Game #72 Preview
Ride the snake.
Ok, so you’re Stan Bowman. Yes, you’re quite bald. It’s ok. The world doesn’t end if everyone can see the top of your head. Trust me. Anyway, though you may have gone to the higher-ups last summer and told them you have a plan to rebuild the roster on-the-fly, and even if they totally believed you, you’re under serious pressure. No matter what you laid out to Rocky and McDonough, probably using very small hockey words, this is not what you told them would happen. Sure, you can claim Corey Crawford getting hurt is the same as Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady or Drew Brees getting hurt, such was his importance to his team. And that’s not even wrong. And hell, they may even go with you on that. But a year missing the playoffs this badly after two first-round exits still has them more in a “glower” position than “hopeful.” You need results and you need them next year.
And sure, if you do actually get analytical instead of just telling us you do because that’s what you think everyone wants you to say, you could play it safe with a move here or there, knowing that there’s every chance Crow stays healthy next year, Toews’s and Saad’s SH% pop back up simply because HOCKEY!, Top Cat and Schmaltz continue to grow, Sikura is just as good as you think he is, and Vinnie Hinostroza has a breakout year that his metrics suggest he very well could. Hell, maybe even Duncan Keith can play the hits for just one more season. Hell, that’s a playoff team there. You make one move at the deadline, and maybe it’s even more.
Still, the higher-ups want more. If all those things don’t happen, you’re out on your ass. Yes, with your resume and last name and this being HOCKEY! you probably won’t be out of a job long. But is that how you’re goin’ out? Like some punk “with a plan?” Or you firing all the guns at once, knowing if it doesn’t work it’s going to be someone else’s problem anyway? You only have max one or two seasons to do anything with this group anyway. Clock’s ticking. You say, “Fuck it. you only live once and dyin’ would be a stone groove.”
You sign John Tavares. $11 million a year. $12 million a year, who fucking cares? This is your blaze of glory. Win next year and ain’t no one gonna give a shit about a fuck.
“But Sam,” you’re saying out there, “there’s no way the Hawks could do that!” Well, actually there is.
Right now, the Hawks will have about $12 million in cap space if the cap goes up to $80 million as has been rumored. And that’s if they don’t find a way to shuffle off Hossa’s hit to some hinterland hockey landfill. Or they could do what they didn’t do last summer and just use it in the summer and white-knuckle it through the season. Again, if you’re Stan Bowman, you need results next season or you’re toast. It’s time for risk. So either moving Hossa’s contract or just using his LTIR gives the Hawks damn near $18 million to play with. Fuck and yes. It could be more if you can flog Artem Anisimov to some destination without taking too much money back.
You basically have no one to re-sign. You can punt Patrick Sharp to the bunny farm upstate where he’s longed to be for two seasons. Anthony Duclair won’t have warranted more than the 10% raise he’s due as an RFA, which is $1.5 million or so. We love Vinnie Smalls, but he’s not getting any more than $1 or $1.2 million. So you’re still just south of $16 mildo to play with. That’s plenty for the $11-12M you’d have to throw at Tavares.
“But Sam,” you’re saying, “Tavares is a pretty low-key guy. He’s not going to want to come here!” Shut up, moron. Let me disabuse you of that notion.
One, this is not a testing hockey market. You’ve seen that. It’s the NHL’s fourth biggest market, yes. But no one cares when the Hawks are bad. Look at it now. These guys facing really hard questions every practice? There’s like three full-time beat reporters for fuck’s sake. No one’s talking about them on the radio or TV. You don’t have a roundtable of concussed ex players/drunk writers with an hour to tell you why you suck. They’re talking about Kris Bryant here. There’s no Steve Simmons to get up your ass, and I’ll be bored and old next year. I ain’t gonna bother ya. You can fly under the radar here easy.
Second, even if there is “furor,” that’s Toews’s job. Or Kane’s, I suppose. Seabrook’s. You’re not first in the firing line. Tavares could play his hockey and go home. But it’s just big enough to keep him in the endorsements/advertisements world if he so desires.
So that makes it a more desirable destination for him than say, Montreal or Toronto or even Vancouver. We’ll circle back to this.
Your top six, if Stan goes Wild West:
Saad-Tavares-Hinostroza/Duclair
Top Cat-Toews-Kane
Sure, you could arrange this several ways. But Tavares has gotten Anders Lee a 35+ goal season and there’s nothing Anders Lee can do that Brandon Saad can’t. This team scores, especially with Schmaltz as a #3 center simply clocking whatever bums he finds across from him with Sikura and whichever of Hinostroza or Duclair is not on the top six. It scores a lot.
