Everything Else

Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight – November 15th

By Sam Fels 1079 0

First Screen Viewing

Leafs vs. Sharks – 9:30

Pretty big week in San Jose. The Sharks and Preds played an absolute barn-burner on Tuesday that saw the Sharks blow a 3-0 lead and then score two goals in 11 seconds in the 3rd to win it. And now another of the league’s glitterati show up at the door, this time the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Sharks haven’t broken away from the pack yet in the Pacific, but after this tilt there’s a fair amount of trash on the schedule until Christmas. The Leafs have hummed along without Auston Matthews or William Nylander, but don’t want to lose touch with Tampa. Given how Martin Jones is playing, this one again should have goals. If you’ve got the day off tomorrow, stay up for this one.

Second Screen Viewing

Canadiens vs. Flames – 8pm

When the Flames start David Rittich, they’re good. When they start Mike Smith, they’re quite entertaining. The Habs continue to do it, though they did kick off this Western Canada swing by getting a foot in their ass from the Oilers. Still, any chance you get to see Mark Giordano play good teams is worth the time. It’s all out west tonight.

Other Games

Rangers vs. Islanders – 6pm

Devils vs. Flyers – 6pm

Lightning vs. Penguins – 6pm

Panthers vs. Jackets – 6pm

Red Wings vs. Senators – 6:30

Canucks vs. Wild – 7pm

Predators vs. Coyotes – 8pm

Everything Else

The Real NHL Standings

By Sam Fels 2543 0

Most of you know that we basically abhor how the NHL standings work. We’ve never recognized shootouts from our very first incarnation at SCH, and when they went to 3-on-3 OT, we started disregarding those results as well. Because it’s basically just an extended shootout gimmick.

We all know why the NHL keeps the loser point and the sometimes two-, sometimes three-point system. It artificially bunches up teams in the standings so just about everyone (save the Kings) can claim to be “in it.” It also gives everyone what appears to be, at first glance, a record over .500 or close to it, which probably helps a little with ticket sales and interest in those markets.

But as we know, it makes it doubly hard to make up ground when you’re behind, and teams in the playoff spots around Thanksgiving (next week) tend to stay there through April. I believe the last number I saw was 75% of teams in those spots as of next week will make the playoffs. There isn’t a lot of drama, though that won’t stop the NHL from telling you there is.

So every so often, I want to post what the NHL standings would look like if the NHL had a straight Win-Loss-Tie after regulation system, and what it would look like if it had a 3-2-1-0 system–that is three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, one for an overtime or shootout loss, and zero for a regulation loss. Basically I just want to toss overtime and see who’s doing the best work in the 60 minutes.

Let’s get in up to the elbow. Here’s the standings if all overtimes are relegated to just ties, and regulation wins are the only wins. I’ve left the standings as they are to the right, so you can see any differences:

