"The Chicago Blackhawks and general manager Stan Bowman shocked a lot of people when they allowed long time goalie Corey Crawford to walk to free agency. Not only were fans and analysts surprised by the move, but lots of guys in the locker room were upset that the goalie wasn't brought back. With the smoke cleared a bit, Bowman decided to open up about what really happened. "We did talk to Corey, right when our season ended. We did talk to him about a one-year deal," Bowman said on the NBC Sports Blackhawks Talk podcast. "So for us, it's not so much about whether Corey can play, whether he can play two years or not, we eventually need to find the next goaltender of the Blackhawks. Corey was not going to be our goalie for the next 10 years. He's [35] years old and he's towards the end of his career. So it's not that we thought Corey couldn't play one or two more seasons, we made the determination that Corey wasn't going to be here for the next six or seven seasons.
"So at some point you have to find that goaltender. You can find it now, you can find it a year from now. But if you sign [Crawford] to a multi-year contract and next offseason there's a really good, young goalie that's available but you've already allocated your money for Corey for a couple years, you're not in that market, you're not able to do that. So the flexibility was something we thought made more sense for where we're at."What do you think of Bowman's comments?"
