Everything Else

Keith, Bolland, And Other Thursday Notes Except I Never Come Up With Notes That Aren’t In The Headline

By 1904

Couple of notes popping up the past day or so.

-Duncan Keith has dropped out of Team Canada, apparently to keep rehabbing or resting his knee that he had problems with last season. I think this is a good barometer of what these players think of the World Cup, where they sort of like it but they’re not risking much for it. If this were the Olympics I wonder what Keith would have done. And we’ll go more into the World Cup in September, but it feels like a real missed and biffed opportunity on the NHL’s part.

What’s more important locally of course is the condition of Keith. While Keith’s play didn’t really drop off from what we’ve come to expect, and he certainly benefitted from getting to play with Hjalmarsson the most, it was noticeable that he didn’t have quite the jump that he used to.

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Fishing In The Clearance Bin At Some Tragic Casual Corner

By 1640

“…and it’s sort of comical how you think you’ve made a choice that exempts you from an NHL forward when in fact, you’ll be playing the forwards selected by the very people in this room from this pile of stuff.”

-Miranda Priestly, or at least she should have

Let’s get something out of the way right at the top. Jiri Hudler was not a make-or-break player for the Hawks. He was not the difference between them winning a Cup and them not. They would almost certainly need one more forward or two even if he signed here. But he might have been the difference between gaining an automatic playoff spot and fighting for a wild card, which could mean something and which might not.

However, the Hawks not having $2 million to scrape together to get a player pretty desperate for a job tells you the dire straits they are in. While some Hawks fans would love to believe that A) the Hawks didn’t really want Hudler or anyone else and B) this was all part of the grand plan, that is simply foolishness. If the Hawks didn’t want Hudler they’re simply wrong, whatever his flaws. They are short two proven forwards on the top six, and if we put Hossa with Toews to make up that gap then there are two holes on Kruger’s wing on the third line and in the West you have to have a top 9 at minimum. As for a plan, well, the Hawks are making it up with what they have to, thanks to holding on to somethings for longer and more money than they should have. But we’ve been over that and over that.

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Mile High Poaching

By 1399

And no, that’s to referring to cashing out the last of the bowl on a trip to Vail while Tyler and The Bros aren’t paying attention.

Late last night Mike Chambers of the Denver Post reported that Blackhawks assistant coach Kevin Dineen interviewed with Joe Sakic and Avs brass for upwards of three-and-a-half hours, and is a finalist for the job vacated by intractable asswipe Patrick Roy along with Bob Boughner. And potentially losing Dineen behind the Hawks’ bench would be decidedly bad for the organ-I-zation on a lot of fronts.

Everything Else

So Much For All That

By 1486

On one hand, Jimmy Vesey choosing to play for the New York Rangers spares us all from a winter of trying to correct people when saying his name wrong. On the other, the Blackhawks need more good forwards.

You can see my dilemma.

In the end, Vesey did exactly what was rumored the whole time – he wanted to play close to home.

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Tom Petty Wrote Something About This

By 1388

We’ve come to the precipice now. Jimmy Vesey hits the free agent market at midnight tonight. This is what hockey news in August is like, six teams fighting over a college free agent who probably maxes out as a second line winger. If you haven’t yet, check out Ryan Lambert’s piece on him today and what he can and can’t do. Ryan watches more Boston-area college hockey than most, so he knows of where he speaks.

I do find it somewhat funny that the main crux of the Hawks’ pitch to Vesey, because every team is going to offer the same two-year ELC with the same bonus structure, is essentially their biggest weakness. “We’re not deep enough at wing so you can play with Toews because basically we don’t have anyone else to do it.”

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Friday Foofaraw: CI’s Premier League Preview

By 1188

If you’ve followed my Twitter feed for any length of time, you know that I much prefer talking about footy than I do hockey. And I feel like there are a lot of hockey bloggers who feel the same way. Our weekends make sense again, as the English Premier League is back to get us up far too early when we’re already hungover and to make us even more miserable than we were before (except for Man City supporters, except I don’t know any Man City supporters and am pretty sure they don’t exist). So without any further ado, let’s go through all the clubs of the EPL in my own special way to see what’s in store for the next eight months. And this is in no particular order of expected finish.

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So Long, Dummy (Apologies To Desipio)

By 1581

Well, this isn’t good news for the Central Division.

Today Patrick Roy, the anchor that had been holding out, when not outright destroying, at least a decently talented Avalanche squad, resigned as coach as half-GM or whatever it was they labeled him. I’d like to think he lost a power struggle with Joe Sakic, mostly because Sakic might have one clue where St. Patrick didn’t have any.

What this means for this year of course hinges on who the Avs hire and what he does. The Avs aren’t loaded or anything, but this isn’t a completely helpless roster either. It comes with pretty good center depth if Matt Duchene is moved back to center, which he obviously should be. MacKinnon-Dutch-Soderberg-Grigorenko is not the worst start.

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Vesey Derby, Rankings, And Any Other August Mishegas

By 1434

Things move slowly for me in the summer. I’m sure I’m not the only one. So it took me five days to get to friend of the program’s Greg Boysen’s post from last week. To be fair to Greg, he’s taking this with a grain of salt because it comes from HockeyBuzz’s John Jaeckel, so I’ll double the grains of salt. However, as we’ve said repeatedly this summer, Jiri Hudler is a perfect fit and the longer he waits his price only comes down. That is if he is indeed focused on coming to the Hawks.

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Weird Hawks Unfiltered

By 1481

Yesterday, we participated in Puck Daddy’s summer series, having been commissioned to submit the Top 5 Weirdest Moments in franchise history for the Hawks. We as a group felt a responsibility to include the events of last summer in the list, as to ignore it would be fully remiss on our part. The version that ran was heavily edited from what we originally submitted, as Yahoo presumably wanted to avoid any blowback, and felt it was not tonally appropriate for what was supposed to be a “fun” and “lighthearted” piece. But this organization has made it very difficult to be either of those things for the last year, and it would have been dishonest to not reflect that. After the jump is what we had originally intended to run.

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Monday Bits And Bobs

By 1546

We’ve reached the Space Madness portion of the offseason, so you’ll have to excuse us if the posts get even more sparse around here. We’re all waiting for the Hawks to sign some forward still sitting on the shelves, and they’re probably waiting until the 15th when Jimmy Vesey goes free agent and see if they can get him. While I’m not sold, he probably comes cheaper than those who are still waiting and could be effective. I’m sorry if we won’t be doing posts about whatever Hawk put his fucking house up for sale. Because who gives a shit, really?

Anyway, some news today elsewhere: