Following up on our earlier report in Murphy’s Law, Nikolai Khabibulin has been placed on waivers. TSN’s Bob McKenzie just announced it on NHL Live on XM. Teams now have 24 hours to pick him up. If a team does do so, they absorb his entire cap hit of $6.7 million. If he goes unclaimed he will then be demoted to the AHL and can be claimed at half the price on re-entry waivers. Sources are telling Murphy’s Law that the Kings, Lightning, Avalanche and Senators are interested, but none are likely to claim him now, instead waiting for re-entry waivers or a trade.

Just four games into the 2007-08 season, the Chicago Blackhawks have made the rash decision to part ways with head coach Denis Savard, replacing him behind the bench with Joel Quenneville. Expectations for the Blackhawks were running high entering this season, with the signings of defenseman Brian Campbell and goaltender Cristobal Huet expected to give them the needed ammunition to earn a playoff spot. And after seeing interest in the team decline precipitously over the past decade, team management was clearly not prepared to allow this to be a lost season on the path the respectability.

But while the motives for the rash maneuver can be explained, it's hard to find rational justification for cutting Savard loose just four games into the season. It's too small a sample size with which to reach any certain conclusions, and is doubly surprising because it came right after an impressive 4-1 win over the Phoenix Coyotes.

If team management was this concerned about having Savard behind the bench--concerned enough to fire him after only four games--it seems clear that they would have been far better off opening training camp with Quenneville as the coach. Instead, they wasted precious time that could have been spent learning Quenneville's system, and now the team will be playing catch-up for at least a month while their competitors are amassing points in the standings.

Yes, Quenneville's an excellent coach. Perhaps he'll turn out to be the right choice for the 'Hawks. But the way this move was executed smacks of desperation and disorganization.

Moreover, it's difficult to look at the team's offseason spending spree without wondering whether it's a case of déjà vu all over again. At the conclusion of the 2004-05 lockout, the 'Hawks spent big to import defenseman Adrian Aucoin and goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. the maneuvers failed miserably, and yet three years later the team spent big again at the same two positions.

Certainly, the circumstances are a bit different today, with youngsters Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane forming the nucleus of what might turn out to be a top-tier NHL club in a few years. But as things stand right now, there are far more questions than answers in the Windy City.