Rocky Wirtz antoi haastattelun paikalliselle talouslehdelle. Tässä tuon haastattelun mielenkiintoisin pätkä Blackhawks fanin näkökulmasta:
"Then the conversation turned to the team, which was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round in two of the past three years, failing to make the postseason at all this winter.
Why the big collapse?
"The better players all had off years," Wirtz said. Star goalie Corey Crawford was out much of the season with injuries. "There were lots of reasons."
One reason is
not the league's salary cap, which some blame for the team's loss of key second-level players. Wirtz is not among them.
"I don't find that as a problem. You can work it, as long as you have a system," he said. "If you're a fan, it's a problem. If you're an owner, it's not," he added, sounding much like his father, who carried the nickname Dollar Bill. "You have to think long-term."
So, what now?
"We're not going to have a knee-jerk reaction," Wirtz said. "You can't let your emotions be in control." Crawford "tells me he's okay. We'll see."
Overall, "I think the team will be fine." But, "if things are off at the beginning of the year, that's a different story. . . .Nothing lasts forever."
Asked if that means changes could occur right after the holiday season if the team is doing poorly, Wirtz had a short answer: "Yes."
The Blackhawks' owner conceded that the price of not winning has started to hit his pocketbook.
As my colleague Danny Ecker previously reported, team ratings are down, and Wirtz confirmed season ticket renewal rates are off, too. Last year at this time, it was 99 percent, with all but "one person who went to jail and another one who moved out of town," Wirtz quipped. This year, it's 85 percent, despite a price hike, high enough to enable the team to fill slots with people on the waiting list and high enough that all games still are sold out—but still, not 99 percent.
I thought Wirtz's most revealing answer came when I asked him if he had any regrets giving long-term contracts to Toews, Kane and Duncan Keith, all of whom have deals not set to expire until the 2022-23 season.
"No," he said. "It was the right thing to do."
But, he immediately added, "Now they have to earn it." Wirtz then promptly underlined what's happened in Las Vegas, which didn't pick up any players with locked-in, long-term contracts."