Atlantic Division GP REG WINS L T R PTS W L OL PTS
Tampa Bay Lightning 18 11 5 2 24 12 5 1 25
Toronto Maple Leafs 18 10 6 2 22 12 6 0 24
Boston Bruins 18 9 6 3 21 10 6 2 22
Buffalo Sabres 18 9 6 3 21 10 6 2 22
Montreal Canadiens 18 9 6 3 21 9 6 3 21
Detroit Red Wings 18 6 8 4 16 8 8 2 18
Florida Panthers 15 6 5 4 16 7 5 3 17
Ottawa Senators 18 6 8 4 16 7 8 3 17
Metropolitan Division GP REG WINS L T R PTS W L OL PTS
Columbus Blue Jackets 18 8 6 4 20 10 6 2 22
New York Islanders 17 8 6 3 19 9 6 2 20
New York Rangers 18 8 7 3 19 9 7 2 20
Philadelphia Flyers 18 8 8 2 18 9 8 1 19
Washington Capitals 18 7 7 4 18 8 7 3 19
Carolina Hurricanes 18 6 7 5 17 8 7 3 19
Pittsburgh Penguins 16 5 6 5 15 7 6 3 17
New Jersey Devils 16 7 8 1 15 7 8 1 15
Central Division GP REG WINS L T R PTS W L OL PTS
Nashville Predators 18 11 4 3 25 13 4 1 27
Minnesota Wild 18 9 5 4 22 11 5 2 24
Winnipeg Jets 17 10 5 2 22 11 5 1 23
Colorado Avalanche 18 9 6 3 21 9 6 3 21
Dallas Stars 18 8 7 3 19 9 7 2 20
Chicago Blackhawks 19 4 8 7 15 7 8 4 18
St. Louis Blues 16 6 7 3 15 6 7 3 15
Pacific Division GP REG WINS L T R PTS W L OL PTS
San Jose Sharks 19 7 6 6 20 10 6 3 23
Vancouver Canucks 20 7 8 5 19 10 8 2 22
Calgary Flames 18 8 7 3 19 10 7 1 21
Anaheim Ducks 20 7 9 4 18 8 9 3 19
Edmonton Oilers 18 6 8 4 16 9 8 1 19
Arizona Coyotes 17 7 8 2 16 8 8 1 17
Vegas Golden Knights 19 7 10 2 16 8 10 1 17
Los Angeles Kings 17 5 11 1 11 5 11 1 11

What we can conclude from this is…man, the Kings really, really suck.

So as you can see, the standings don’t really change at all. Some of the gaps open up a little more, but Tampa, Toronto, Nashville basically remain the class of the league.

As for the Hawks, they’d be seven points out of an automatic playoff spot, and four out of a wild card spot, instead of the current five and two.

Elsewhere, the Pacific Division would look even more pathetic, as it would only have two teams above .500. The Atlantic would still be brutal.

Now let’s check it out under the 3-2-1-0 points system:

Atlantic Division GP REG WINS OTW OL L R PTS W L PTS
Tampa Bay Lightning 18 11 1 1 5 36 12 5 25
Toronto Maple Leafs 18 10 2 0 6 34 12 6 24
Boston Bruins 18 9 1 2 6 31 10 6 22
Buffalo Sabres 18 9 1 2 6 31 10 6 22
Montreal Canadiens 18 9 0 3 6 30 9 6 21
Detroit Red Wings 18 6 2 2 8 24 8 8 18
Florida Panthers 15 6 1 3 5 23 7 5 17
Ottawa Senators 18 6 1 3 8 23 7 8 17
Metropolitan Division GP REG WINS OTW OL L R PTS W L PTS
Columbus Blue Jackets 18 8 2 2 6 30 10 6 22
New York Islanders 17 8 1 2 6 28 9 6 20
New York Rangers 18 8 1 2 7 28 9 7 20
Philadelphia Flyers 18 8 1 1 8 27 9 8 19
Washington Capitals 18 7 1 3 7 26 8 7 19
Carolina Hurricanes 18 6 2 3 7 25 8 7 19
Pittsburgh Penguins 16 5 2 3 6 22 7 6 17
New Jersey Devils 16 7 0 1 8 22 7 8 15
Central Division GP REG WINS OTW OL L R PTS W L PTS
Nashville Predators 18 11 2 1 4 38 13 4 27
Minnesota Wild 18 9 2 2 5 33 11 5 24
Winnipeg Jets 17 10 1 1 5 33 11 5 23
Colorado Avalanche 18 9 0 3 6 30 9 6 21
Dallas Stars 18 8 1 2 7 28 9 7 20
Chicago Blackhawks 19 4 3 4 8 22 7 8 18
St. Louis Blues 16 6 0 3 7 21 6 7 15
Pacific Division GP REG WINS OTW OL L R PTS W L PTS
San Jose Sharks 19 7 3 3 6 30 10 6 23
Vancouver Canucks 20 7 3 2 8 29 10 8 22
Calgary Flames 18 8 2 1 7 29 10 7 21
Anaheim Ducks 20 7 1 3 9 26 8 9 19
Edmonton Oilers 18 6 3 1 8 25 9 8 19
Arizona Coyotes 17 7 1 1 8 24 8 8 17
Vegas Golden Knights 19 7 1 1 10 24 8 10 17
Los Angeles Kings 17 5 0 1 11 16 5 11 11

