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Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: Patrick Kane or The Barometer?

By Sam Fels 2009 0

It was kind of a weird season for Patrick Kane. And not all of it was self-inflicted. But perhaps no player symbolizes what went wrong for the Hawks, and their reaction to it, better than him. Let’s deep dive.

Patrick Kane

27 goals, 49 assists, 76 points, -20, 32 PIM

51.6 CF%, -1.1 CF% Rel, 48.0 xGF%, -2.36 xGF% rel

There are a couple thing to know about Kane before you get into how this season fit. While his previous two MVP-level seasons are the ones that get the most attention, Kane had actually been a point-per-game player for five straight seasons before this one. One was the season-in-a-can of 2013, and the next two were ended prematurely due to injury where he only played 69 and 61 games. So he could have had eye-popping numbers in five seasons instead of the two he did simply due to different fates. So to complain he’d fallen off that a bit this seasons would seem the most petty of tactics, but it’s the standard he set.

Second, it’s important to note that Kane is one of those players that the metrics don’t mean a ton to. He’s never been a great possession player, and has always lagged behind the team rates for the past six years. In fact, his relative marks above are the best he’s had in the past four seasons. Some of that is playing with exclusively offensive players like Panarin or basically glorified obelisks like Artem Anisimov or players needed heavy sheltering like Brad Richards or Michal Handzus (the horror…the horror…) or Andrew Shaw. The roster wonkiness has always seemed to affect Kane most or thereabouts, but it doesn’t matter because he’s going to score anyway.

So why the dip in points this year? Quite simply, luck and linemates. Kane’s personal SH% dropped to 9.5% this year from 11.6% last year and 16% the year before that. Even if 16% is the outlier leading to a 46-goals season we’re probably not going to see again, 9% is low enough below his career 12% mark that you know it’s crap luck. Even that career mark would have seen him score 34 goals this year instead of 27. The team’s overall shooting-percentage when Kane was on the ice dipped from 9.5 to 7.7. That might not sound like a lot but it’s a difference of 12 goals over the season at evens just for Kane’s time on the ice.

And we can boil it down to luck, mostly, because he was getting the same chances as he had the previous seasons. Kane actually had more attempts at evens per 60 minutes this year than he had in five seasons. Some of that could be a product of playing with the pass-happy Schmaltz. Kane got more shots on net than he had in five seasons as well. His individual expected goals was higher than it was the previous two seasons, though not as high as ’15 or ’14. Again, this is where we can’t measure if he somehow lost something off his shot or accuracy, but it’s a good sign he was getting the chances we’re accustomed to seeing.

It would be easy to point to the power play as a points-dipper (phrasing?), but Kane actually only had one less point on the power play than he did last year, though obviously nowhere near the 37 power play points he piled up in his Hart year. But this is where the discussion turns. Because most will tell you the Hawks power play struggles due to it standing around and waiting for Kane to do something. Our argument this  year is Kane is just as much of a problem. The puck dies when it gets to him. It’s isolation basketball, and there’s little temptation for anyone to do anything when that consistently happens. It’s not near the full explanation for why the power play in a constant state of self-fuckery, but it’s one. Going forward, whoever is running it has to get Kane to make decisions quicker and to move around more. The stick-handling at the circle for 10-15 seconds isn’t getting anyone anywhere except closer to the embrace of the reaper.

And this is where we get beyond the stats. There wasn’t anything Kane could do to save this season. A 110-point tour-de-force still lands this team well outside the playoff spots. And there were some nights, or at least periods, where it did seem Kane was trying to salvage everything himself, and drag this team to relevance.

But there were other nights, or shifts, where it was clear Kane couldn’t locate a fuck to give. On some level, you understand. As well-informed about hockey matters as he is, Kane almost assuredly knew this season was toast in January. And in his 12th year, you could understand if a game against Minnesota in February just doesn’t have the same ring as it did when the Hawks were good. Still, that’s not what he’s asked to do. There were lazy passes or changes, a lack of desire to backcheck, or trying shit simply to entertain himself. Cynically looking for his 500th assist when the Hawks were getting clubbed in Arizona was a particular highlight.

He’s not alone. Toews had his nights. So did Keith. When you’ve spent as long at the top as these guys have, finding the same charge when at the bottom is near impossible. They shouldn’t be given a pass but they also shouldn’t just be accepted either.

If the Hawks are going to be good again, they’ll need Kane back at his PPG+ form. And he probably will be with simple luck rebounding. But it would also help if he were there every night, and that can’t be dependent on if he thinks the rest of his team is at his level. Sure, accepting the problems and putting Top Cat on his wing for the 35 goals he could assuredly score with Kane wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

But also, whatever fatigue there is with Joel Quenneville has to be cleared by the team’s veterans. Our suspicions before have been that Kane and Toews have sort of tired of the coach’s voice, but with the Hartman trade it appeared that it was the kids who weren’t really responding. And yet…and yet…

Get to the 5:07 mark of this video, and while dabbling in body language and speech analysis is probably a really dumb thing to do, does this strike you as someone believing in the direction of everything? Something tells me there are interesting times ahead, and that doesn’t necessarily mean smooth.

