After being unceremoniously dumped in the first round of the playoffs last season, the Chicago Blackhawks have once again returned to play in the BRHL2 Stanley Cup finals in their quest to hoist Lord Stanley's Grail once more.

"Last year was a bit of a wake up call for us," said Chicago GM Dave Yee, "After we won the cup in '08 and made the finals again in '09, I think we got a little too complacent as an organization on the whole."

"While we've always been very happy with our players and our roster, we weren't focusing enough on what the other guys were doing to the make up of their teams - teams like Buffalo and all of their young talent and Atlanta, who for all of their wheeling and dealing are perennial cup contenders - and we got caught."

"So after we got bounced in the first round last season, Slats (Blackhawks president of hockey operations George Bacul) and I sat down and took a hard look at our roster to try and figure out what our strengths were, and what we needed to address to keep us as contenders and get us back into the finals."

"What we came away with after those meetings was a bucket list of not necessarily names of players we wanted to target, but of qualities that we wanted to add to our roster. More scoring depth of course was one of our main targets... That and more grit and a little more veteran leadership."

"On the whole, I think we've done a pretty good job in getting what we needed throughout the course of this season by bring in guys like Gionta, Backes, Draper, and Alex Burrows. All of them can find the back of the net and Burrows and Backes give us a little more sandpaper that we'll need in this next series against Atlanta."

But will it be enough?

"Who knows," laughs GM Yee, "We've made it back to the finals, but the job isn't done yet!"

-- Edited by Hawks GM 2 on Tuesday 16th of August 2011 11:17:11 AM