“Sam!” you’ll exclaim, “how are the Hawks going to afford all of Kane, Toews, Tavares, Seabrook, Keith, Saad, and then raises for Schmaltz or DeBrincat or more?” There’s going to be another lockout, you ninny. They can hit the reset button on one or two of these deals under a new system. And you’re probably fucked by that point anyway.
“But Sam,” you’ll interject, “this does nothing to solve an already porous blue line!” Fuck you! I can’t do everything here!
Ok yeah, your blue line would still suck and you can’t get out of the Central or West without one. The free agent class of d-men makes you vomit all the colors of the rainbow. You don’t have the pieces to acquire Erik Karlsson, unless you’re comfortable moving Schmaltz for him. Which you might be after signing Tavares, I don’t know. Maybe you find a way to pry OEL loose at the deadline. Maybe when Vegas reverts back to being an expansion team next year they loose Nate Schmidt before he’s a free agent. There are solutions to every problem.
“But Sam,” you say as I get more annoyed with your pragmatism, “everyone’s going to want Tavares and the Hawks haven’t won a bidding war since Hossa!”
Yeah ok, fine. They haven’t even really tried either. They wanted us to believe they were in on Zach Parise in ’12, though I have my doubts. But the Hawks name and market is still an awfully big draw, especially when you consider Tavares has already been on a Team Canada with Toews and Keith.
He’s not going to Montreal. Who wants to deal with that shit? Toronto doesn’t need nor can afford him. Vancouver is clueless and stupid. Tampa… ok, well that could be a problem if they can lose Callahan’s bloated checks for looking angry. But maybe they want to keep their powder dry for the entire bank chain they’re going to have to hand to Kucherov. Or maybe they’re still after Karlsson. Is Florida going to make a splash? Weather and state income tax aversion are nice, but that team isn’t that much more attractive than the Hawks in the near-term? Detroit might be more clueless and stupid than Vancouver. The Rangers are rebuilding. The Islanders won’t have a home for two or three years. The only language really here is green. Tell me you’re not starting to see it. Tell me a grin isn’t slowly spreading across your face.
C’mon Stan, let’s get nuts. You really don’t have anything to lose.
First Screen Viewing
Blue Jackets vs. Flyers – 6pm
I can’t tell you either of these teams are good. In fact, I would argue they’re barely middling. But thanks to the odious nature of the Metro and the bottom half of the Atlantic, they’re battling for the two of the last three playoff spots. The Flyers have the third spot in the Metro and the Jackets have the last wild card spot. New Jersey and Florida are the other possibilities. So ths one is pretty important. At least the Flyers are fun. The Jackets are…Torts. Anyway, should be a passionate one.
Second Screen Viewing
Bruins vs. Panthers – 6:30
The Panthers have climbed back into this, mostly because their two goalies are healthy and playing out off their minds. Sasha Barkov going a bit nuclear hasn’t hurt either. They’re four points back of Columbus for the last spot but have three games in hand, which basically means they have to take them all. The Bruins are locked in and everyone’s hurt or rested, so this could be another the Panthers could add to their hot streak and distract people from noticing that Dale Tallon is the biggest reason the Knights are embarrassing the sport.
Other Games
Maple Leafs vs. Sabres – 6pm
Capitals vs. Islanders – 6pm
Penguins vs. Canadiens – 6:30
Avalanche vs. Blues – 7pm
Predators vs. Coyotes – 9pm
Red Wings vs. Kings – 9pm
As someone pointed out on Twitter, sadly we can’t find who, Patrik Laine looks like he would stand and ask you three questions before you could cross his bridge. We all do stupid things as teenagers, and growing really bad facial hair is one of them. It’s like a new toy you have to try out. Clearly, Laine is in this phase. It also doesn’t help that Finnish people are just weird to begin with, and gives him a truly creepy, this guy plays with toys at home vibe.
Something Laine is also doing that’s incredibly stupid as a teenager is the rate at which he scores.
Off the top, Laine has 77 goals before his 20th birthday. No one’s bested that in 29 years, which was Jimmy Carson. The only other better mark as a teenager since 1980 is Dale Hawerchuk’s 85, also in Winnipeg, in 1983. No one else in 38 years has scored more goals at 18 and 19 than Laine. His two-season mark is better than Crosby, Stamkos, Jagr, Kovalchuk, everyone else. And Hawerchuk and Jimmy Carson played in an era when goalies were essentially just inflatable flappy-arm guys you see at car dealerships (and the Half Acre brewery, for some reason. Trust us).