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Night Songs – Round 3 Day 6: Cheat Code

By Sam Fels 1516 0

Lightning 4 – Capitals 2 (Caps lead 2-1)

Well, if any team could blow winning two games on the road to start a series…

In reality, I’m not sure anything fundamentally changed about this one. Victor Hedman got his head out of his ass, which helps a ton. Andrei Vasilevskiy didn’t look like all his gear was covered in ants. The Lightning scored first, which makes a huge difference in these games usually. They got a multi-goal lead, which is an even bigger one given the environment.

Still, it came down to the Lightning getting two power play goals before the Caps scratched. And it was high comedy that the first four goals of this game all came on cross-ice one-timers that you would use in NHL ’95 or ’96 that quite simply couldn’t be stopped. Before that you had to use the breakaway move where you just skated post to post and the goalie never got over. Then there was one variation where if you faked forehand and went backhand or vice versa you always scored. But that’s another discussion for another time. Still, when you have snipers like Kucherov and Stamkos on either side, I’m sort of curious why the TB power play doesn’t clock in at over 30% for a season every season. I’m gonna go with apathy.

Much like when a catcher takes a foul tip to a bad spot, when Stamkos or the like are blasting one right by a goalie’s ear, if you look at him at just the right moment you can tell he’s questioning why he ever took this job in the first place. “Here I am trying to slide over to a shot I’m never going to see and the best case scenario is it hits me square in the face. Otherwise I’m just going to glide over to the corner looking like a doofus because no one thought to cover this guy. I should have taken that left at Albuquerque.”

Still, I’m not sure Jon Cooper and his various rings are getting this right. Once again, things happened when Sergachev was on the ice. Again, he got less than eight minutes of even-strength time. Stralman and McDonagh continue to get their heads beaten in, so I don’t know exactly what they’re hanging on to here. Trotz seems to recognize this, or Ovechkin has come for vengeance for all those Capitals-Rangers series (and we all want vengeance for those ever happening and being foisted upon us like it was an actual treat. Curse your heathen gods for that), because they were the exclusive prey for the Caps top line.

Anyway, it’s better to have a series than not, although maybe Cooper thinks because they got Sergachev for Drouin he has to treat him like Drouin too. They have two d-men who can skate themselves out of trouble agains the Caps smash-and-grab forecheck. He’s simply choosing to not play one of them so we can watch life toss an anvil at a drowning Stralman. This will matter soon.

 

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Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: David Kampf or All The Jokes We Couldn’t Make

By Sam Fels 1662 0

Ever since the Hawks pipeline started churning out actual players regularly a decade ago, call-ups have followed a pretty familiar pattern. Unless they were really touted prospects with pedigree (Saad, Teuvo, DeBrincat), for the most part they would come up, get a fair amount of games, and a lot of them would merit more affection that they should simply because we were all kinds of bored of all the guys who had been here for years. Some were actually useful like Andrew Shaw or…well, Andrew Shaw. Most fade into the background. David Kampf is one of the weird ones who kind of fits in the middle. He didn’t gain huge fanfare, and it feels like he’s in the background, but he might actually be useful.

David Kampf

46 games, 4 goals, 7 assists, 11 points, 12 PIM, -9

51.9 CF%, -0.09 CF% rel, 47.5 xGF%, -1.83 xGF% rel

There’s not too much point in getting too attached to fourth line centers. There’s only one Marcus Kruger in the world, and we saw how even that went last year. They’re middle relievers, or fourth wide receivers. If you don’t think you have one you can probably find one somewhere pretty easily.

That doesn’t mean Kampf was completely disposable. Defensively, he was actually pretty good when on the ice. He had the second-lowest corsi-against per 60 on the team among forwards (trailing only DeBrincat WHY THE FUCK WAS HE ON THE THIRD LINE MOST OF THE YE….sorry, sorry, tiger got out of the cage there). His xGA/60 only trailed Vinnie Smalls and Jurco among the forwards. And when talking about a fourth line player, the first thing you ask is that they keep it out of your net. Considering the goaltending the Hawks were getting, there wasn’t much Kampf could do about that but he did what he could.

The problem for Kampf might lie on the penalty kill. He was only one of six forwards to be used for more than 50 minutes while shorthanded, but he had the worst metrics of those in terms of attempts and chances against. We’ve never subscribed to the theory that penalty killing should only be done by third and fourth liners, but if you have ones that can’t they tend to be shuffled out for those who can. After all, you can probably find a tomato can who can give you 12 minutes at evens per night and nothing else anywhere. If Kampf is going to stick, that’s going to have to get better.