Again, the standings don’t really change much, just the gaps do. The Preds, Lightning, and Leafs remain the aristocracy…and the Kings still overwhelmingly blow (can you tell I’m enjoying writing that?).

Locally, the Hawks would be 11 points out of a automatic playoff spot, and though that gap is large it would be make up-able. They would be six points out of a wild card spot, or two regulation wins, which is one more win than they currently are now.

We’ll revisit this somewhere around the halfway mark when teams have gone to OT more and games tighten up from the Chinese fire drill they’ve been so far.

 

Everything Else

Game #19 – Blues vs. Hawks Preview: At Least We’ve Got You Beat

By Sam Fels 1717 0

 vs. 

RECORDS: Blues 6-6-3   Hawks 6-8-4

PUCK DROP: 7pm

TV: NBCSN

EVERYTHING IS EVIL: St. Louis Gametime

No matter where you are in life, or how things are going, there is sadistic joy in looking around and seeing that someone else has it worse. Or at least it provides perspective. In sports, it’s joy. The Germans didn’t create the word, “schadenfreude” out of thin air, folks.

So while the Hawks have fired a coach, and yet still looked pretty helpless, and the season very well might get away from them before Black Friday, they could be the St. Louis Blues. And they should be intimately familiar with what the Blues are now, because we all are, because this will be the fourth fucking time these two have seen each other in a six-week-old season. Thankfully for everyone, they won’t do this again until April. We have enough trash here, thanks. Don’t constantly need to double it up. We could all use the break.

It was something of an outside shot that the Hawks fired their coach before the Blues did, because Mike Yeo showed up at training camp with a noose instead of a whistle. The players have had it out for him since just about the time he took over for Ken Hitchcock, whom they also hated, so it’s a real positive atmosphere down there. Unlike the Hawks however, the Blues went all out this summer to be something, trading for Ryan O’Reilly and signing Tyler Bozak. It has not worked, at least not yet. Maybe the next coach will be the one to unlock the mystery. Just like the last one was. Or the one before that. Or the one before that. And then there was Davis Payne.

And maybe it’s not going to. As we keep saying, and they keep ignoring, this was a castle built on sand. We’ve been over and over the Jay Gallon saga, which once again appears to be turning into him surrendering the starting role to a backup–in this case Chad Johnson. It doesn’t matter what work you do anywhere on the ice if it results in your goalie waving at pucks going by him like an acid head waving at imaginary, friendly flying rabbits toddling off into the sky. For some reason, even though Johnson has been pretty ok of late, Allen will get the start.

But it goes deeper. This defense isn’t good. It hasn’t been for a while. In a league that gets faster and faster and more aggressive, the Blues have become entrenched with a top four that can’t move and can’t think. Alex OrangeJello has limited mobility. Joel Edmundson has limited IQ. Same with Colton Burpo. Jay Bouwmeester is dead, and when it’s not him it’s Carl Gunnarsson who is essentially the same as Michael Cera’s girlfriend in “Arrested Development.” Way to plant, Carl! The Blues defense is like the worst house cat. It’s like having nothing, and they probably don’t even clean themselves.

So where are the Blues going with their improved forward group if they’re constantly pulling the defense out of the ditch they just backed into in their own zone? Into the basement, where they currently reside (though it should be mentioned they’ve played three less games than the Hawks and when that gets made up, it could see the Hawks with the wooden spoon).

