With the opening faceoff of Game 1 Thursday night inching ever closer, it’s now time to take a look at one of the more unpleasant aspects of facing the West East St. Louis River Rats: their special teams.
Sometimes the end of the regular season presents incredibly exciting hockey as both teams are fighting for their post-season lives or hoping to make a reputation for themselves as they head to the next round.
And sometimes it presents some absolute stinkers.
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Game Time: 6:30PM Central
TV/Radio: CSN, TSN (Anglophone), RDS (Francophone), 87.7FM The Game
Les Incompétents: Habs EOTP
Tonight the home schedule for the Hawks’ regular season comes to its thrilling conclusion with an Original Six Matchup (TM) against their perpetually entitled ancient nemesis Montreal Canadiens. And neither really have much to play for at this stage heading into the final weekend of the season.
Box Score
Event Summary
Extra Skater
In all likelihood this game will end up not mattering much in the final standings, nor will it have any effect on the outcome should these two teams end up meeting again about a month from now. However, it did serve to prove that the Hawks at least are capable of skating even one of the leagues top teams with mostly worker bees if they actually move up the ice as a five man unit.
While everyone associated with the Hawks was in a tizzy over Jonathan Toews’s injury and mourning the end of this season figuratively, another somewhat important story slipped through the cracks.
We all noticed, and so did the NBCSN broadcast (you think the CSN one would have?), that on Sunday night Michal Handzus basically didn’t play the second half of the game. He was on the bench, but we didn’t know if he was hurt or simply benched.
We now know that he was benched, though we had to pry that out.
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FACEOFF: 6pm Central
TV/RADIO: WGN for both
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES: On The Forecheck
The Hawks continue their late season homestand with another encounter with a bottom-feeder of the league, this time in their own division with the Nashville Predators. While the Carolina Hurricanes barely roused the Hawks’ attention, the Predators’ recent success against the Hawks should have them more tuned in whatever their current standing.
Like a mangy dog looking for scraps in the alleyway, we’ve finally come around to recording another one of these things. For some reason there was a bit of a clamor for it, even though it seemed like no one listened to them the first go around. In any event, we’re all back for all of your podcasting delights. Or at least Sam and I are in this episode.
We’re also working on a slightly new format, one that’s a little more guest-intensive, because no one wants to listen to either of us yammer on to each other for an hour straight and not be a paid member of Chicago’s bartending service industry. So this episode will feature:
- Chris Block of The Third Man In discussing Rockford politics at length.
- Derek from Fear The Fin on the Sharks’ chances in the West.
- And Chris Gift of St. Louis Game Time (the publication) gracing Sam with 8 minutes of his attention between innings of a Cardinals spring training game.
We’ll work on getting it back up into iTunes and such, but that requires a bit of vetting and we’ve got to start all over again since we’ve moved down the block. But for now, you can download it here.
If you were an optimist and watched the Blackhawks fall to the Avalanche 3-2, you would have seen the Hawks dominate the puck for about 75% of the game, had a couple unlucky bounces end up in their net and ultimately concluded, “Meh, this happens.”
If you were a pessimist, you would’ve lit yourself on fire, jumped into the snow to put the fire out, go back to finish watching the game and then light yourself back on fire to avoid having to watch these teams square off in the first round.
In the end, it turned out to be a pretty flaccid trade deadline for the Hawks. It makes sense. They’re capped out and would have had to get awfully creative to acquire another center, which is what they need. And you can understand if not agree running for the shelter of going with last year’s team that won instead of risking fucking it up by tearing off a piece to get another.
But therein lies the problem, at least for me. The Hawks are basically standing still, and the rest of the West aren’t. The Blues, Avs, Ducks, and Sharks are unquestionably better than they were last year (and it’s not Ryan Miller’s acquisition for the Blues, but the growth of Jaden Schwartz and the unholy performance of Alex Steen among others). The Kings might not be better, though Gaborik helps and they might not be as beat up this spring as they were last.
Well, that didn’t go well.
The U.S. landed with a Fudd-like thud in the Bronze Medal game, getting stonewalled by Tuukka Rask for two periods before coming apart at the seams in the 3rd to leave an ugly looking scoreline of 5-0. I don’t think it was a 5-0 game, and I don’t think the Finns are five goals better than the Yanks. But that’s what the final tally says for today, and the US heads home with no answers, no medals, and no good feelings.