Outlook: When you look at him, you can’t help but think, “He’s fine, and if he’s the fourth line center at the start of the season I won’t die, but it’s also a spot you can probably improve upon.” If the Hawks are actually a real-ass team next year, Kampf feels like the type who would be doing the Rockford shuffle all year, getting you out of a stretch when injuries and fatigue pile up and providing a spark. It would help if he was lighting it up with the Hogs in their playoff run right now, but he doesn’t have a point in seven games. He’s young, he’s cheap, he’s fast, and those are all things not to be discounted. If Anisimov is traded he probably gets a center spot by default.

But you can’t help but think this is something the Hawks can probably do better in when the time comes. If that “better” is a step forward from Kampf himself, then that’s fine. But for an idea what good teams have at center on their bottom unit, the Jets have Lowry, the Preds have Jarnkrok (when their coach isn’t turning into Dr. Weird), at the moment even the Wild have Jordan Greenway. Do you think Kampf is in that class?

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Night Songs – 3rd Round, Day 4: Wrong Plan B

By Sam Fels 1461 0

Knights 3 – Jets 1 (Tied 1-1)

In talking about Game 1 in this series, I wondered what the Knights Plan B would be. Perhaps the better route would have been wondering what Winnipeg’s would be.

This is the third time in a week or so that an opposition has dialed it back a bit in terms of pace and aggression, making their first priority to bottle up the Jets in the neutral zone. The Predators did it by trapping in Games 4 and 6 (though not in Game 7 and now they’re on the couch). The Knights didn’t adopt a full trap, but certainly made the forwards main aim to backcheck furiously and step up the defense ahead of their own line. Squeezing the space made it awfully difficult on the Jets. You may recognize this as something the Hawks based three Cup wins on.

What made it even more difficult is the Jets insistence to try and kamikaze their way through it, instead of just chipping pucks in beyond it and working hard enough to get it back. Because they can. They’re bigger and faster than the Knights’ blue line and they can cause turnovers that way.

But all night you saw Byfuglien, who was just as bad as he was good in Game 1, or Scheifele or Connor or Ehlers go hero-ball and try and dance their way through three or four checkers. Given the Rockets’ struggles, this was not a banner night for isolation play.

While we’ve remarked that Paul Maurice might have extricated himself from the “Moron” category of coaches in this league and at least could knock on the door of the other category (“Not A Moron”), he doesn’t seem to have any answer for when his opponent doesn’t do the exact same thing they did the last game. The Jets were an overturned turtle in those games against Nashville, and they didn’t look much better last night. Gerard Gallant may not outthink himself at home the way Peter Laviolette did, and would be content to just do this again in Games 3 and 4. What will Maurice’s answer be? It’s easier to play a simpler game on the road of course, and the Predators never asked them to in Nashville. And the Jets won three games there. Not hard to work out.

As we said then, it does reduce the margin for error and Marc-Andre Fleury did give up a softie that probably had the nerves jangling a bit. But that was his only mistake, and Jacob Trouba and Josh Morrissey gave it back minutes later (and they haven’t been good most of the last two rounds, admittedly). Do that for a first goal though and things change. We’ll see how they play it from here.

-A word on analysts. I watched yesterday’s game on the second TV, and hence muted, and it was way better than hearing Joe Michelleti spew whatever hockey-spam he’s got on offer. While I don’t want to always run for comparison’s to the NBA, I’m intrigued by how pretty much every analyst TNT trots out was recently connected to the game and names we know, even if Reggie Miller kind of sucks. Brent Barry, Grant Hill, Greg Anthony, Chris Webber, Candace Parker, Steve Smith, etc. They’re not all great but they at least have fresh voices and are more in tune with the game now.

What does NBCSN give us? McGuire, Michelleti, Jones, Roenick, Olczyk, Milbury. None of these guys have played or coached in years, though I suppose Roenick could claim to. The newer voices they have used, such as Brian Boucher, AJ Meleczko Mike Johnson have at least sounded fresh, if not torn the walls down with analysis. The next interesting thing Michelleti has to say will probably cause me to go into anaphylactic shock. Both physically and mentally Roenick’s jaw looks like it’s trying to swallow the rest of his head.

This is a complaint I seem to lodge once a month, and I know no one’s listening. But fuck, even baseball, perhaps the crustiest sport there is, has welcomed new voices into its prime broadcast booths and been rewarded with Alex Rodriguez and John Smotlz  and Jessica Mendoza and a few others. Hell, Fox was going to chuck Jay Cutler right into the booth, and everyone said he was going to be really good. Jason Whitten is going right from the field to perhaps the most famous chair in the sport, or once was at least.

Is it so much to ask?

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Night Songs – Conference Final Weekend Wrap: So That Happened

By Sam Fels 1743 0

One in a state of shock, one game went exactly as planned. It’s the NHL on NBC!

Capitals 2-0 Lightning

I guess this is what everyone else felt last year when watching the Preds roll over the Hawks from the outside. But I think that made more sense than this. At least Game 1 of that series was close. The Lightning haven’t even been in the same zip code as the Capitals. And I can’t believe I wrote that sentence.

