Is it time to pull the plug on the Chicago Blackhawks? Is it time to say the dynasty is very close to ending? Can you surround the main core with talent to get back to the playoffs? Is this main core taking up so much salary cap it’s hard to keep retooling on the fly? Something must give here. This season will be the first year in a long long time the Blackhawks will not make the playoffs. This coming after the early exit to the Nashville Predators in the first round of the playoffs last season. In which Nashville showed you a Hawks team very slow and filled with holes. Not enough depth. The young talent not able to catch up with the core. Some of the core crumbling in their old age.

The Blackhawks have been sliding before the first round against Nashville and it continued into this season. It hurts not having Marion Hossa on the ice. An aging super star with a skin condition had to hang up the skates for this season. His presence and his abilities on the ice were definitely missed. However he is getting older. Then usually Stan Bowman’s moves have all been golden. They thought trading for Brandon Sadd would help the captain, Jonathan Toews’, line get better like the glory days. In the process they interrupted Patrick Kane’s line trading away Artemi Panararin. Brandon Sadd has shown some flashes this year but mostly he had a down year. Then to see Brent Seabrook and Ducan Keith play on the decline. Maybe getting rid of Niklas Jalmarsson was the wrong defenseman to trade last off season. Then the biggest thing that happened to hawks is goalie Corey Crawford going down. With the salary cap they could not hold on to Scott Darling. You could see some of the band aids not sticking well as the team in whole has some glaring weaknesses. Back up goalies especially.

This is the first trade deadline Stan Bowman has been involved in with the Hawks trading away players. Not adding pieces for the playoff run, but instead collecting draft picks and younger unknown players. Last week they traded Michael Kempny to the Capitals. Before Monday’s deadline, they sent Tommy Wingles to the Bruins as everyone knew teams would want him as he is veteran and needed for a playoff run. Then they traded former 2013 first round pick Ryan Hartman to the Nashville Predators. Hartman, who is a local kid, seems to always be in Joe Quenneville’s dog house. He had a promising rookie campaign and scored 19 goals. He was known for dumb penalties in which he led the Blackhawks in that category this season. He only has 8 goals and 16 assists in 56 games this season. Is this a kid who will flourish with another coach?

Ryan Hartman… I wonder is it too early to give up on a young talent. This is the problem with the Blackhawks. I think the young talent that they do have don’t have enough time to develop. With this constant retooling and shuffling, you’re getting rid of young players and holding onto hopes of your old core still having enough gasoline in the tanks. Patrick Sharp was a waste of time bringing him back. Seabrook and Keith should be traded away. I would shut down Crawford for the rest of the season. Give the new guy they just called up most of the games for the rest of the season in front of the net. Jean Francois Berube played great against one top team in the conference, the San Jose Sharks, last week. Maybe you can get lightning in a bottle finding your back up for Crawford with him next year.  Your need for a solid back up for Crawford is one of your main concerns next season.

I would build the team around Crawford, Cane, and Toews.  Keep the young talent you have. Guys that have been very productive and growing with the team. Guys like Artem Anisimon, Alex DeBricat and a Nick Schmalz should not be traded. I think keeping Brandon Sadd, who is still young will rebound and get back to his old ways. Perhaps Sadd is your biggest trade chip without trading away Cane or Toews. Then continue building it with all young talent. Fast skaters and perhaps you can salvage one more cup with some of the main core. They need to get rid of some of these guys making big money and not doing much these days. This would also help your salary cap issues you have every single year. It’s frustrating seeing them lose young guys because you’re over paying guys who once were main staples and very productive now they can’t even get the biscuit in the basket. The retool on the fly is not working. Time to scrap that plan and come up with a new one for next season. However the top brass has to be patient and let the new guys develop with some of the older guys. By doing  this it would get the hawk head back to glory like it always should be.

