It was never going to be an easy job for Blackhawks coach Jeremy Colliton.
Replacing a future Hall of Fame coach while handling an aging, declining roster with significant salary cap constraints only raised the difficulty on Colliton, who was the youngest active head coach in the NHL when hired at the age of 33.
A rookie head coach in his first playoff series is going to have missteps, of course. So there must be some level of context associated with any critiques of Colliton.
However, with Chicago’s most noticeable stars in Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane already on the wrong side of 30 — not to mention the mid-30s duo of Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford — time is a luxury not afforded to Colliton.