I suppose if there’s one thing we can point to, it’s that the Lightning’s blue line was overhyped. But it mostly didn’t matter because their forwards were so good, and there was “God Mode” within Victor Hedman to cancel it out even further. You saw in ’15. So you know it’s there. Well, the Caps don’t seem to care, and have greatly exposed Stralman, Girardi, Coburn and even McDonagh–who’s a good defensive guy but has never been a mover and that’s getting wildly demonstrated. Meanwhile Hedman has been tentative and unnoticeable, which is just really weird. The only d-man who seems to be able to survive the Caps’ forecheck is Sergachev, mostly because he’s fearless and not having to see the best the Caps have to offer. Stralman and Girardi look like they just discovered there’s a bear in their breakfast nook.

It hasn’t helped that Cooper has coached this series with both hands around his neck instead of his usual postgame belt in the shower. His team look completely shell-shocked, and they seem to be playing right into the Caps hands by either not bypassing the forecheck as the Penguins did the past two years or having his forwards help out. Then when the Caps set up three at their own line every Bolt seems content to just charge headfirst into it and lose the puck and the whole thing starts over. And then they panic, and their defense goes charging everywhere in the offensive zone and they’re giving up an odd-man rush a minute.

If there’s one team that could surrender this momentum it’s the Caps. But man they would really have to like, shit themselves to a dysentery-like level. Because it’s one thing to disrupt and it’s another to cash in, and right now at Ovechkin and Kuzentsov and Eller and Beagle, they all can’t miss. It’s been astonishing.

Jets 1-0 Knights

This was more to form, though only one game. But in Game 1, the Knights saw what was always going to be their biggest problem. A team that can play their game, is willing to, and can do it with better talent. The thing with the Knights during the season is it’s hard to find a team in February and January that’s going to want to skate back as hard to catch them going forward. It’s easier to inspire players to bust it up the ice during the season than it is to inspire them to bust it back. Think the mid-2ooos Suns. Or why Tom Thibodeau’s teams want to murder him by Valentine’s Day.

Well, inspiration isn’t a problem in the conference final. The Jets smell it. So they can get back and negate the get-it-the-fuck-up-there ways of the Knights by getting the fuck back there. How many passes did they pick off on what Knights players thought were odd-man rushes only to find a backchecking forward closing it off? That’s how the Knights get you, and if they don’t have it they’re proper fucked.

I don’t know what to make of Byfuglien. Everyone knows I’m probably the polar opposite of his fan but he was marvelous in Game 1. Then again the Knights didn’t try and get him off his game which is so easily done and it was so fast it didn’t matter that he was rarely where he needed to be defensively and he was making so much happen at the other end. Maybe you just accept the show. Anyway, if the Jets get Game 2 tonight in any sort of similar fashion as Game 1 you can start penciling them in. I don’t know what Vegas’s Plan B could possibly be.

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Watching The Party – FFUD’s Conference Final Preview: Knights vs. Jets or High Speed Dirt

By Sam Fels 1898 0

 vs. 

 

Now that we’ve officially buried the Predators, it’s time to look forward to the West Final. I feel like we’ve gotten to the point, or maybe I just have personally, where it’s time to stop fighting against the Knights. Because if nothing else, this series is going to be in 5th gear or however long it lasts. We didn’t quite get the Fury Road remake we wanted in the previous round, as the Preds could only win when they pumped the brakes on everything. The Knights aren’t capable, and don’t know, any other way than what got them here.

Goalies: That’s the strange thing about this series, is that no matter the speeds it attains, the vapor trails it leaves, or however many chances are created, it could still end up 2-1 for every game. That’s how well these two goalies are playing.

There’s really nothing to say about Marc-Andre Fleury at this point. He’s clearly gotten hold of some eye of newt or something. You can’t even say his defense helped him out, because he made over 30 saves in the first four games of the San Jose series. Granted, two of those were OT games but that’s still work. A .951 is a .951, much like a football in the groin is a football in the groin. He’s .965 at evens.

The one thing you can say is that Fleury hasn’t really seen a team of assassins in the first two rounds. The Kings plan of attack was hoping the Knights would pass out from boredom. The Sharks had two lines or so going, but without Thornton they were certainly limited. There are no such limits to the Jets, and you feel like Fleury is going to have to come up with a handful of 35-40 save performances just to keep the Knights in this.

It’s kind of weird that Connor Hellebuyck has a .940 at evens and he’s not even close to the other goalie in this series. Hellebuyck was marvelous in Game 7 after being pretty wonky in Game 6. He buckled under the pressure of the Predators at times when they were still trying to drag race with the Jets, and the Knights won’t shrink from that at any point. So he’s going to need more of his 36-save performance form from Game 7 than how he was early in the series.