I know fire fighters, paramedics, police officers and soldiers are heroes. They go beyond putting their lives on the line everyday. What about coaches? You can compare them to comic book superheroes. The Batman and Spiderman have their logos they wear on their underoos. Coaches in schools wear the school logos on their clothes. Some years when coaches are up in age, it looks like they wear tights. Both Batman and Spider Man do not get paid for their heroics. While coaches don’t get paid extra for going beyond their duties. Fire fighters,  police officers, paramedics and soldiers’ jobs going in are to save lives.

When I was younger I played many organized sports. Lots of coaches were very good. One of them stood out the most out of any of the coaches I have played for. I played grammar school basketball. After two years without winning one single game, it was coming down to the year without an eighth grade basketball team. Finally somebody rose up when the season was on the brink, took the job and was paid no money. He took a rag tag group like the Bad News Bears and turned them around. That year was special because we won three games. It’s not the games we won or all the losses. Coach Mike Berry taught us to be better people. Taught us to be men. Taught us the fundamentals of the game. How to work as a team. The man molded young minds. The things he did beyond was pay his own money to get the team in tournaments to compete. Our own school higher-ups did not want to waste money on a group like us. We were just a bunch skinny white boys from the burbs playing a game we loved. No way none of us would soar into the NBA. But as a group we have been friends forever. Mike Berry was not shy about inviting the group to his house to break bread with him and his own family.

This week a nasty school shooting occurred in Florida. It was a massacre with 17 dead. You can say what you want or who’s to blame. You can say all the schools need armed security guards. The liberals will blame the Congress about the gun laws. The Republicans will respond that if everyone had guns these things would not occur like they have. I think they can make it a tad harder to get a gun. Not make it easy going through a drive thru while you order a burger. These things happen for many reasons. Some people have bad parenting that does not help. Plus the cries for help are not reported from people in authority or peers. It’s probably all of the above in some way. Everyone has their own set of opinions on the subject. But we can all agree that it is horrible. It needs to be stopped.

In these sticky situations, heroes rise up. A football coach who does security at the school he graduated from is a superhero that comes out of this horrible day. Aaron Feis who graduated from the school in 1999. As a student he played on the grid iron and loved the game of football. It did not take him long after he graduated to come back and be the football coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He was head coach of the Junior Varsity team for 8 seasons. He’s been an assistant coach these days for the varsity team. He’s been coaching the offensive line. In which their job is protect the quarterback. He probably played offensive line in his own playing days. This was a man whose job and passion was to protect people. When the shit hit the fan people thought firecrackers were being lit. He had different thoughts as he ran towards the action. Then he came face to face with the danger. A mad man named Nikols Cruz. Like a quarterback that is about to be sacked, Aaron Feis became a human shield once again and this time it cost him his life. However all the lives he was able to save. Just like on the field all the quarterbacks that were able to continue the play. It is very sad but he goes out a Superhero. A real superhero. The people he saved could go on and do great things in this world. Maybe protect schools from this kind of nightmare. He was a guy that probably reached people on the playing field. He was a guy that you could stop in the office and shoot the shit. Those moments he probably made people better. He leaves a family that loved him. It tears their hearts out but they know what he has done for mankind. He was doing it for mankind way before this incident took place this week.

This brings me back to the coach I had named Mike Berry. This was a guy that gave you a mind set you can do anything you want in life, if you work hard for it. Keep dreaming because you can get there. Our Most Holy Redeemer Raiders rag tag group did very well in life. I can not speak for everyone but in my opinion I would like to say Mike Berry had something to do with that. We had a few guys go play high school basketball. One actually played overseas and grew a mustache after high school. This group came out with a fire fighter. It came out with a guy that helps fight forest fires, some would say a smoke jumper. We have some engineers. We even have a guy that went over to Iraq and fought for our country and saw lots of combat. We had some guy that helped the homeless and his work he did for the nursing program at a major University. We have the one guy with some radical ideas, but harmless. We even have some computer savvy men in our group of bad news bears. Those three wins are not many but it built something in every one of us. If Mike Berry did not take the team that year maybe basketball would have been over for most of us. Maybe without him molding us maybe some of us would have turned out different. Maybe some of us take the wrong road in life. I think Mike Berry would of done the same thing Aaron Feis did this week in Florida. Never underestimate a man that carries around a whistle. These are the real heroes that help make the world a good place. It’s too bad some fall through the cracks. Mike Berry and Aaron Feis are probably up in heaven coaching a game as you read this. Abraham Lincoln is probably doing a windmill dunk for one of the teams.

