Private dismay on public display. Thank you as always.
Well, The Beloved embarassed themselves yet again for seemingly the millionth time in our collective lifetime today, and to what end no one is clear on. Also, wither Kirby Dach?
Happy Thanksgiving.
Apologies for waiting two days to get a wrap up here, but all things considered, this was a relatively uneventful week with only two games, and only minimal off-ice unpleasantness. Even on top of that, the Hawks actually won both of those games, and even one in regulation- it truly us a wonderous new frontier around here.
11/9 – Hawks 2, Penguins 2 (Hawks Win “Best Hog” At The Hog Shit Snarfing Contest)
Last Tuesday Marc-Andre Fleury was given another chance to face his former mates, after a disastrous turn of affairs a couple weeks ago in Pittsburgh wherein he was yanked in the first period and melted down in the tunnel. Even if Sid and Geno still weren’t playing the Penguins threw everything they had at the Hawks in the third period after falling behind 2-0 in the second on the first goals with the team from both Jhujar Khaira on a vintage Toews power move around the net, and Amy’s oldest son Seth nicely picking a corner through traffic at the top of the right circle. Derek King tried to get this group to collapse and sit on a lead in the third, and he was probably quickly shown that this team is not constructed to do that from a personnel standpoint at forward, even if the likes of Jones, Jake McCabe, and Calvin deHaan have been asked to trap at previous stops in their career. All it led to was the Penguins out-attempting the Hawks THIRTY THREE TO SIX in the final period before escaping with a point and getting things to the skills competition. If nothing else though, this looks like it would be a fun rollercoaster:
11/12 – Hawks 2, Coyotes 1
Look, the less said about this one, the better off the hockey world at large is going to be. This game was banished to an online-only audience, and it lived up to every bit of that billing between a team that is still playing like it’s half-concussed and its foot fell asleep from sitting on the toilet too long and another that is basically the restaurant that Ray Liotta convinces Paulie to buy and then hollow out and burn down in the beginning of Goodfellas. And the actual in game production was right in line with the quality of play. It’s clear ESPN doesn’t give a fuck about hockey (and why would they), because they’re just transposing all of their usual production methods and it’s not working. First off, the mix of the sound is unbearable. It’s been like this for Sunday night baseball for a while too, which is why the Ohtani bomb in April against the Sox on SNB sounded like a firecracker – things are way too tinny and hollow sounding, nothing sounds like it has any weight to it as far as ambient hockey sounds are concerned. Secondly, the brightness and contrast on their cameras is cranked way the fuck up, presumably because they’re used to filming things on primarily green and brown surfaces. But on a solid white backdrop, all it does is blind people and completely wash out many of the lines on the rink, especially the tops of the circles. They were also employing a camera “method” where when they went to a secondary camera behind the end boards for something like a defenseman wheeling around to make a breakout pass, when they went BACK to the main sideline camera, it was seemingly back in time a half-second to where the viewer saw the pass occur again from the side view. It’s a very tweak-inducing feeling, particularly when you’re watching these two bags of wet dirt collide into one another (and knock Kirby Dach’s teeth out) for an hour. Given that it’s ESPN and they don’t have to change anything to keep cashing checks, don’t expect any of these things to change any time soon. But at least Dylan Strome scored.
Up next is Pacific Northwest swing on this year’s version of the Circus Trip even though there’s no circus anymore. The Hawks will have winnable games in Seattle and Vancouver sandwiched around an inevitable torching by McJesus and Leon in Edmonton in the Duncan Keith Revenge Game (or something). Enjoy staying up late.
With a load of iron ore and twenty six thousand tons more.
At last the long national nightmare is over. Coach Kelvin Gemstone/Vinny Del Colliton/Jeremy Bevington/Jeremy Trestman/Alpo Colliton/Jeremy Prinze, Jr./Cool Youth Pastor and his throbbing brain filled with defensive schemes so elaborate he forgets to even bother thinking about in game deployment are gone. It was about 18 months overdue, but the important thing is that it’s over, and with all of the other shit that happened two weeks ago in a cleansing fire, there’s actually finally a new prism to view this team through rather than utter nihilism. Interim GM Kyle Davidson was as forthcoming as anyone with an interim label could possibly be in his remarks after Colliton’s dismissal, saying that the message simply wasn’t getting through and correctable things weren’t being corrected, both of which are tremendous understatements but accurate nonetheless. Basically it only took him a week and a half of watching this disorganized and disinterested horse shit to see enough to get Stan’s golden child the hell up out of here and bring in Pigs bench boss Derek King.