Defense: You’d say this is the Jets’ biggest advantage, but much like the Penguins before them the Knights do the best they can to take their defense out of the equation. They don’t really care how many chances they give up, especially with Fleury playing like this, as long as they can turn the puck up the other way quickly. Still, that feels like death against this Jets team, who simply have more talented scorers and offensive players and I don’t care if William Karlsson shoots 76% this series. This defense is not keeping this Winnipeg hit squad from creating a ton of chances, and that seems like it’s going to be the end of it. McNabb, Engelland, and Theodore are going to smell distinctly of burnt wood by Game 3.

The Jets might have the same problems. With Byfuglien wandering all over the ice and not showing much interested in either being where he’s supposed to be or ignoring players who don’t matter, there’s going to be plenty of space for the Knights, too. Tyler Myers has some of the same issues and Ben Chiarot looks a lot like the Bears’ free safeties of this decade in trying to cover for him. Trouba and Morrison are going to get a lot of work in this series, and Maurice should be playing them the most instead of DAT BIG BUCK GUY. But he won’t, and he’ll pay at some point. Still, the Jets defense contributes more than the Knights’, and is a little more mobile.

Forwards: This is the fun part. The Knights top two lines have been excellent, but their bottom two weren’t as effective in the second round. Still, it’s packed with speed that’s going to have a lot of space to exploit.

The problem for the Knights is that the Jets have the same thing, except every line they have is better than the one Vegas has. Their top line is better, their second line is better, and so on. The Knights have seen this before, but not over seven games and not this big of a difference. If the Jets can go toe-to-toe with the Preds and beat them to a pulp in that style, they can do the same to the Knights. Like we said in the last round, the Jets only have to match or thereabouts the amount of chances their opponents get, because their talent says they’ll bury more of them. Same holds true here.

Prediction: Obviously, the Knights have something unquantifiable going on here. And if they maintain silly shooting-percentages along with Fleury being a an absurdist exhibition, they can win this. But the Knights need the unexplainable. The Jets don’t. They can skate all day with Vegas, and they have the better players to do it. Something strange definitely can happen here, but you don’t bank on that. Fleury himself probably assures this is a long series. I was tempted to say the Jets in five simply because of the disparity in scoring talent up and down the lineup, but beating Fleury four out of five times, without a return to his previous playoff form, is unlikely. So we’ll call it Jets in 6. 

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You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The Nashville Predators

By Sam Fels 3377 0

You can’t run from who you are.

That’s the lesson for the Predators this spring. They told themselves a lot of things. They did a lot of things above their head the past two seasons. But eventually, the truth always comes back. And the Predators go home before any baubles are handed out, other than the Presidents’ Trophy which will hang around their neck like a boulder. And these days we know that trinket gets won by basic randomness of four or five points over the regular season. But it’ll make a fine banner for the yellow-clad, riddlin’, diddlin’, country fiddlin’ mob to make yet another chant about that involves the word “suck” eight times.

Pekka Rinne came into last spring as a Playoff Fleury – Finnish Model. He miracled three rounds, before turning into pop-rocks-in-soda in the Final. Patric Hornqvist is probably still laughing about that clinching goal he scored from the urinal. That was a warning shot. The Predators did not heed it. He put on a Vezina campaign, which was espionage-worthy cover for what was to come. But deep down you knew this was always there. Has any Vezina winner ever been pulled three times in a series? One has now! Don’t worry, at this time next year Preds fans will be convinced that Rinne will have something new figured out at 36.

But it goes deeper than Rinne of course. Let me present two season stat-lines for you:

79 games, 15 goals, 39 assists, 54 points, +1.24 CF% rel, -0.21 xGF% rel

74 games, 20 goals, 32 assists, 52 points, +4.79 CF% rel, +4.19 xGF% rel

One of those lines is Ryan Johansen’s, who I’m told is part of the new crop of young centers taking over the league and is signed for the next eight years. One is Jonathan Toews’s, who I’m told is clinically dead and his bloated carcass should be served to the lion house at Lincoln Park Zoo as food. By the way, Toews is the second one, the better one. Johansen did manage eight points in this series, which is nice. Mark Scheifele managed seven goals on Nashville ice alone. In case you were curious, Preds fans, that’s what a #1 center looks like. But you aren’t curious. Most people wanna know stuff, Predators fans, but you ain’t even suspicious.

It keeps going. Peter Laviolette basically coached this in the same fashion as an air raid siren. Kevin Fiala went from scoring an OT winner to getting scratched for the fat dude from Bloodsport. Lavvy’s team couldn’t do anything when they weren’t parking a bus in the neutral zone, and now you can look forward to this team quitting on him in November and being out of a job by 2019. You can set your watch to it. Oh and I think the Preds just took another dumb, offensive zone penalty. PK Subban at even-strength showed that “slower” and “roasted” isn’t just on the sign at Jack’s across the street. Hey PK, you were supposed to replace Shea Weber, not emulate him! Kyle Turris apparently played in this series. Much like his entire career, did you know he did? No, no you did not. Turris’s favorite food is a saltine in water. Good thing he’s signed forever to be a myth when it counts.

