Hockey

Fractures In Plaster – Hurricanes 5, Hawks 3 – Game #19 Wrap

By Matt McClure 1717

Box Score
Event Log
Natural Stat Trick

Well that looks more in line with what’s to be expected. The Hawks play an obviously better team, keep it close for long enough through a couple of highly skilled plays including a flash from a kid, while the deeper truths about how far this team has to go are ultimately revealed. It’s not that losses are good, except when they are. It’s about the results matching the output, and the Hawks have been mauled for three straight games at times, and only once by a team with any kind of hope whatsoever. To the bullets.

Hockey

Raise Up – Hawks at Hurricanes Game 19 Preview

By Matt McClure 1279

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Game Time:  6:00PM
TV/Radio: NBCSN Chicago, NHL Network, WGN-AM 720
Brass Bonanza: Canes Country

Despite largely avoiding covid-induced difficulties, it was only a matter of time before the cascading effects of the league (and world) being ravaged by the plague hit the West Side Hockey club, and as a result the back half of the straight doubleheader with the Hurricanes has been banged so that they and the Bolts can make up a previously postponed game. It’s more schedule making geniusness from the NHL brain trust, but there’s a fairly good chance that this was the least impactful way to make the games up. But this is another reason to look at winning percentages in the standings and NOT the point totals. Hint hint, the rest of the hockey observing universe. But at least everyone gets to see the Hawks against the Canes in their Reverse Retro Whalers threads this evening.

Hockey

Endless Winter – Hawks Split Series With Jackets

By Matt McClure 1745

Box Scores: Game 15 | Game 16
Game Logs: Game 15 | Game 16
Natural Stat Trick: Game 15 | Game 16

 

Fresh off two OT wins in Dallas that was leading some in the hockey cognoscenti to declare the Hawks AHEAD OF SCHDULE, and FUN, the team got to return home to face the ongoing extravaganza of comedic mediocrity that is the Columbus Blue Jackets. It’s been scenarios like this where Coach Jeremy Boylen’s teams have began to flirt with competence that they immediately shit all over themselves, so in this two game series, maybe it’s a step in the right direction that they only kind of did. Or it could just be a case of two bad teams smashing into one another for two straight games; it could be that too. But at least the Hawks were able to end the back half of the series in an entertaining manner on Saturday night, all usual caveats about 3 on 3 being a complete joke still applying.

Hockey

March Of The Elephants – Jackets vs Hawks Games 15 & 16 Preview

By Matt McClure 1304

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Game Times: 7:00PM (2/11 & 2/13)
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
It’s Anti-Italian Discrimination: The Cannon

Picking up from last week’s episode of The Columbus Blue Jackets’ 2021 Cavalcade of Numbskullery, Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Tortorella and his charges return to West Madison for the second time in three weekends, and are somehow even more hilarious than when these two teams last met up.

Hockey

Waiting Around To Die – Hawks at Stars Games 13 & 14 Preview

By Matt McClure 1614

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Game Times: 2:00PM (2/7), 7:30PM (2/9)
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, ESPN+ (2/7), WGN-AM 720
Sky Point Riley Gale: Defending Big D

This past fall or summer or whatever (time has no meaning anymore), the Stars nearly set the hockey world back 20 years by boring-ing their way to the Cup Final only to be fodder for the eventual and inevitable champion Lightning, with interim coach and NHL lifer Rick Bowness largely keeping Jim Montgomery’s desolate and exhausting defensive system in place which clearly belied Montgomery’s personal life. But that run earned Bowness a Magic Training Camp of his own, and after being the first of now countless covid breakouts across the league, the Stars have somehow turned into a pinball machine of scoring.

Hockey

The Ghost Of Woody Hayes’ Snapping Turtle – Jackets vs Hawks Games 9&10 Preview

By Matt McClure 1472

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Game Times: 7:00PM (1/29), 6:00PM (1/31)
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago (Both), NHL Network, TVA-S, SportsNet (1/29), WGN-AM 720
Ohio Tpke: The Cannon

For about 48 hours last week, Columbus became the center of the hockey universe with The Saga of Pierre-Luc Dubois coming to a head and promptly ending with him being dealt per his request. And once again tonight they’ll be the focal point of the league as their tilt on West Madison with the Hawks is the only game on the NHL docket on a Friday night. Great scheduling from the league once again.