King’s coaching resume is limited but had a pretty lengthy NHL career in the mid 80s and 90s (plenty will remember him being not a bum on Sega), but he at least had enough common damn sense to understand to tell these guys to just go out and play and not worry about adhering to some galaxy brained man-on-man high pressure SYSTEM. It’s well worn territory here, but the dirty secret in hockey is that it’s not exactly like they need to run elaborate blitz packages and disguise coverages on defenses in hockey. Puck side defenseman pursues and goes into the corner, weak side stays in front of the net, wingers on points, help if it comes up the wall, and ass on the boards at the hash for a breakout pass. This is what everyone who’s played hockey for any length of time just instinctively knows in their bone marrow and is what is just a default even when at an 11:45 on a Tuesday night rat hockey. Which is why having the D chase and stay with their checks everywhere in the zone was so counter-intuitive and the results clearly bore that out. Furthermore, in his post game comments, King remarked that he wanted to prioritize matching up Carpenter against Sissons on Sunday, and also had Erik Gustafsson barely play at all. So while he might end up ultimately proving himself A Moron, he’s at least got a baseline of common hockey sense that seemed to so elude his handsome predecessor, and all of the sudden the Hawks find themselves with actual winnable games on the docket.
11/9 vs Pittsburgh
Game Time – 7:30PM CST
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, TVA-S, WGN-AM 720
Ben Roethlisberger Retire Bitch – Pensburgh
So after missing the first 7 games of the season with a wrist injury, Sidney Crosby came back for one game against the POWERHOUSE New Jersey Devils, was a -3 with no points, and promptly returned to Sick Bay with a mildly symptomatic case of Covid. With him being out and Evgeni Malkin out for a few more months still, things have gone about as well as could be expected with this last-gasp Penguins group, which is to say it’s barely .500-ish with a 4-3-3 record in 10 games, which is good for 11 points and the ass-end of the Metro division. When Danton Heinen is leading the team in goals and points at any juncture of a season, it’s probably safe to say that things aren’t particularly optimal. Most recently the Pens to the first place Wild (huh?) to a shootout on the road and ultimately ended up losing the Hog Shit Snarfing Contest, but Mike Sullivan still has the team playing relatively hard even if they’re pretty outgunned most nights without their franchise pillars. Tristan Jarry has at least been pulling his weight in a starter’s workload even after every Yinzer wanted to toss him into a variety of rivers last spring, with a .945 save percentage 5v5 and .925 overall. This is a team that has to play with structure and discipline because it can’t get away with skill right now, and one game with Derek King isn’t magically going to have the Hawks be able to counter that, even if on paper the Hawks’ current lineup does have more spice than the Penguins right now.
11/12 vs Arizona
Game Time – 7:30PM CST
TV/Radio – ESPN+, Hulu, WGN-AM 720
Kyrsten Sinema Is A Goblin: Five For Howling
The Coyotes are the only team in the league worse than the Hawks right now, and really it could be argued that they shouldn’t even count because not only are they willfully trying to be bad on the ice, but the entire franchise is basically a money laundering front/shell corporation for the league right now, and they’re going to get evicted out of their building at the end of the season anyway. It’s tough to say whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that this game is an online exclusive- on one hand if this was a game ESPN/Hulu earmarked as being a selling point for the platform and ad dollars, they were catastrophically mistaken. On the other hand, it’s almost a public service that no one can accidentally find their way to this imminent disaster, one would have to be a true sicko to go out of their way to find and watch this game. But it will at least be the first time it’s been Hawks red vs white Kachina in like 15 years.
We’re still dealing with it, but at least we cover some actual gameplay this time around. Thank you again.
