The roster was better than the performance last season and the season prior to that. It wasn't a Cup winning roster, but it was better than a miss the playoffs and get thoroughly embarrassed in the 1st round roster. Is that all on Quenneville? No. But add to that the changing dynamic and direction of this roster (getting younger and younger) and the game continuing to evolve, and Bowman did exactly what you ask him to do of the players; he predicted his current coach was not the fit going forward for this team and he replaced him. Time will tell if he chose the right guy and that will 100% be on him. You can also very fairly argue that the timing was bad for a multitude of reasons. If this was going to happen, it should have last summer. It's a better look and exit for Quenneville, and it gives your new head coach the proper time to prepare, have a training camp, and come in fresh. Bowman set up Colliton terribly in this scenario and the optics are pretty bad, and that's squarely on him. He wears that.
As for Bowman, a fair debate can be made that he could have been canned last summer as well. With that said, a coach generally goes before an exec, and the upper crust obviously thought enough of the fact that Bowman has drafted very well with many talented young players imminently joining the NHL ranks and done some things to instill the confidence to be able to crawl out of this AND choose his own coach to lead the way, that they allowed for him some time to rectify this and get back to contending again. Will it happen? Who knows? How long will he get? Who knows?
Personally, I am okay with him being retained and being given full control of fixing this. That includes moving on with a new voice in a head coach, which takes absolutely nothing away from what that head coach did previously or what he may do somewhere else. Here in Chicago...it was time. I have a hard time really seeing how anyone sees otherwise, but to each their own. It wasn't working anymore, and the shelf life had expired. Unfortunately, it was done at the wrong time, but that's on Bowman as well. With all of that said, if there isn't a significant step forward made in the results next season, that should be it for him. They don't need to win a Cup next season, but there needs to be significant, significant steps forward. He doesn't get much time, for me. The reality is, you need to give your head coach the time as well and he'll need a full off-season, fresh training camp, etc. to move forward with that. There's enough youth imminently on the way, upcoming cap space, and continued production out of some of your core members, that I am ok with moving forward with Bowman getting his ONE final chance to right this ship. If this team is middling or treading water at this point next season from the beginning, feel free to get out the ax.
This is the most reasonable way I can present how and why this makes sense. Certainly isn't foolproof and can be absolutely be debated, but it's where I'm at and why I think a move at head coach was sensible and also extremely complicated.
