The Erik Gustafsson Era Is Finally Over In Chicago

That first tweet was from the St Louis Blues series that basically ended on a bonehead defensive play by Gustafsson. He will go down as one of the more frustrating players of my lifetime. He has all the talent and tools in the world, but never seemed to care enough about his own end to make himself into a bonafide top 4 defensemen. 

Maybe in a reduce role with sheltered minutes and on a power-play unit that isn't the worst in the NHL Gustafsson can be an effective player. I hope he is for them. Even though I've always been hard on Dustafsson my frustration laid more with Stan Bowman than with Gustafsson who I am sure is a nice enough guy. And that is the point of this blog. So far all that has been as the return for Gus is "Conditional Draft Picks". That likely means something that starts out as a 5th and perhaps can end up as a 3rd round pick depending on how far the Flames go in the playoffs and perhaps if Gustafsson re-signs. Which is a COMPLETE failure by Stan Bowman. 

Last summer, Gustafsson's value was MUCH higher. MUCH. Gustafsson was coming off a career year. He scored 60 points. His analytics looked okay. His cap hit was only $1.2M. And back then the Blackhawks also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gustafsson had ZERO future with the team. With Boqvist, Ian Mitchell, and at the time of the draft Henri Jokiharju, in the fold and on the verge of being ready for the NHL Gustafsson was never going to re-sign. Bowman knew that and still elected to keep Gustafsson in the fold. There is no excuse for that. And if Bowman was thinking "hey, if we keep him until the deadline maybe his value will be driven up even higher if he has another big year". And if that was his thinking then he, once again, is a moron. There's a reason why Gustafsson is 27 years-old and is just now a full-time NHL defenseman. Joel Quenneville didn't like Gus so even though he was desperate for dmen Gustafsson only got 76 in three seasons. Colliton liked Gus, didn't like Jokiharju. Quenneville LOVED Jokiharju, didn't like Gus. Joel fired, Jokiharju trade. Stan has to be held responsible for that. He has read every situation wrong for legit 5 years and maybe longer. Getting next to nothing for Gustafsson because he sold too late is just the latest in a long line of failure deriving from his own inability to evaluate players internally.