Usually I do this myself, but this year the whole crew is chiming in so you can hang us all out to dry in April. Let’s kick this pig…
Hawks Point Total and finish in the division
Cieslak – 104 points, 2nd
McClure – 102 points, 2nd (lose on ROW)
Feather – 110 points, 1st
Fearless Leader – 108 points, 1st
Leading Scorer
Cieslak – Kane, 91pts
McClure – Garbage Dick, 90 points
Feather – Kane, EIGHTY-THREE
Fearless Leader – Kane, 89 pts
The last stop on the TCI 2016-2017 World Tour is the Metro (no, not nearly this cool). The Metropolitan Division was home to both last year’s Cup champions and President’s Trophy winners, who are always the truer champions because an 82 game sample size is so much larger than four discrete seven game series. Here is a chart with proprietary, arbitrary, and made-up stats to prove that point by your own logic.
The mythical Flortheast, not quite a winged beast from Lord of the Rings, but an oddly cobbled together division that begins in the swamps of Florida and travels all the way up the ass crack of the continent to Ottawa, which I’m reliably informed is one giant IKEA that a couple hundred thousand people have never quite been able to escape from. Let’s barely learn about some hockey teams.
And so now we move west, young men and women to the hellhole that is known as the Pacific Division. Once the place where Vancouver collected 100 points by merely having a pulse, the division has seen a bit of a makeover since realignment. The Kings, Ducks and Sharks have all taken turns setting the coast on fire while Canada weeps. Where does this year leave us? Follow the jump, suckas.
Holy shit, this actually got done two weeks in a row. And what a riveting 40ish minutes this is, wherein the training camp roster battles and Artemi Panerin’s contract issue are discussed. Find new and exciting ways to fill your ear holes with us after the jump.
With the Hawks’ issues and trajectory pretty clearly mapped out now that the exhibition season two-thirds over, this week the focus will turn external to see what in the hell the rest of the league is doing. And today starts with the Hawks’ most direct competition, the Central Division.
Just a few quick notes on tonight’s what-have-ya, contested mostly by guys who will be running a rink in Medicine Hat or the like in five years.
-I was most interested in watching Forsling and Kempny. Both showed composure on the puck, especially Kempny. It’s hard to get a read on him in particular when he’s still not facing the quality of players he’s going to in a couple weeks, but at least he showed a willingness to skate himself out of trouble and try and find a pass. Unfortunately for him, there were like two forwards on his team who could receive said pass cleanly.
As for Forsling, same thing but man is he small. Even if he’s willing he’s going to get crushed by NHL bodies. This is probably what will send him back to Sweden this year. There are small d-men around the league. Jared Spurgeon comes to mind. Toby Enstrom is another. Spurgeon is quite sturdy though, something of a fire hydrant. Enstrom is just really smart with great hands. Forsling has maybe two or three games to show he has the latter.
We’ve been through the biggest questions the Hawks face coming into this season. Next week we’ll spend tooling around the Central Division and Western Conference to see what the Hawks are up against. But for today, let’s try and clear up whatever we haven’t gotten to for the Hawks.
-The working theory for most of the summer, and until they actually show up in camp we have no reason to think any different, is that Marian Hossa is going to slide down to the third line to form some kind of checking line with Marcus Kruger and GTBD (goofus-to-be-determined). Quenneville mentioned it at the convention, Hossa and Kruger have talked about it at the World Cup. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and all that.
On the surface, this seems like a pretty good idea. Hossa is slowing down, he still has defensive instincts matched by very few, Kruger does as well, and perhaps if they really wanted it to they could free up Toews to not have to keep battling the Kopitars, Seguins, Getzlafs, and whoever else’s of the world. That might free Toews to do more scoring, even if there’s just farmland runoff on his wings.
Well, probably not. But these posts can’t be three words long.
It’s amazing what can happen for a player like Kane when he gets an actual line with which to play. After spending years with the likes of Michal Handzus and Andrew Shaw and Kris Versteeg or centering a line or whatever other jokers and punters the Hawks could drudge up rather than just playing him with Toews, Kane got Brad Richards two years ago and finally a center and other winger in Panarin and Anisimov. It resulted in an Art Ross and Hart Trophy.
And the Hawks needed all of it with Saad and Sharp gone, Hossa falling off, Toews not being able to produce a top line’s production all by himself, and basically no bottom six for most of the season. The problem for the Hawks is that they might find themselves in the same bind again this year. And this time, other teams are not going to be fooled by the names of Toews or Hossa and leave their best out against them instead of Kane’s line.
I only caught the last 17 minutes of whatever the fuck this was, and that’s only because someone here had to. Anyone who watched all of this please consider re-prioritizing your life.
