Did Joel Quenneville Make a Mistake Benching Huet?
Jim Neveau, PIB Co-conspirator
The last time Blackhawks fans saw Cristobal Huet, he was skating to the bench with his tail between his legs after giving up four goals on 17 shots against the Detroit Red Wings on Sunday afternoon.
The boos cascaded down on him, as they have more than once during this season, and you got the feeling that the winds of change had once again blown through the United Center. Swept away was the Frenchman, and brought in to replace him was the young Finn Antti Niemi. It was a scene all too familiar, and this time it rang with a tone of finality that hadn’t been sounded in the other instances.
With Niemi slotted to get the start on Wednesday night, in what will undoubtedly be another opportunity for one of the goalies to grab the reins and lead the Hawks’ playoff chickens to roost, the ultimate question becomes what to do with the high-priced Huet. Do you just let him ride the pine, send him down to Rockford, or keep interchanging him with Niemi?

Huet and Niemi (Pam Rodriguez/PIB)
It is a complicated issue that Joel Quenneville is going to have to deal with, and there are only a limited number of games left in the season in which to do it.
One sportswriter, David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune, weighed in with an interesting thought on whether or not the Hawks should bench Cristobal:
Quenneville planned to discuss the Huet vs. Niemi decision with his staff, but with 17 games until the postseason, what choice does he have? If you agree that part of goaltending is psychological, consider the boost Huet would get from having his coach reinforce the team’s support by starting him against the Kings. Bench Huet now, you may lose him later — when the Hawks still may need him.
With the decision already made to start Niemi tomorrow night, Haugh’s thoughts on the Huet matter strike an interesting chord. Could Joel Quenneville have just wounded Huet beyond repair for the rest of the year, and maybe for the rest of his tenure with the Blackhawks? Do the Hawks have any use for a goaltender who would be that fragile of mind that he would take a demotion so negatively that he would never recover? Is the decision to go with Antti the correct one in the first place?
Tackling the issue of Quenneville damaging Huet, there might very well be some truth to that thought. Cristobal hasn’t exactly shown a propensity of bouncing back quickly from adversity. During the Detroit game on Sunday, it was almost as though he quit trying when the Wings scored two quick goals, and his movement was noticeably slower for the rest of his time in the game.
With his body language serving as a Webster’s Dictionary definition of “defeatist attitude”, Joel Quenneville probably came to the conclusion that Huet is fairly useless at this point. After all, no matter how talented the team is in front of their goalie, they feed off of whatever vibe he puts out onto the ice. Antti Niemi usually puts out a vibe that nothing gets him down, and that is an admirable trait.
Yes, he does get upset about allowing goals, but then again, who doesn’t in this league? He shakes it off in as much time as it takes him to take a swig of his Gatorade bottle, and then that’s the end of it. Huet, on the other hand, seems to let the stench of a goal against linger in the air for a long period of time, and it’s usually during those stretches that he sees goal after goal find the back of the net. This in turn makes him even more mopey, and bad things continue to happen.
So, knowing that Huet is going to succumb to self-loathing each time he lets in a goal he knows he should have stopped, then why coddle him? Why continue to give him opportunities, only to watch him self-destruct and take the SS Blackhawks down with him?
The only rational justification for starting Huet tonight against the Kings would have been Haugh’s argument that it could have done wonders for him psychologically. The boost that Cristobal would have gotten from being turned to even after a bad outing could have been a powerful motivation tool, and he could have ridden that wave all the way to the postseason.
Instead, Huet once again finds himself on the bench, and Quenneville once again finds himself with a high-priced mistake rocking a baseball cap on his bench. Is this the right decision for the Blackhawks and their playoff aspirations, or is giving the keys back to Niemi a decision pointed to in later years as a reason why this team blew it? Only time will tell.
Tags: antti niemi, Cristobal Huet, David Haugh, Joel Quenneville



























