Quenneville exudes Quality, Quantitative Presence in Quest

Q is the second most rarely used letter in the English language and Quenneville tries to keep it that way.

Quenneville seems to blend into any background, obviously believing the less said the better so you don't get noticed. You hardly hear anyone talking about him. Popular Denis Savard, fired so Quenneville could take over this team early last season, likely received a louder round of applause at the convention than his successful replacement.

That's the kind of crass sentiment McDonough sanctions in its place, which is the fan world of the convention. But not running his club's day-to-day affairs.

He prefers the fact Quenneville used to moonlight as a stock broker for a time during the summer in his playing days to earn extra cash the right way--by analyzing the numbers just as he now breaks down his many line combos. It's organized, systematic. The Q method of hockey: Quantitative reasoning.

Savard just raked in the dough as an extraordinary talent and hired a financial advisor to do the rest. For the Hawks, Savard obviously didn't have the ability to organize and run the process the precise way an analyst would. He was just a famous player trying to let his knowledge carry him and his fledglings.

Truthfully, Quenneville's low profile seems like a positive. In a town where Lou Piniella and Ozzie Guillen make headlines for their tirades and temperaments, Quenneville shows mostly a calm, understated demeanor. That might be the steady leadership that a young team requires to succeed via growth spurts.

Oh, he blew his top during the conference finals at the same pressure moment some of his players were self-destructing emotionally. He does utilize an effective snarl that is helped by the menacing mustache.

He also forced himself into the headlines with a rare burst of hyperbole for him, defining Matt Walker's roughing penalty in Game 4 (definitely a bad decision by officials) "the worst call in the history of sports."

Quenneville is controversial so seldom, he doesn't know how to not over-embellish when strong quotes are called for. "Worst call I've ever seen" would have been sufficient. No need to make people thumb through the history books to see if he had a valid point.

It was interesting to notice that he is already concerned his team could blindly take their new and unfamiliar reputation as a given and forget to really play like contenders . He's already thinking of how to attack their overconfidence, months before that crackdown will take place sooner or later.

"We gained a lot of experience and it can help us, but going into the year we can't expect it can just happen," he told reporters over the weekend. "We should be motivated to be better, and use what we accomplished to our advantage, from the get go. Teams will be hungry against us and gunning."

You'll be hearing those words again shaped in a different way when the Hawks hit their first slump. But that's planning when you look that far ahead.

Quenneville survived in St. Louis into his 8^th season, when he was fired. He had a shorter run in Colorado as head coach. But he figures to last a while in Chicago and defenseman Brent Seabrook told NHL.com during the postseason why the players like him.

"He's done a great job of keeping things loose and letting the players do their own thing," Seabrook said. "He works us hard, but he lets us have fun and enjoy ourselves, which is good because we have such a young team."

Or as McDonough summed it up: "He's somebody that doesn't panic."

Never let them see you sweat it and the Hawks might hire you. Get booed as McDonough did by fans, and you tough it out, talk about how thick your skin is--as McDonough did in his best bravado. Show the little pukes your Jimmy Cagney face and share your frozen smile.

The Blackhawks front office is now a stoic mask. You aren't suppose to tell what it is thinking or how it feels. It's Godzilla. It's King Kong. Rugged and impervious to pain.

Of course, it would help this mask if Quenneville hadn't been knocked out five times in the playoffs against Detroit as Blues, Avalanche and Hawks coach. But once the stoic mask straightens out this facial tic of quantitative reasoning, everything will be fine.

Because Pittsburgh is no problem for the Hawks. Let's take Hull at his word. Although, come to think about it, the Penguins were a sticky problem for the Hawks in 1992 when they last visited the championship round.

But if the steady hand of Quenneville gets us that rematch 18 years later, we'll get on the Hull bandwagon, stare down those waddling, overmatched Penguin fans and believe that we'll all be drinking tequila gold from the silver cup.

After all, Mario Lemieux has stepped aside since '92. Mario and Hull can do battle with words rather than sticks, while Q works on adding a few quips to his quantitative game.