Will it save us from the holier-than-thou attitude Preds fans and hockey media bestow upon this franchise, only discovering it existed last year? No, probably not. We get it all the time here in Chicago about how the Preds are run “the right way.”

Here’s a phrase for you: Re-signed Mike Ribeiro. Shove your own fist down your throat until you can pop your own belly button out.

This was a team that celebrated welcoming back Mike Fisher, who then went on to be just about the worst forward in the league. He can go away forever now to plan his conversion therapy camp, a lifelong dream I’m sure. Maybe while they’re at it they can figure out what it is Carrie Underwood does for a living. “Carrie Underwood” is just another phrase for “Juliana Zobrist.” Nashville: Give us your talentless, your blonde, your utterly desperate to be relevant. I’m sure Underwood pushed to have one of her songs played whenever Fisher scored. Ha, just kidding, Mike Fisher never scored a goal.

They try to tell you Nashville is the cool place to be now, though how you do that by playing Black Keys after your goals is a real wonder. Just because Jack White chose to live there over Detroit is not something you fly a flag for. “We’re Not Detroit” was the tag line of a spoof video promoting Cleveland, remember. This is still Shit-Kicker-Burgh. They had the CMA awards not long ago. Or was it the NRA convention? Can you tell the difference? I couldn’t!

So now Cellblock and The Yellow Pickup go back home from the summer, rehearsing all those chants that have the same five words. Congratulations Preds fans, your lifted chants make you a run-of-the-mill MLS atmosphere. You must be so proud. Come to think of, Mike Fisher would be a the definition of a big MLS signing, given he’s 93 years old.

The Preds are pretty much jammed into bringing the exact same team back next year, when Rinne will be a year older and mentally broken, Lavvy will be fired, and David Poile can still make a deal to ruin it all. Maybe he can bring Paul Gaustad back. The Jets aren’t going anywhere, either. The Avs, who came a lot closer to pantsing the Preds in the first round than they had any right to, will be better. Corey Crawford likely won’t be hurt. The Stars might actually listen to a coach (yeah, right). It’s not getting any easier for them, and it certainly won’t if Johansen and Subban keep their Chips Ahoy! eating contest going before every game.

So long, Predators. Keep on keepin’ the red out. Maybe you can do a chant about that. We know you won’t have one about winning anything anyone remembers.

 

 

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Watching The Party – FFUD’s Conference Final Previews: Capitals vs. Lightning or You Come All This Way For Nothin’

By Sam Fels 1787 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Friday, Game 2 Sunday, Game 3 Tuesday, Game 4 Thursday

They’ve broken through. After more than a decade in the Ovechkin Era, and repeated attempts to run head-first (sometimes literally) through the forcefield between the second round and the conference final, the Caps finally found the weak point and got into the back half of the journey toward the Cup. Good for them, Ovie certainly deserves it. Seems a shame it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a very long stay, because they’re going to find an unholy machine waiting for them.

Goalies: Before this whole thing started, we said it might be better for Braden Holtby, who’s not ever really been a playoff dog except for last season, to come in and be the white knight to bail out Barry Trotz and the Caps after trying Phillip Grubauer in the first two games against the Jackets. That didn’t work, this did work, and now Holtby is playing awfully well. He only gave up 13 goals in the six games against the Pens, but then again he wasn’t asked to do all that much. The Caps only gave up more than 25 shots twice in six games, and that’s just about the best they can do. Holtby isn’t going to have a full-out meltdown with that kind of workload, but sadly that workload is probably going to get a whole lot heavier in this round.

You could say Vasilevskiy has had even less to do. He only had to face one player in the first round in Taylor Hall. He only had to face one line in the second round against the Bruins, and after Game 1 he gave up only seven goals in their four wins. He only saw over 30 shots once in those four wins, but the Lightning can probably hold the Caps to the same kind of output which certainly isn’t the case vice versa. Neither Holtby or Vasilevskiy have been here before so we have no idea how they’ll react. When this is all over, I doubt it’ll be because of either goalie primarily.

Defense: The Caps defense in the second round was basically what it was all season. John Carlson scores a ton on the power play, some at evens, and then they kind of turtle well enough to keep the other side from tearing the walls down. Orlov and Niskanen have been more than just useful, and basically nullified Crosby and Guentzel when the last series got decided. They’ll get the Stamkos and Kucherov assignment you’d think as often as possible, and based on how the last series ended the Caps are probably going to send their stall out to help them as much as possible with a trapping style that’s going to make you really understand Ibsen and welcome the void into your life.