The Blues aren’t going to trade for Justin Faulk or the like to try and correct this. They’re just going to fire another coach and then pray that their players finally start pushing up the mercury on the give-a-shit meter. They haven’t in three years but hope springs eternal! Anyway, that’s the mess that arrives at the United Center tonight.

As for the Hawks, the big story is that Gustav Forsling will make his season-debut tonight. And when that’s your story, you know there are issues. At least it will be in place of Jan Rutta, who is also in plant-area as far as usefulness. The Hawks are screaming for more mobility and spice on their blue line, and this will be Forsling third (and last) chance to grab the NHL brass ring. Now he’s got a coach who believes in him and worked with him extensively last season. It’s now or never, and he should get bum-slaying opportunities at home and on the third-pairing with whatever member of the Eat Arby’s Trio’s number is drawn (it’s Brandon Manning). As the other two puck-movers are barking at each other in the second pairing, this could be welcome.

Other than that, Alexandre Fortin is going to sit so Eddie O can wax lyrical about Andreas Martinsen and John Hayden some more, before turning on Hayden for not shooting from outside the circles. Whatever. Corey Crawford is your starter.

If the Hawks are going to pull out of this, it kind of has to be now. The Blues suck, the Kings are way worse, and you can show me the Wild’s point totals all you like but I just won’t buy it. There’s a three-game road trip either side of Thanksgiving that’s not as daunting as it looks on first glance, even with the expected thwacking by the Lightning. But then it gets real hard, real quick. Points are needed now or the Hawks could very well be buried by Christmas.

No better way to get started than against this lot.

 

Game #19 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #19 – Blues vs. Hawks Spotlight: Alex Pietrangelo And The Rottenness In Denmark

By Sam Fels 1763 0

Yes, that’s probably an insult to Denmark to compare it to St. Louis. We hope the Danes forgive us. We love Christian Eriksen. Does that help?

Alex Pietrangelo is something of a yearly post for us. While the Blues have touted and used him as a #1 d-man for a good few years now, we aren’t the only ones who have gone to lengths to show that he’s just not. Is he a good d-man? Yes, unquestionably. If he were a #2 or #3 on a team, that team would almost certainly be really good. At least on the blue line it would be.

But as we’ve pointed out, probably far too much for anyone who still pretends to be of use to society. Pietrangelo just doesn’t push the play that much against the toughest competition. We started when he somehow conned his way onto Team Canada in ’14 (with Bouwmeester! And he played ahead of Subban! Assuredly not because Subban is black!) He’s not prime Keith. He’s not Doughty. He’s not Karlsson. He’s not even Kris Letang. Pietrangelo’s metrics are fine. They’re usually right in line with the team’s, though the Blues’ numbers were always skewed by Ken Hitchock’s ultra-defensive system that didn’t give up much but sure didn’t create much either.

The only time in the past six season that Pietrangelo has exceeded his team’s possession rate by anything significant is this year, where he’s +2.3. That’s going really well for the Blues too, who are still staring up at the Hawks.

Pietrangelo is a good skater, but not great, and can get beat by the faster forwards in the league. And he can get caught with the puck, too. That seems to be a problem this year, where the Blues can’t get out of their zone if there was a carbon monoxide leak. Or maybe there is and that’s the problem. Hard to tell, given the way the whole city smells. Yes, we know carbon monoxide doesn’t smell, just fucking go with us you heathen!

But let’s shelve that discussion for another time. Hockey loves its intangibles. No sport loves to mention what goes on “in the room” more. There is some mystical quality to where the players get dressed, and that has kept some truly woeful hockey players in a job for longer than you’d believe because it was thought they added to this. “The Room” in hockey is somehow weirder than the one with Tommy Wiseau, and maybe it’ll be the subject of its own “Disaster Artist” one day (probably starring David Backes), As if you couldn’t just pack a dressing room full of really good players who win all the time and they wouldn’t just figure it out when they’re not on the ice to get along. We present the 2015 Chicago Blackhawks as evidence.