During the 1990’s I was a huge Buffalo Bills fan. Still one on this day. Out painting the town red I was awoken by the phone the next day. One of my friends wanted to console me talk me off the ledge on the bad news about my Buffalo Bills. I could be like Sophia from the Golden Girls, picture this… 1992 Oilers versus the Bills in Buffalo. I was a young lad in high school. Now you will ask what the hell I was doing painting the town red in high school? Drinking under age is what we did time to time. However that is not the power point of this story. I was told my Bills were getting their bums beaten in as that is the rated G version of the conversation that took place. The Buffalo Bills were looking for redemption from losing two Superbowls in a row. This was a game that hall of famer Jim Kelly was hurt and could not play. This game should of been over as the Oilers were up 35-3. I got off the phone and looked at the television. It felt like a gut punch to the tummy seeing that.

Now present day, a team that felt like the sky was falling. The kind of gut punch the Colts probably felt when they hired Josh McDainels then to see the snake weasel out of the job he accepted. He went back to the pied piper who accepted the snakes from Saint Patrick who drove them out of Ireland centuries ago. The pied piper, the leader of the Evil Empire. He needed his Viper back. It was like the Cobra Commander crawling back to the Serpentor. Being a bird that can’t fly the coop without their mommy, the colts were now in a pickle. They were gut punched by the Evil Empire like everyone else has been in some way against the Patriot storm troopers.

In 1992 in Buffalo it was a slaughter. The Houston Oilers invaded like an old Western movie and took over the town. The town was a blood bath. The gates of the old saloon in town were off their hinges. People slumped over their card games. Lots of bottles of whisky shattered. Puddling on the floor next to the crimson colored blood spilled that afternoon. Warren Moon was the black Sheriff from Blazing Saddles as he went through town on his horse with swagger. He looked at the towns people in triumph. Now he’s ready to take his Oilers to the next town over and steal their gold. It was a bad scene. It was that bad taste that was left after that kick by Scott Norwood in the 1990 Superbowl. Where Darth Bill Belicheck was working for the Giants, not quite Darth Vader yet.

The Oilers ready to string up the rest of the Bills in town square that day. However something changed. Somebody rose up from the burnt ashes and dust of the mayhem that took place in the first half. It was like the rise of the Batman. It was like Shane or John Wayne coming back into town to save the day. Frank Reich and THE COMEBACK. This was one of the best games I ever saw. Years later I did watch the first half of this game. Frank Reich’s brilliance that had him finishing 21-34 passes for 289 yards 4 touch down passes and one interception. Most of it was done in the second half as the game was something out of Tale of Two Cities. He brought the Bills back and they went on to win 41-38 in overtime.

Frank Reich is the same man that help come up with a game plan to beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles who have never won a Superbowl in their team history. Reich help put in a plan for the Eagles back up quarterback that worked very well against the Evil Empire. Now he’s the new Sheriff in town for the Indianapolis Colts. They even took a picture of him signing the contract then announced the deal to their fans. Last week dark skies were clouding the Indianapolis skies. Now the Colts are feeling hopeful and they should. Frank Reich has accomplished much more as a player and a coach and guy that played College football for a big program, then some snake named Josh McDaniels. Some day… it might not be this upcoming season…might not be 2019 season but the Colts Fans will thank the weasel Josh McDaniels for slithering home to Billy boy. Because when the Colts beat the Patriots. Or if Andrew Luck leads the colts to the Superbowl, it will be Frank Reich that made this come together. Josh McDaniels did set the franchise back a tad for him backing out last minute. If the snake stayed it would of been a city burning from Josh McDaniels stupidness over the burning rubber of the tires flying around the race track. Let the comeback start today in Colts land.