There is literally nowhere for this team to go but up after the worst week in this franchise’s long history of bad weeks, both on and off the ice. The Hawks extended their own streak in futility to start the season, came away with one point out of a possible six, and looked like disinterested shit while doing so. It all pales in comparison to the shockwaves still echoing across the league today for their arguable criminal negligence 11 years ago, but either way the games on the schedule still have to be played. Not that this standard is going to be adhered to, at this time in 2018 when the now disgraced Joel Quenneville was launched and the team was supposed to be competitive (as this one was to be), he was fired after 15 points in 15 games. With two points in 9 games so far, it is now not possible for Jeremy Trestman to even meet that meager threshold, but given the circumstances around the team, it remains unlikely he’ll be fired any time soon. Even at that point, the next choice on the bench to step in is Marc Crawford, who was the first head coach Quenneville served under, and was suspended himself for physical abuse of players. Around every every corner there seems to be a new and fresh pile of shit to step in, but perhaps most impressive is that in just a month, the Hawks have seemingly managed to absolutely crush the spirit of one of the league’s smiling faces for a generation in Marc-Andre Fleury, while basically playing themselves into a wasted season in the blink of an eye. If the Hawks new GM Kyle something or other has any humanity, he’ll get Flower the fuck out of here at the earliest possible convenience.
11/1 – vs Ottawa
Game Time – 7:00PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, SportsNet1, WGN-720
Lance And Blake (One Son) – Silver Seven Sens
Perhaps the Hawks’ best chance to grab a victory comes tonight against the visiting Senators, though that’s not to say that it’s going to be in any way easy, as absolutely nothing about this team can be taken as a given at this point. The Sens are coming off a victory in Dallas, having last played on Friday, so they got to spend their Halloween here in the city. That marked the Senators first road win and second against the Stars so far this season, and to this point they’ve been fairly competitive. They’re obviously an incredibly young team that’s still figuring things out with all of the hallmarks – good power play, bad on the road, and needing excellent goaltending to prop it all up, which they’ve gotten from Matt Murray and Filip Gustavsson, but former Hawk legend Anton Forsberg has been another story. So far the younger of the Garbage Tkachuk Sons has yet to hit his stride after missing camp and the first three games of the year with his contract dispute, but he’ll likely round into form soon. Likewise Tim Stutzle has been slow out of the gates after showing plenty of flash in last year’s abbreviated campaign. The Senators have gotten contrtibutions elsewhere up front for the time being in Drake Batherson and Josh Norris, but they’ll need their marquee guys to step it up, along with getting the play driven from the back end by Thomas Chabot in order to hang around for longer than just a month before their inevitable descent into the oblivion that is Kanata.
11/3 – vs Carolina
Game Time – 7:30PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago+, TVA-S, WGN-AM 720
Larry Johnson’s Grandmama – Canes Country
The Hurricanes are now 8-0-0, with all eight wins coming in regulation. They will also have had two full days off coming into Wednesday night’s game, having played most recently on Sunday afternoon. This probably goes just about as well at Club 1901 as it did in Raleigh.
11/5 – at Winnipeg
Game Time – 7:00PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
Leave Them At “The Airport” – Arctic Ice Hockey, Jets Nation
So Kevin Chevyldayoff gets to keep his job despite the fact he was in the meeting where all of Hawks upper management effectively conspired to keep Kyle Beach’s claims swept under the rug because he was the only person who placed himself there, but still didn’t manage to do anything about it? This is why hockey culture is perversely fucked and needs to be burnt to the ground for any real improvements to be made. Anyway, on the ice, the Jets are the same mess they’ve been for what feels like 12 years now. The forward group is extremely solid top to bottom even if Blake Wheeler is somehow like 58 years old now, the blue line is a complete gas can in its own end, and Connor Hellebuyck needs to be in top form for them to have a chance. To this point he hasn’t been, with an .899 overall, but that’s been absolutely obliterated by the Jets’ horse shit PK, which is only operating at 63% right now, good for 31st in the league. Of the 24 goals Hellebuyck has allowed, a staggering ELEVEN have come on the power play, and his even strength save percentage is a fully respectable and sustainable (for him) .935. Good thing for them that Paul Maurice teams are known for staying out of the box.
11/7 – vs Nashville
Game Time – 6:00PM CST
TV/Radio –NBC Sports Chicago, SportsNet1, WGN-AM 720
It’s Just Fucking Everywhere Isn’t It? – On The Forecheck
Every year it seems like it might finally be the one where Nashville finally has the bottom fall out of it, and every year they seem to still make the playoffs by the hair on their ass. Of course, they won’t get to play a full 12% of their games against this stupid ass Hawks team like they did last year and took 15 of 16 possible points. Nearly 25% of their points came from games against the Hawks last year, and it’s not exactly like John Hynes has a throbbing brain in that big bald head of his. It literally just takes a single counter-measure to make Vinny Del Colliton look like a completely clueless asshole. Roman Josi is once again leading this team in scoring with 9 points in 8 games from the back end because that’s how this whole thing has to work with Filip Forsberg the only real threat offensively because Ryan Johansen is too busy chugging root beers. Juuse Saros has been solid at evens with a .931, but only has a .917 overall thanks to early season PK issues in Nashville as well, though clearly not to the extent of the Jets. He’ll have to be excellent for them to even stay on the fringes of the wild card situation even with as shitty as the Pacific is, if only because there’s simply almost no firepower up front.