And it can’t be any clearer that there is something amiss with the Blues both on and off the ice. We can pinpoint the problems on it. The ones off it are a little tougher.

The Blues are about to turf their second coach in less than three seasons. A loss tonight could be the final straw in the case against Mike Yeo. So it’s fair to ask how many coaches the Blues are going to cycle through before they conclude that it’s the group of players who are in someway unreachable.

Pietrangelo is the captain. Along with Vladimir Tarasenko and Alex Steen, that’s pretty much the leadership group in St. Louis, as they’ve been around the longest. While Tarasenko’s performances have never dropped, he clearly had a hand in throwing Hitchcock overboard (quite the feat). But if Pietrangelo is wearing the “C”, the questions have to stop with him.

While the Blues were indisputably stupid under the stewardship of David Backes, you couldn’t accuse them of floating and giving up and trying to undermine their coach. Their effort was in all the wrong directions and tactics, but it was there. This will be the second time they’ve downed tools under Pietrangelo. This becomes a theme at some point soon.

Compare that to the local side, where everyone knew that Joel Quenneville was minutes away from the axe from training camp. And yet you never got the impression the Hawks had quit on him. The front office did last year, but the players didn’t, at least for the most part.

Maybe the silly arrangement of having Yeo right there to succeed Hitchcock jaded the players. They could have soured on Yeo before he even took the job, knowing all the time he was going to take the job. Maybe someone completely new juices everything (though the rumors have it that it’ll just be Craig Berube sliding over from assistant, which is how we got here in the first place). Perhaps the Blues want a completely new voice.

Methinks the players are the thing….

 

Game #19 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #19 – Blues vs. Hawks Q&A: Once More Unto The Ugliest Breach, Dear Friends

By Sam Fels 1672 0

Brad Lee runs a gameday program, like we used to but then we either grew up or lost the light in our eyes, called St. Louis Gametime. It’s like ours if all the people who wrote ours huffed paint for lunch. Follow him on Twitter @GTBradLee.

So when are the Blues hiring Quenneville? Or can you not go down that road again?
Blues fans decided five seconds after hearing he had been fired that he was a perfect match for the Blues. Granted, it’s a wet dream at this point. Coach Connor McDavid can’t teach the Oilers how to play defense or put kid gloves on dealing with Jake Allen. Both sound like pains in the ass. The dealbreaker might be how much power the Stache wants. GM Doug Armstrong is in the first year of his new contract. A new coach would get no power. Period. And make no mistake, the Blues are one bad loss away from a coaching change…before Craig Berube is promoted from associate coach. Of course I prefer the future HoFer.
The Blues are generating barely any chances at even-strength. Why?
Because the Blues struggle to get the puck out of their own end. Because the Blues defense makes shitty exit passes out of the zone. Because the Blues dump the puck in way too much. Because only one forward line wants to play well at a time. Because Ryan O’Reilly can only do so much. Because the hockey gods hate us. Because it’s a .500 team and that’s how .500 teams play.
If it’s not firing the coach, what’s the big shakeup that clearly is coming? Or is there not one coming?
Yeo is a dead man walking. The Blues went 4-3-0 on a seven-game homestand that just ended. At one point they won three of four and Yeo actually said on the television that it didn’t feel like they had won that often. On Tuesday after practice, Yeo tried to tell the media that Jay Bouwmeester is working his way back to previous playing levels. It’s a lie. Potential shakeups: Yeo gone. Bouwmeester on long term IR. Jake Allen sent packing. Possible captaincy change. Probably only two of those are likely.
The Blues and Hawks fighting it out to stay out of the basement of the division. Honestly, doesn’t this feel like where we belong?
As the late Dennis Green would say, they are who we thought they were. And we let them off the hook. On paper, the Blues are supposed to be better than this. They aren’t. Too many core guys look exactly how they did when they got Hitchcock fired. Pushing the boss overboard has gotten easy. Common. Accepted. And it sucks. Is Yeo a good coach? Hell no. He lost the room early. Ultimately that’s his fault. But the reality is he had a partial season, a full season and this one so far. And the players couldn’t figure out a way to play hard for him in that short timespan. That’s rotten. The roots of the core of this team might be rotten. And I don’t know how they fix it without a blowtorch. As for the Hawks, long-term contracts are fun. It spreads the misery out over several years. Most expensive Blues players aren’t signed past 2020.

