Hawks Weekly Update 6/11
Vosters out, Ball in. Q and Bowman still out. CapFriendly... out.
A little late this week, but better late than never.
Been busy so this week is just Hawks news focused.
Doing things a little different for this one as far as formatting goes. A lot of news items to cover, so let’s just cut to the cheese.
The biggest news of the week came with the firing of play-by-play Chris Vosters and the hiring of Rick Ball. It came as a surprise… kind of. Apparently, the Hawks were looking at announcers earlier in the week, according to Ben Pope.
Before the news came out, the Athletic posted an article ranking all of the team’s broadcasts and the Hawks finished second to last. Shortly after that article came out, the Hawks announced that Vosters was out.
The dude has a good voice but hockey is not his sport. I wish him the best of luck but man, did he make it hard to listen to games (Murphy… Korchinski… BEDAAAARD AND A SCORE!). He lacked chemistry with Darren Pang and general knowledge of the sport. Hot take, Panger wasn’t great either.
Speaking of Pang, Ben Pope also said that there was “strained relationships” between him and Vosters. I never really got that sense but I felt that when Troy Murray was in the seat.
Gary Bettman spoke before the Stanley Cup Final started. A couple of interesting points for Hawks fans:
Bettman made it clear that Stan Bowman and Joel Quinnville are still not eligible to return to the NHL. Bowman and Q had reached out to see about being a part of the NHL again.
The salary cap is going to rise to $88M. This is a $4.5M raise with a cap floor at $65M. The Hawks are currently at $55M. They’ll have some room to play with and this off-season will be one of the first marks of Kyle Dadvidson’s decision making as GM.
I wouldn’t read too much into the Jake Guentzel rumors. Elliotte Friedman just thinks it’s not impossible if the Hawks look at acquiring him. Nothing more.
The NHL Combine was this weekend. A lot of talk surrounding Artyom Levshunov. The Hawks will get a chance to talk to Demidov somtime mid-June. The prospect ranking continues it’s flip-flopping as Demidov is starting to sink a bit in projected draft positions. A reminder that this is all meaningless until draft day.
Powers wrote an interesting article on pending RFA Martin Necas. The 25-year-old winger is likely available from the Hurricanes. I’m torn on the whole free agent thing. Should Davidson spend the money that he has? Sure you have to worry about Bedard’s contract as well as Korchinski. But you can’t be scared to spend and weaponize the space you do have. Also, who’s going to want to come to a team that’s still in rebuild mode for a couple more seasons?
Some sad news came out on Sunday… CapFriendly was bought out by the Washington Capitals and the website will go private when free agency hits in July.
Let’s Go Hawks