from David Hough of the Chicago Tribune,

Had the Hawks been eliminated in Game 7, the immediate impact on the organization would be less jarring. Going down meekly in four straight games represented a mandate for change and rattled the Hawks enough to reassess everything. The powers-that-be can't be tone-deaf to what happened in the Music City.

Stop clinging to the Hawks winning 50 games and earning 109 points. Listen to coach Joel Quenneville, who acknowledged his team's postseason failure nullified its regular-season success. The Hawks "One Goal" isn't being the best team from October to April. It's beating four playoff opponents and hoisting the Stanley Cup in June, something the current roster was ill-equipped to do....

Finding a silver lining in the 2016-17 season contradicts everything the Hawks always have espoused. Where was the championship pedigree? Their quest ended abruptly, as Quenneville put it, because the Hawks couldn't find "the all-out button.'' Translation: The Preds showed more heart. Depending on the shift, the Predators alternately made the Hawks look old and slow or young and lost. The pushback everybody expected never came, the response muted by a more relentless bunch. Something was missing from the Hawks and that indicted everybody on the bloated payroll.

Oversimplifying it, the Hawks always appeared too comfortable. What we interpreted as confidence, in retrospect, could have been complacency that often is the residue of continuity. Kane hinted as much in postgame comments to reporters.

more