were high. Steve Stone was really good at color commentary, too. No one ever hired Steve Stone to run a team.

I'm not averse to having a business guy and a hockey guy, but that shouldn't be reinventing the wheel; that was what McDonough and Bowman were supposed to be.

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Eddie O is fine exactly where his....color analyst and figure-head. I want no part of him as a GM.

The Cubs model is a bit much with bloated titles, but the structure works. Theo is GM and Crane is Business. I could give 2 shits about what Jed does or the other underlings. Theo is the (in practice) GM and responsible for all personnel.

The hawks having one person responsible for personnel and one for the businesses die works fine if they can do that job. yes....that was suppposed by McDonnough and Stan, but Stan turned out to not be very good at General Managing...whoops. Obviously, something went wrong with McDonnough as well. Maybe some day we will get the real story.

I don't care who replaced McDonnough, but Stan has to go so we can get a competent Hockey GM running personnel.

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Probably would have made the playoffs twice since 07 if he had taken over.

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I remember when Reinsdorf was thinking about buying the Phoenix Coyotes out of bankruptcy. His big plan was that the city would set up a TIF district around the arena that would then funnel the sales tax revenues to him, which he would then use to pay for the team on an installment plan. In essence, the people would be buying Jerry Reinsdorf the team. It was so crooked a Reinsdorf ploy that even the rubes of suburban Phoenix didn't go for it.

My point here is that there's no way he ever would have let a GM sign Marian Hossa and Brian Campbell.

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Never believe a billionaire who tells you he is losing money on a business. He is losing money in terms of taxable income purposes.

for instance, wirtz owns a part of UC. Wirtz also owns the Blackhawks. The Blackhawks do not own the UC. They pay a rent. Now how do the two billionaire owners of the UC determine rent for their teams that are using the facility almost the exact same number of days per year? Might it be in their best interests to have an above market rent in some years where the team is showing a big profit?

I don't think we can fathom the accounting gymnastics done between the various wirtz/jr corporations to create the most tax advantageous situations for them personally. REALLY. SMART. PEOPLE.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

i agree 100%. all started when bowman got bickell all wrong, gave him money and as a result, forced to trade saad.