Daily Faceoff Show: Colliton Handing Whiteboard To Players A Bad Look
There are few teams in the league having a tougher start to their season than the Chicago Blackhawks.
They’ve stumbled out of the gates to an abysmal 0-5-1 start to the season and got walloped Sunday night against the visiting Detroit Red Wings 6-3. It launched Chicago into record territory going 360:57 to start a season without having a lead.
Newly acquired Seth Jones has had his issues going 0-10 in 5×5 goal scoring on the ice, but a small moment late in the game caught the eye of the hockey world.
Chicago called a timeout with just over seven minutes to go in the third, and head coach Jeremy Colliton was seen passing a whiteboard to Chicago players. It’s far from something common, and is definitely something that caught the eye of Daily Faceoff’s Bryce Salvador.
“It’s not common how that looked and that’s what it came down to, the perception. Optically, when things aren’t going well in their season… then you have Colliton hand the board over to the players,” said Salvador. “It’s one thing if you’re holding the board and hand a marker to a player… but it really looked like he was giving it over to the players and saying ‘I’m out of solutions for you guys.’
“I wouldn’t read too much into it from a players perspective, because everyone in that locker room is going to be like ‘hey, we’re all in this together — we’re not leaving anyone out to dry.’
“But optically, it just doesn’t look good well and you saw Twitter immediately jump all over the situation here.”
Chicago’s rocky start has seen them fall to the New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Islanders, Vancouver Canucks and Detroit Red Wings and things aren’t going to get easier.
They close out a four game homestand Wednesday against an incredibly desperate Toronto Maple Leafs, before a two-game road trip against the Carolina Hurricanes and St. Louis Blues.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.