It seems impossible to have to turn to on-ice concerns after what came to light yesterday, but that’s seemingly the case. For those looking for more reaction to what the hell is even going on anymore with all of this, Sam obviously has it covered, and this might be the rare instance where listening to the podcast might actually be beneficial. In any event, yesterday coupled with the fact that with literally every second that ticks off the clock as the game starts tonight, the Hawks will be extending an NHL record for futility to start the season, this could very well be the nadir of the franchise, and if it’s not, it’s certainly a low point of the past 40 years.
The fallout from yesterday’s revelations is far from over and is wide spanning, as there are bound to be consequences in Winnipeg, Sunrise, and potentially at the NHLPA. And on the ice the Hawks will be missing more players to covid protocols (including two lettered captains who were on this team when all of this happened) while they face far more skilled opponents. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
10/27 vs Toronto
Game Time – 6:30PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, SportsNet 1, WGN-AM 720
God I’m So Tired – PPP
As if to drive home the point of just how endemic sexual assault is in the culture of hockey, a day after these horrors are brought to light, the Leafs come to town, whose own current coach and GM are each separately involved in sordid, disgusting, and horrifying tales of sexual assault from their past. On the ice, the Leafs are off to a 2-4-1 start, which of course is causing all of THE SIX to rend their garments and self-immolate given the expectations of what this team is supposed to do after the longest cup drought evere and another flameout, but the fact remains that this forward corps is still one of the most talented in the league even if it’s getting by the PDO gods right now, Mitch Marner in particular. This defense still likely isn’t deep enough and entrusting Cup aspirations to Jack Campbell is undoubtedly a fool’s errand, but for late October, there should be more than enough here to help right the ship for them tonight.
10/27 at Carolina
Game Time – 6:00PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
Mop & Slop – Canes Country
The Hurricanes have started the season 5-0-0 with all five wins coming in regulation, and are second in the league with a +14 goal differential, and once again are solidly in control of the shot attempts ledger with a 52.24% share 5v5, good for 10th in the league. They are getting balanced scoring up and down the lineup, with 5 players at a point-per or better in the early going, led by Andrei Svechnikov at 9 points and Sebastian Aho not far behind with 9. Freddy Andersen has played all 5 games and has a .946 overall save percentage, .950 at evens. And no one gives a shit. This has all happened before, for a couple years now, and it has only translated into a couple of playoff round wins. It seems fitting that Andersen landed here, as this publication has always branded him “Just Good Enough To Break Your Heart”, and that’s what this entire Canes team has been for the past handful of years. None of this matters unless it translates to silver in the spring, and at a certain point the team has to know that. Tony DeAngelo is a racist piece of shit.
10/30 at St. Louis
Game Time (not that one) – 7:00PM CDT
TV/Radio – NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
Oh God Dammit – SLGT
The Blues are also currently 5-0-0 with all five wins coming in regulation and have a +14 goal differential, however they are not as territorially sound as the Canes, being underwater with a 49 share, good for 18th in the league so far. They’ve feasted a little bit on the dog food (GET IT) that is the Kings (twice) and the Coyotes, but they’ve looked sound in doing so, but also have wins against the Knights and Avs too, two teams that the Bene Gesserit prophecy has foretold of meeting in the West finals for a couple years running now. Old friend Brandon Saad is currently in covid protocol, but if indeed literally everyone in the league other than Tyler Bertuzzi is vaccinated, he’ll likely be available for this game. David Perron has six goals to lead the Blues so far, which undoubtedly pleases Allan Walsh, and thusly pleases everyone, because Allan Walsh is a very normal person that everyone likes and roots for, and who has never ever done anything remotely weird.
We tried. Obvious content warnings here. Thank you for listening.
It’s all a problem. Please listen.