If I was a Colts fan and heard that Josh McDaniels was going to be the next head coach, I think my days as a fan of that team would be done. I would drop my season tickets like a bad habit. Then the sudden news that Josh McDaniels is not accepting the job, I would be setting up the parade route. Can you do what Cleveland did and have a parade route for a perfect season of no wins? Instead of the year without a Santa Claus the year with without a coach. How many times do you get second chances? I’m not a Colt fan. However you know that the owner Jim Irsay is a moron. Maybe this lucky break might be what the franchise needed. Like the day Peyton Manning walked into your building kind of break after you drafted him.

The only thing Josh McDaniels has done right in his career as a head coach was sniff out what Jay Cutler actually was. He inherited a 500 team in Denver. Then followed that year up with another 8-8 season. He was off to a 6-2 season. Then lost 8 out of his last ten games. Then the following year he was 3-9 fired week 13. He drafted Tim Tebow as a quarterback. Where credit was due with Cutler, credit was quickly taken away with Tebow.  Many players at the time did not want to play for this guy. He was a young hot shot thought he knew more than everyone else in the room. Is running an offense that has Tom Brady behind center something pretty much anybody can do? Why is this guy so special? Did not see it then and not seeing it now.

Only thing I can tell you is McDaniels is a tool just like all the assistants that have come from the Belicheck’s tree under the bridge. Belichek chokes the life out of them and sends them on their way to fail. Belichek might only deal with people that are inferior to him.

If I were the Detroit Lions after the Superbowl, I would have hoped for Matt Patricia to run home to Bill Belichek. Was not impressed with that defense on the biggest stage of the year. Look at the bafoons that Belichek let go. Eric Mangini went 23-25 with the Jets. Then actually got another job and went 10-22 with the Browns. Romeo Crennel 24-40 with the Browns. He might have done the best with the Browns. Then 2-14 with the Chiefs. Then Charlie Weis who still being paid for his stellar work in college. For the Irish he went 35-27 and then went 6-22 with Kansas. Then Bill O’Brien did some good work with Penn State. However 31-33 with the Texans. History has only rotten fruit picked off the Belichek tree. It’s no Andy Reid tree where it’s filled with bright big shiny apples of success. Look at most of the league and how many of the successful coaches came from the Walrus.

Could this be some revenge ploy from the Patriots? The Colts are the ones that ratted out the Patriots in deflate gate. If that is the fact then wouldn’t Josh McDaniels even be a bigger moron as he is just a pawn in some rich man’s revenge. Did the Patriots promise him something much bigger? What does this tell you about Matt Patricia? He is the assistant that is replaceable. Everyone gets cold feet and changes their mind. But this idiot accepted the job. They made an official announcement. They even waited until the Patriots were done with the season. McDaniels even screwed people that he wanted as assistants. Now they are in limbo after agreeing to help this sorry ass of a man. If McDaniels knew that Jim Irsay is not the type of guy he wanted to work for, why didn’t he do some research before any interviews? Even McDaniels’ agent quit on him. If this guy does not get something from New England in the future he will not get another offer from any other team in the league. Something definitely smells in the State of Massachusetts. Just add this story to the never-ending Santa’s nice list of why most people hate the Patriots. I think the Colts are now in a tough situation. They are behind as the draft and free agency are on the horizon. Whoever they hire now will be better off in the long run than that bum McDaniels. It will be a tough few months ahead but they will find someone to right the ship that has taken damage from the Evil Empire once again.