Chicago Blackhawks started the year out with a flourish handing Coach Denis Savard his walking papers after 4 games. This appears to be latest of the many moves by owner Rocky Witz has made to remake the Hawks in his image. Savard was quickly replaced by an internal candidate Blackhawks scout and NHL veteran coach Joel Quenneville. Quenneville boasts a career record of 438-283-118, while Savard's at 65-66-16 with the Hawks indicates that this move may possibly indicate the wish for a more aggressive coaching line behind the bench with the team. Last year under Savard while the Hawks managed to climb to their first 40 win season since 01-02'. Despite this climb they still missed the playoffs. The Hawks will have to perform much better as a team under Quenneville to progress beyond the first round and not rely on on young blood from Rockford and the sticks of Jonathn Toews and Patrick Kane. In short the entire organization had better take it up several notches, Rocky has to pink slips out and obviously is not hesitating to use them. Meanwhile in Rosemont the ice is firming up for Saturday's home opener. Mean while the Chicago Wolves have started the 08-09' season on the road with a western swing and two heart break defeats. Saturday's season opener in Houston, seemed to be a game of shaking out the kinks rather than a barn burner from last year. Of course it would be, many of the players from last season are scattered to the AHL/NHL winds never to return. The Wolves are in the process of getting to know their new coach, Don Granato and he, his players, both new to the team and each other. It is going to be a while before this new incarnation of the Wolves gels into the winning form their fans expect.

Houston and the Wolves look evenly matched on for this outing, 27/28 SOG, PIM wre evenly distributed with Houston 10 min/5 inf and Wolves 8 min/4inf, typical of a Aeros/Wolves encounter. The score told the same story, Houston's Dane Crowley scored the first goal of the season at 10:35 in the first period. Colin Stuart answered for the Wolves at 14:18 during the second. Both teams fought until OT then at 2:37 Houston's Krys Kokanos ended the game and sent Chicago to the showers and on the bus to San Antonio for game two of the season. San Antoino this year featuring a old friends Alex Bourret and Francis Lessard both old Wolves. Frannie managed to contain himself with only 2 minutes of PIMs for holding so he must have plenty of warm fuzzes left for his od team. <em>That's nice</em>. Those hoping for a more exciting game two were to be left disappointed. Again the score was 2:1 a Wolves loss. San Antonio goals were notched by Allex Bourret at 12:50 in the first, and at 19:54 in the second period. The sole Wolves goal was registered by the always pesky Joey Crabb at 17:47 in the first period. Ondrej Pavlec was in goal for both games, he should be well warmed up for Saturday's home opener. The Rampage proved to be far more feisty this game featured far more fisticuffs than the Aeros game 47 min/15 inf for the Rampage and 41 min/12 inf for the Wolves. Most notable was a bit of dancing between Boris Valabik (7 PIMs) and Garth Murray(17 PIMs) at 10:28 in the 2nd. Looks like Boris is getting back into the AHL swing of things. It all comes home tomorrow October 18th 7:00 at the Allstate Arena,good seats are still available. Let's drop the puck already!