I’m still not totally convinced by the Lightning’s defense, but because it hasn’t been seriously tested, and the Caps are likely to play this very conservatively, I don’t know that I have to be. Hedman might be enough, and will see plenty of Ovechkin with McDonagh you would think. Or if they wanted to play a funny joke they could throw McDonagh and Girardi at Ovie’s line just like the Rangers did and it always seemed to work even though everything tells you it shouldn’t. Also, Dan Girardi sucks. Anton Stralman isn’t much better these days as he gets older, but he’s enough. What the Bolts do have that the Caps don’t is a young, third-pairing bum-slayer in Mikhail Sergachev who has run wild most of these playoffs. That is when he’s played which really has been barely at all. Cooper needs to let this guy off the hook because the Caps will not have an answer and they’re probably going to need all the neutral zone busters they can find as the Caps dig trenches and set up barbed wire there.

Forwards: Even if the Caps were fully healthy, this is where the Lightning have the biggest advantage. And Backstrom and Burakovsky are not healthy. If they could not make the bell for an elimination game against the Penguins, only Washington’s Sisyphusian boulder they finally got up the hill, you have to imagine they’re really hurt. They’ll suit up at some point in this series, though Backstrom’s status for Game 1 is up in the air. Without him, this team is really just one line, and we saw what the Bolts did to a one-line team the last round. Lars Eller is great and all but he’s not enough. Especially when Tom Wilson is assuredly going to give away a couple dumbass power plays to the Lightning by trying to eat someone’s face in a bid to one-up Marchand or something.

We derided Swingin’ Jon Cooper’s choice to send Brayden Point and Palat and Johnson out against Boston’s main threat after Game 1. They spent the rest of the series giving that line a swirly. That goes with Stamkos and Kucherov and Miller (who’s been great) on the top line. Killorn and Gourde are a very decent third line. Basically, the Lightning are two to three times deeper than the Caps, and there just isn’t much they can do about it.

Prediction: The Caps have to gum this up as much as possible. They cannot run with the Lightning in any fashion. They don’t have the depth at forward. They’ll get outscored. So they’ll have to make everything 2-1 and hope Holtby goes nuclear or Vasilevskiy goes blind. They’re counting on Ovechkin or Oshie getting really hot, but if neither do they just don’t have the goals. The Lightning have the guns and they have the numbers. Crash before my eyes…Lightning in 5. 

Everything Else

Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: Vinnie Smalls Or The Secret Weapon?

By Sam Fels 1716 0

I haven’t made much of a secret about what I think Vinnie Hinostroza is and what he could be. There’s more here than we’ve seen, and I fear there’s more than even the team thinks. Let’s tease it out here.

Vinnie Hinostroza

50 games, 7 goals, 18 assists, 25 points, 10 PIM, +5

53.7 CF%, -1.53 CF% rel, 53.7 xGF%, +5.39 xGF% rel

Yeah, so on the surface, 25 points in 50 games is certainly a decent contribution. Even you can do the math to see that works out to 41 points over 82 games, which you’d take from a bottom-sixer in a goddamn heartbeat. And maybe that’s all he is. And that’s ok. You need contributing third and fourth liners to be good, and Vinnie can give you that.

Except…

There was a point this season, when Hinostroza was getting to run with Schmaltz and Kane or on the top six in general, that he was top-20 in the league in terms of attempts he took and chances he got himself. Vinnie Hinostroza was one of the best individual chance creators in the league. His problem is that he didn’t bury enough of them, as his 8.1 SH% and only seven goals kind of make clear. And that might be it for him, because he wasn’t a big goal-scorer at Notre Dame and his best year in the AHL saw 18 goals in 66 games.

Still, looking at his WOWYs, when Hinostroza skated with Saad and Toews they ran up a 60+ CF%, and a 57% scoring-chance percentage. That’s the best mark any winger managed with those two. He and Schmaltz ran a 52% mark in both as well.

This doesn’t mean that Vinnie Hinostroza should be on Toews’s line all next year and never moved. What I think it does say is that he’s a winger you can play anywhere in the lineup and get something from him. He can certainly get you out of a game or five in the top six. And there might be more there. His speed alone causes problems. He can get in on a forecheck, not by hitting people or being all that strong on the wall, but by simply making d-men play faster than they want to. He causes turnovers. He opens space by just zipping around. This is how things work in the NHL now.

Again, like other players, how the Hawks view Hinostroza going forward will say a lot about how they’re going to build this team going forward.

Outlook: I’m not going to claim that Hinostroza can be Jake Guenztel. The Hawks don’t have a Crosby to make him one anyway. But he’s got tools to be on the top six and if you have the rest of it set, he can be a real weapon. It depends what the Hawks want to be.

I’m afraid they see how small he is and think he can only be a penalty-killing gnat on the fourth line who they just let loose for 10-12 minutes per game. And keeping him on the bottom six is fine, especially if you have four wingers that are clearly better which the Hawks probably should. It would be even more pleasing if he’s on a third line on a team that’s decided it’s just going to pack as much speed as possible into the lineup and play as if their balls are being lightly singed for 60 minutes. Not as a checking forward, but just as a third line that’s trying to skate by you until you puke. This is what the Hawks should be doing, it’s what more and more teams are going to do, and Hinostroza is a piece that can do that.

