Let's play Name That Team. Here are your clues: The coach and GM aren't seeing eye-to-eye. One of the team's top-paid players, now known more for his off-ice woes than his on-ice contributions, was a healthy scratch for two games, after which he talked of shoving the situation up unidentified posteriors. And the owner hasn't the slightest clue how to turn things around.

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If you're still unclear as to which NHL team we're writing about, live in the greater Chicago area, and aren't completely convinced the invention of television isn't a passing fad, you're exactly the kind of hockey fan the Chicago Blackhawks are looking for.

What other conclusions are observers supposed to make? Surely owner Bill Wirtz and longtime right-hand-man Bob Pulford don't want fans with any type of functional memory bank, as most Hawks supporters with such a skill surrendered their support long ago. And they can't want people with so much as a semi-regular interest in the team, as they'd realize before this sentence is finished what a dilapidated monstrosity the franchise has become.

If, as we suggested in an earlier column, Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs is the NHL's resident grinch, Wirtz is its Citizen Kane, and the franchise's non-existent TV contract for home games his Rosebud, forever destined to be kindling for the fire lest the general populace get their filthy little mitts on it. You'd say the game has passed the man by, only you're not sure he had a grasp of it to begin with.

In this, their 42nd year without a Stanley Cup championship, the Hawks' fortunes have reached their nadir: Coach Brian Sutter and GM Mike Smith aren't looking to purchase a timeshare anytime soon. Theo Fleury's struggle staying sober has been far rockier -- and more public -- than anyone associated with the team envisioned, as evidenced by his notorious visit to a Columbus-area strip club that ended with a visit from the police, a black eye for Fleury and a blacker eye for the Hawks.

Prior to the strip club incident, the Hawks were six games over .500, playoff-bound, and optimistic about the future. Since then, they have won three of 19 games, beating Boston, Edmonton and Columbus, none of whom will be playing hockey in May. They have fallen to 11th place in the Western Conference. They are one of just three teams that don't have a 20-goal scorer. They are 1-9-0-1 in their last 10 games, haven't won in seven straight tries, and have the league's worst power play with 29 goals in 258 chances. In other words, they're putting the "ugh" in ugly.

Even when they try to do the right thing, such as signing Fleury when few teams wished to take on the burden of employing and caring for a burdened man, the Hawks still couldn't get it right; the person hired to help Fleury deal with his demons was sound asleep in his hotel room as Fleury tripped the (strobe) light fantastic in Ohio.

Not surprisingly, then, attendance at Hawks games is continuing in its downward trend; total attendance figures in Chicago are down about 20,000 from the same point in 2001-02, and in the 20,500-seat United Center, they've had as many as 8,000 empty seats during games.

	“	The players keep wanting more and more. Pretty soon they'll want the key to my door. Well, God bless 'em. I love them all. But I love my door even more. ”
		— Bill Wirtz, Blackhawks owner

Who can blame people for staying away? You can't fault folks from doing everything in their power to avoid watching Sergei Berezin, whose next pass will be contractually mandated by management. You can't blame people who don't want to cheer for Alexander Karpovtsev, the defenseman injured so often, the makers of paper mache just offered him an endorsement deal. And it's hard to support a team that has become the elephant graveyard of aging former Maple Leafs.

But if you think improving the hockey team is job one for Wirtz, you're dreaming in Technicolor. Wirtz has bigger things to worry about. Doors, for instance.

"The players keep wanting more and more," said Wirtz, dusting off the rhetoric cannon in anticipation of the labor war also known as the 2004-05 season. "Pretty soon they'll want the key to my door. Well, God bless 'em. I love them all. But I love my door even more."

Besides answering the prayers of sportswriters everywhere, the quote provides a fitting epitaph for the Wirtz era: No Stanley Cups, but a hell of a door. He would rather cut a corner than turn one, which isn't exactly a stirring battle hymn to be played while nibbling on crumpets at the country club, but it's good enough for Wirtz, and, as his management decisions continue to prove, his opinion is the only one of relevance.

Where the rest of the league spends money to keep their stars, Wirtz has watched all his "loved ones" -- including, but not limited to, Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour, and Tony Amonte, and Bobby Hull -- walk away. Where other franchises stick with their coaches no matter what record they've amassed, Wirtz keeps Pulford on a 24/7 pager in case a needless management shakeup is in order. And where the airing of home games on TV is basic Marketing 101 for NHL owners, it's tantamount to suicide for Wirtz.

Make no mistake, it's Wirtz's way or no way at all, and "no way" will be the answer to Chicago hockey fans' Cup dreams as long as he is reluctantly signing the checks.

"If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't buy an NHL team right now," Wirtz said, "and that includes the one I own."

Undoubtedly, Hawks fans would love to show Wirtz the door; it's a civic tragedy he's too in love with the damn thing to walk out of it.

E-mail Adam Proteau at aproteau@thehockeynews.com.

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