Will Blackhawks' Failure to Add Better D-Man Than Kimmo Timonen Cost Them a Cup?

Stan Bowman is a good general manager. He inherited an awfully nice situation when he was named general manager in Chicago, but he’s more than proven himself, navigating the salary cap carefully and keeping the Blackhawks core together and competitive.

So I find myself surprised to be writing that a tone-deaf trade-deadline performance could well end up costing his team the Stanley Cup.

It’s not just that Antoine Vermette has been a curiously bad fit in Chicago. The Blackhawks paid a lot in assets to acquire him and he hasn’t really delivered for them. But the desire to add the two-way centre was understandable since he was performing splendidly at the time of the deadline. So far, the deal hasn’t worked as hoped, but it was a reasonable gamble.

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The real question is why Bowman opted to pay a major price in assets for Kimmo Timonen, a 40-year-old defenceman who hadn’t played a single game this season before the Blackhawks coughed up a second-round pick and a conditional pick that could also rise as high as the second round.

Not everyone saw the deal as a negative. Randy Holt of Second City Hockey praised the acquisition after it went through in late February:

"

Overall, there's a lot to like about this deal. Timonen comes in fresh, even with his health woes that held him out this long. The 'Hawks didn't surrender a lot to get him, which was certainly a concern when the Kings shelled out a first-rounder and a prospect for Andrej Sekera. He's not a complete solution for a defensive corps that has been rough all year, but he's an important addition and should be a very nice fit as a rental for the remainder of the year.

"

The big issue here is opportunity cost. The draft picks the Blackhawks shipped away were not going to help the team win the Stanley Cup in 2015, so that’s not an issue. The problem is that for two significant draft picks, Chicago could have acquired a lot more than Timonen.

It’s true that some defenceman went for more than Timonen at the deadline. Holt references the high cost of Andrej Sekera. Braydon Coburn cost Tampa Bay a first-round pick and more, while players like Tyler Myers and Keith Yandle were moved as part of big, expensive packages.

But all of those players were logging massive minutes for their respective teams. They aren’t fair comparisons for an old, injured, undersized Timonen.

And when we look at players who went for a similar or lesser price, the acquisition cost on Timonen looks exorbitant.

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Looking at Sportsnet’s trade tracker, we find that Montreal added Jeff Petry for a very similar package (a second-round pick and a conditional selection that could have risen as high as the third round) to what Chicago paid for Timonen. In exchange for that slightly lower price, the Canadiens added a No. 3 even-strength defenceman who excels in a shutdown role and contributes to both special teams—the kind of player who had a real impact on his new team.

Or we might consider Zbynek Michalek. A veteran shutdown defenceman who was averaging 21:05 per game in Arizona, Michalek was in a similarly questionable injury situation to Timonen at the time of the trade. St. Louis dealt a prospect, Maxim Letunov, who it had drafted in the second round last season, but also managed to convince Arizona to toss in a conditional third-round pick as insurance just in case Michalek proved unable to play.

Bowman didn’t land a difference-maker like Petry, and he didn’t cover himself the way the Blues did. Now thanks to some injuries, Chicago might end up paying for that. Here’s how the ice time on the Blackhawks’ defence sorted out in their 4-1 Game 1 Western Conference Final loss to the Anaheim Ducks:

• Duncan Keith: 28:25
• Brent Seabrook: 26:57
• Johnny Oduya: 22:29
• Niklas Hjalmarsson: 20:10
• David Rundblad: 10:47
• Kimmo Timonen: 5:15

Chicago is essentially running four defencemen at this point. Timonen keeps dressing but clearly isn’t trusted; he had all of two shifts in the third period of Game 1, and one of those was only eight seconds long. Rundblad, playing in his first game of the postseason, was on the ice for Anaheim’s first two goals and ended up ranking ahead of only Timonen and No. 12 forward Vermette in terms of total ice time.  

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Head coach Joel Quenneville has looked at his options and decided that the best thing he can do is run his four best defencemen into the ground. There’s no Petry, who can be trusted in all situations; there isn’t even a reliable presence like Michalek to stabilize the third pairing.

That’s on Bowman. He could have added a defenceman who could really help his team. Instead, he burned serious ammunition on a player who has predictably been a playoff non-entity.

Chicago might still win it all despite the mistake, but with just four teams left in the playoffs, the margin for error is razor thin, and it could well be that defensive depth ends up costing the Blackhawks their third championship of the Bowman era.  

Statistics courtesy of NHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.