 

Game #19 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #19 – Blues vs. Hawks Douchebag Du Jour: Jabe O’Meester And Sunk Cost

By Sam Fels 1761 0

There is a modicum of respect you have to pay a veteran, no matter what kind of shit-heep he’s turned into. So when a player like Jay Bouwmeester ends up a healthy scratch, as he’s done a couple times this season, the coach and his teammates have to read from the script from the box marked, “Veteran Scratched Act Sad.” And you hear about how it’s such a shame and we really wish it didn’t have to be like this but he’ll work harder and come out of it better.

Except he won’t. Jabe O’Meester is 35. This is what he is, and what this is sucks. It’s sucked for years. He’s had multiple surgeries and the odometer is about to burst. He makes the Blues worse when he’s out there.

And yet the idea of sunk cost isn’t something that’s come to the NHL. You see it Edmonton with Milan Lucic. Or Calgary with Mike Smith. Hell, you could throw Brent Seabrook on this list, except the Hawks don’t have better options. This list could go on for a while.

The Blues probably have six better d-men than Bouwmeester. Kids like Vince Dunn and Jordan Schmaltz need to play if for no other reason so the Blues can see what they have. Carl Gunnarsson is at least more stable than J-Bow, and has been a better partner for Alex OrangeJello anyway.

The Blues have spent that money on Bouwmeester. It’s gone. They’re not getting it back. So why keep trying to justify it by crowbarring him into the lineup every night? Your fans know he blows. His teammates, though they’ll never say it, know it as well.

Is it the most glorious end to a fine career? No, it isn’t. But not everyone gets that, and certainly no one is owed that. It’s not like Bouwmeester is a Blues legend or anything. Getting paid $5M to watch hockey isn’t the worst job in the world. The Blues still have hopes to make something of this season. Which means putting their best players out there. That’s not Bouwmeester. Time they admit that, no matter what his bank balance is.

Hockey is defined on the margins. A couple of Bouwmeester shifts could honestly be the difference. Might it have been last year when the Blues missed out on a playoff spot by a point? You’d think they’d learn, but we know how St. Louis and learning go together.

 

Game #19 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight – November 13th

By Sam Fels 1124 0

First Screen Viewing

Predators vs. Sharks – 9:30

Their first game was a doozy, as the Sharks scored three times in the 3rd to get a comeback win. This is what most people expect the West Final to be, so these are occasions. The Sharks recently did get their dick kicked in by the Blues recovered to beat the Flames at home on Sunday. The Preds are yet to lose on the road this season, and those of us who would like them to prove to be a fraud are getting more and more nervous. A treat for the insomnia set.

Second Screen Viewing

Canadiens vs. Oilers – 8pm

The Habs remain the surprise of the league, and it appears an old dog coach in Claude Julien has figured out to get his quick forwards into space. Max Domi won’t shoot 25% forever, at least we hope the little turd doesn’t, but they’re playing up-tempo and are overwhelming some teams. The Oilers can at least partly match the speed, so your hopes for 6-5 aren’t dead.

Other Games

Penguins vs. Devils – 6pm

Canucks vs. Islanders – 6pm

Panthers vs. Flyers – 6pm

Lightning vs. Sabres – 6:30

Coyotes vs. Red Wings – 6:30

Capitals vs. Wild – 7pm

Maple Leafs vs. Kings – 9:30

Everything Else

Game #18 – Hawks 2, Hurricanes 2 (Canes win ping pong tourney): Can’t Get Right

By Sam Fels 1968 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

Well, changing coaches hasn’t worked yet. Jumbling around the lines didn’t really either. Though Jeremy Colliton has his first point, a return of one out of six probably isn’t what management had in mind. Or maybe it was and they didn’t tell us?

