John McDonough leaves behind complicated Blackhawks legacy

I hate to speak ill of the recently fired, but anyone who universally praises John McDonough has probably never worked for him or spoken honestly to anyone who has.

That’s not an opinion, it’s just the result of talking to people over the last decade. And boy, do people like talking about working for John McDonough, a complicated, successful man who is now without a job.

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McDonough, who was shockingly fired by the Blackhawks on Monday afternoon in a press release, is a polarizing figure among Cubs and Blackhawks employees who worked under him in his almost 40 years in leadership roles in sports. The opinion of him is mostly split between camps of “He’s tough to work for, but I respect him” and “Man, I really don’t like that guy.”

I’m leaving the expletives out of the latter opinion out of respect for the sports marketing guru who is credited for inventing the modern fan convention. I’ve never had a problem with McDonough and I think he deserves a lot of credit for what he actually deserves credit for. He’s done a lot of nice things for people in the media and in the local sports community. But people who worked for the Hawks lived in fear of him. Is that a good thing? 

I have tweeted out jokes about McDonough and his top lieutenant Jay Blunk for years as a way of balancing out the over-the-top praise they get for the Blackhawks’ recent success, which is due, of course, to the talented core of players led by Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith, and the coaching of Joel Quenneville. People who worked for the Hawks (and the Cubs) loved the tweets and encouraged me to keep them going, even as late as this past fall in Prague. He deserved the tweaking.

McDonough and Blunk did an admirable job of upgrading the business operations of the franchise. Hockey and marketing were aligned and three Stanley Cups later, the Hawks are still drawing big crowds despite a pronounced descent into mediocrity.

After he got there at the same time as Toews and Kane, the Hawks went from afterthought to marketing juggernaut. Hockey fans in Chicago were starved for relevance and there were hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans who appreciated a winner. If there’s ever been a celebrity who stepped off a plane in Chicago and didn’t immediately get a personalized jersey, I’d be shocked.

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To be sure, if the Hawks were still competing for Stanley Cups, McDonough would still have a job. But as everyone waits for the sports world to restart, this must’ve seemed like a good time for a shocking change. Or maybe owner Rocky Wirtz was just jealous that Michael Reinsdorf was getting good press for pulling the plug on the GarPax era.

As the Blackhawks president, McDonough certainly wasn’t one who believed that all press is good press. His rants about stories (sometimes down to the most unimportant detail) he disagreed with are legendary, even if he only took out his anger on his subordinates, who then took it out on reporters. The trickle-down effect of his temper was unnecessary.

McDonough was unapologetically tough on people and some of his subordinates didn’t mind it. But they appreciated him more after they stopped working with him. In that regard, he was a lot like a red-ass, high-school coach.

But here’s the question: Why fire him now, just weeks after Wirtz told The Athletic’s Scott Powers that McDonough and everyone else in power were safe?

Based on conversations I’ve had, this is likely the result of a power struggle between McDonough and Danny Wirtz, the 43-year-old son of the owner. Danny is now the interim president.

The younger Wirtz, officially the team’s alternate governor and vice president, has taken a more active role with the franchise in recent years since the family’s liquor business merged with Charmer Sunbelt in the fall of 2015.

Danny Wirtz isn’t especially popular himself around some circles of the organization. He and McDonough have sparred about the business side of the team, two sources told me, and their dislike of each other was an open secret. One reason for the dissension? Marketing. In 2018, the Blackhawks fired their longtime advertising agency Ogilvy Chicago, which was responsible for the popular “One Goal” campaign, and hired a small hipster firm Varyer. Why Varyer, which was founded by two ex-Pitchfork executives and had few clients at the time? Danny Wirtz was a partner.

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One view of this rivalry is that while McDonough can be a jerk, at least he’s earned that right by being good at his job for decades, unlike the younger Wirtz. Another view of McDonough is that he’s a poor leader who intimidates people under him, creating a toxic work environment.

McDonough’s lengthy executive profile was taken off the team’s website almost immediately after the news broke Monday and he was removed from the front office directory. Just like that.

Will the Blackhawks be better off without him? As someone noted, McDonough and Blunk marketed the idea of Rocky Wirtz, heroic owner, as much as they marketed the Blackhawks. Will a Wirtz and Wirtz production be successful? The Blackhawks are already trending downward.

There’s a level of shock around the organization right now and I’m sure players are wondering if they’re allowed to talk to the media without getting it OK’d by the team. Front office employees are probably wondering if they don’t have to wear suits now when they work from home. The Blackhawks’ dress code under McDonough is one of my favorite jokes because it’s indicative of the gratuitous aspect of his management style.

McDonough loomed large over the franchise and you could always justify his severe nature by looking at the success of the organization. The Hawks were a complete joke when Bill Wirtz died and left his son Rocky, who had been working in the liquor business, in charge.

It was Rocky who reversed the insane decree that home games weren’t televised months before he hired McDonough from the Cubs. It wasn’t a genius business move, just common sense.

McDonough joined up just as the hockey side got going. The Hawks needed his particular set of skills. It was the right hire at the right time, as was promoting Joel Quenneville, who was hired as a scout after losing his job in Colorado. McDonough had a hand in that decision as well. 

“We were remodeling everything here, everything,” he told Powers in an oral history of the Quenneville hiring. “We had made so many changes even by then. We looked at everything. We looked at every single part of the organization. We had an obligation to Rocky, to his family, to the city that we needed to take a really hard look at everything. This certainly was one of them.”

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For all the work John McDonough did for the franchise, for how he lived and breathed the Blackhawks for the last 13 years, it’s fair to say he deserved better than a press release during a pandemic. 

If McDonough were throwing his own goodbye party, it would be a classy affair with catered food and plenty of praise for him. Maybe a band. Certainly a dress code.

What’s next for him? I’m guessing he’ll open a consulting shop or maybe he’ll write a book. He’s got plenty of stories to tell. No, I don’t see another franchise in town hiring him. Given the state of the Hawks, maybe he left at the right time, just like how he arrived.

This story was updated with new information after publication.

(Photo: Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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