I’d be a touch surprised if Vinnie Smalls ever got to 20 goals. He’d need to improve his shooting markedly, but that’s been done before. What he doesn’t have to improve is getting into the right spots, because he already does. The fear is that he can get buried in his own zone, which we saw at times with him and Schmaltz when they played together. But as the league gets smaller and faster, and it will, that’s less and less of a problem. And with his speed the other way he certainly keeps d-men from pinching too low.

There’s more here. I hope the Hawks and Vinnie see it.

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The Pittsburgh Penguins

By Sam Fels 1923 0

All good things…

…or whatever this Pittsburgh Penguins thing was the past three seasons.

I don’t know what the final epitaph for this era of Penguins hockey should or will read. When you repeat as Cup champs you automatically walk amongst the giants of the past. It’s only been done nine times, to repeat as champs, since the ’67 expansion. And only the Penguins themselves and the Red Wings had done it in the past 30 years. So your favorite Roethlisberger-defender in your office decked out in his James Harrison jersey in July (they’ll still wear it, don’t let them fool you) is going to point to that no matter what you say.

And yet the entire time you couldn’t help but ask yourself…was this Penguins team that good?

While Florida is mostly to blame, the Penguins have their hand in this Vegas nonsense as well. Though really, it’s the fault of the rest of the league being categorically stupid. Because if two standard-thinkers like George “Right Cross” McPhee and Gerard “Shawn Burr Had More Skill Than I Did” Gallant could see the Penguins merely getting up the ice as fast as possible to get away from shot-blockers and think, “Hey we can do that and most of this league will be too stupid/drunk when we play them to do anything about it!,” why didn’t everyone else?

Perhaps mostly it’s just an indictment on Dan Bylsma, who had the same talent and just kept balloon-handing his way into first and second round exits. When you have two of the best five centers in the league, the 2nd round is basically your floor.

Either way, the Penguins were able to catch the rest of the league flat-footed when the cap flattened out, and merely played with a “Get The Fuck Up There” mentality that worked against teams that were still focused on getting defensemen who farted a lot. Seriously, they saw Roman Polak in a Final. On a team that TRADED for Roman Polak. I guess it’s something when you can look at your limited team, see a more limited league, and think, “Play faster?” And it works.

It was always a delicate balance. At some point a team was going to get a good goalie performance against them and Matt Murray wasn’t going to be able to channel the lovechild of Achilles and Aragorn. Especially when you go charging up the ice with Olli Maatta’s vacant gape out there. Hey Justin Schultz, you know your partner blows, right? Might want to dial it in a touch. And while you’re at it, get Letang a map.

But it seemed to be that way all series. Penguins fans will tell you Kris Letang is one of the best in the league, and one of these days he just might play like it! And no, trying to disembowel various Flyers, as enjoyable as that might be, doesn’t count. I look forward next year to the continuation of the competition between Phil Kessel and PK Subban as to who can swell more while still being productive. We’re about two years away from Kessel reenacting the post-credits scene to Dodgeball. “Fatty Made A Funny!” And he’ll still pour in 25 goals. Let’s just start calling him “Bartolo” now.

This is probably better than the Pens deserved, after all. They reacted to their consecutive Cups built on speed and more speed by trading a first round pick for Purina Factory resident/superintendent Ryan Reaves. Whom they discarded months later. Jim Rutherford has two rings. The NHL is just one accident after another. It’s like if you made a sports league out of that ball hitting Canseco in the head and going for a homer 10 times a night for eight months.

That’s the takeaway from these Pens teams, basically and indictment of the league. When people ask you about them years from now your reaction is basically going to be, “They were fine, I think?” They’re hockey’s answer to the San Francisco Giants. Multiple championship won by a team mostly made up of “guys” thanks to a league/playoff system that spits out silly results as a function. They were there, they stood upright long enough for everyone else to fall down around them, and then they’re the only ones left to hand a trophy to. Except in the NHL, pretty much everyone is Mike Matheny.

Much like other teams that reigned for a while, the Pens will be brought down by teams doing what they did. The architecture of your destruction is always within the architecture of your success. More and more teams, you hope, are going to play faster and in space and try and get thing done before a team can set up defensively. And attacking Maatta, Schultz, Oleksiak, and Ruhwedel with speed more consistently is going to lead to a lot of Iron City being spilled and thrown. Which is exactly what you should do with that swill. Though in all honesty, it’s no worse or better than Yeungling which we all spent our 20s spraying our shorts over and then you grow up and realize it’s not even Coors Banquet.

I suppose we should thank the Penguins. It’ll be a more entertaining league as more teams take their cues from them. But fuck that. 1992 scars still haven’t healed, and Lemieux is a fuckstick. No woman will ever mean as much to me as the night Darius Kasparitis punched him in the face.

So take your baubles and go, Pens.