Whatever it was, tonight was nothing we didn’t know. The roster is short, and there a couple veterans not carrying their weight. This team was probably calibrated on the hope that they would. I don’t know why you’d calibrate it that way, but here we are. At least I don’t have another explanation. If you do, feel free to share.

All right, let’s clean this up and get on with our lives.

The Two Obs

-Not sure where to begin, so I’ll unfairly begin with Duncan Keith again. While his glaring gaffe (alliteration, people) took place on the penalty kill, so I should probably just dismiss it as him getting the inevitable goal against out of the way early so the Hawks could get back to even-strength.

At some point this season, if Jeremy Colliton accomplishes nothing else this season but convince Duncan Keith that he’s no longer DUNCAN KEITH, I’ll call it a success. We went over this on Saturday. Duncan Keith was paired with Henri Jokharju to take that aspect of his game off his plate. It was meant to streamline his game, and keep him more efficient with what he can do. He didn’t listen. Maybe he can’t fight it, maybe it’s been too long.

Pairing him with Seabrook was only going to enforce that feeling, I guess. So there he was, chasing Andrei Svechnikov outside the circles, pretty well contained out there. But Keith can’t get there anymore. And Svechnikov, a budding monster, is going to walk him every time. He did it later in the game as well, So did Aho. But this is the one the Hawks paid for. Svechnikov has a clear path to the net, forcing Seabrook into basically Sophie’s choice. He could maybe do a little more than just amble over there while leaving a passing lane to Michael Ferland, but here were no good options.

Someone get Keith in front of a video screen with nothing but how Ryan Suter plays these days. It’s a super-efficient game, where Suter lets the game come to him and picks his spots when to get outside the normal parameters. Keith is still chasing the game and trying to bend it to his will, He can’t do it anymore. And the Hawks keep paying for it.

-That goal was off a Henri Jokiharju penalty where he braced for a hit at the expense of getting the puck. These are the kinds of mistakes we would normally live with, but now is about the time they have to stop. Hey, The HarJu isn’t going to survive too many hits in the NHL with the puck. But his hands are quick enough to move the puck along before getting hit. Chalk it up to the learning curve.

-Which will bring us to Nick Schmaltz. We generally like Schmaltz around here. Fine player. Clear problems. The refusing to shoot is getting really annoying. And Eddie correctly lit him up for ducking out of a puck battle/hit with Justin Faulk (though Schmaltz did cause a turnover a second later, but still).

And that kind of thing keeps happening. And it’s a tough sell to your fanbase and everyone else when you’re saying you basically did nothing in the offseason to keep your powder dry in big part to re-sign Schmaltz. Because he keeps looking like a second-line player, whether that’s wing or center. You don’t build around second-line players. I don’t want to know what kind of deals Stan turned down that included Schmaltz.

Schmaltz still has 60 games to turn it around and look like a real piece. But it’s year three now, you kind of know where he is. Are you tossing $6 million at this? Or are you hoping he keeps doing shit like this and we’ll have to agree to a bridge deal? And shoot the fucking thing already.

-Brandon Davidson and Jan Rutta got themselves in a tangle when the Canes were on a change and there was literally no forechecker in the zone and they couldn’t manage to pass between each other in the 2nd period. I can’t really sum the third pairing up any better than that.

-Other than the penalty, Goose and The HarJu weren’t a complete disaster, to the tune of a 68% and 64% share on the night.

-It’s nice that the Hawks fourth-line was so effective. But to review, when your fourth line is your most effective, that’s a problem.

Ok, that’s enough. It’s a point. Maybe it’ll be better to snap it against the Blues. Somehow, I doubt it.

Onwards…