Laine also converts at an extraordinary rate. His career 18.7 shooting-percentage is second since the Great Bettman 2005 Lockout, behind only Anson Carter. And you’ll recall Carter racked most of that up playing with the Sedins, so it didn’t involve much more than standing near the crease and letting the Children of The Corn ping pucks off of him (The Nuno Gomes Policy, for you soccer fans). This is amongst players who have played 100 games. It blows the greatest scorer of the generation, or possibly any generation, Alex Ovechkin’s career mark of 12.7 out of the water.
What’s really frightening is that Laine doesn’t shoot nearly as often as some of the other premier goal scorers in the league. He ranks 27th in total shots. He ranks 71st in shots per 60 at even-strength. He ranks 33rd in attempts per 60 at even-strength. And yet he’s 5th in goals per 60 at even-strength.
Even on the power play you won’t see him dominating the shots and attempts there. He’s 16th in shots per 60 while on the advantage, 21st in attempts per 60 on the power play, but you won’t find anyone who scores more often on the PP than Laine. So the question the league should be asking is what happens if he starts firing pucks at Ovechkin-like rates for a season? Just so you have some idea, Ovechkin’s 298 shots with Laine’s 19.7% SH% this year would see Laine with 58 goals already.
Perhaps one thing holding Laine back in terms of the amount of rubber he can violently hurl at goaltenders is that he has yet to be a dominant possession player. Whereas Ovechkin and Stamkos and Crosby and Malkin have always consistently been above-water in Corsi-percentages and comfortably ahead of their team-rates, Laine has yet to do that in two seasons. Getting ahead of the team-rate in Winnipeg is tricky because they’ve actually been a very good possession team the past two years, but Laine hasn’t been above water either season. If he spent more time in the offensive zone, his goal-scoring numbers would simply be pornographic. You would think playing with Ehlers and Little would make for better possession numbers, but it just hasn’t.
Of course, some of this is going to make for quite the headache for the Jets front office. They’re looking at giving Laine, Trouba, Wheeler, and Hellebuyck new paper over the next two summers, and Toby Enstrom and Tyler Myers are the only big-ticket items coming off the books in that time. While Laine will only be an RFA, the Jets are not going to get him on a bridge-deal you wouldn’t think. While offer-sheets just don’t happen, tossing three or four first-round picks at a historical scorer like Laine might actually make sense for a team.
Laine’s release already is up there with the best of all-time, and takes no backseat to Ovie’s or Artemi Panarin’s. If Mike Bossy played in this era, this very well might be what it would have looked like.
Game #71 Preview
Lineups & How Teams Were Built
Game Time Art is still our Jets weirdo. And he’s happy to be so. Which tells you everything you need to know. Follow him @GameTimeArt.
So the Jets have lost to the Preds twice in the past couple weeks. Does that put any fear into your playoff hopes or does the fact that the Jets (barring something stupid) will win their first playoff game and quite possibly series since being resurrected be enough for everyone?
In a strange way it doesn’t really put fear into most Jets fans because those last two meetings have been with a Jets team with four or more regulars out of the lineup including their top center and top defenseman and really save for a stretch of ten minutes at the end of one game and ten minutes at the start of the other, a depleted Jets lineup hung in ok against the Preds, so I think there is still hope that if the Jets can get healthy, they should give Nashville a good fight. That said, I think everyone expects good things from the first round and then we’ll worry about a potential second round blood bath against the Predators.
Blake Wheeler has 77 points. He shifted to center when Scheifele was hurt. And yet he doesn’t seem to be getting any Hart Trophy love. While it would be hard to make a case for him over say MacKinnon or Hall or Malkin or Kucherov, shouldn’t he at least be discussed?
Maybe a little… If there was an award for most inspiring leader who leads inspiringly – is that the Messier award? – then Blake should get that hands down. As far as most valuable player, I’d say he deserves a brief mention but I don’t even know if he’s the MVP on the Jets as I’d argue Connor Hellebuyck has been far more important to the Jets win totals than anything Blake has done. Then again, maybe I’m just not used to seeing actual good goaltending for my team so I could be biased.
Flying under the radar a bit is Kyle Connor, thanks to Wheeler and Laine and Barzal in the Calder race. What’s most impressive about his game as a rookie?
I love Connor’s ability to weave in and out of traffic when he has the puck, especially when it comes to skating into the offensive zone. He seems to have this ability to find just enough room on the ice to make a move past a defender or at the very least give himself an extra second to move the puck forward or pass it off to a teammate.
How much has Trouba been missed?
A lot and really it’s only because with Trouba out, it has meant Tyler Myers I’d argue has gotten more minutes per game than he can handle and Myers’ game – especially in the defensive zone – has suffered because of it. Byfuglien has done well in stepping up as he does and Josh Morrissey is quietly good as always, but Trouba is kind of the lynchpin that holds the Jets defense together. To put it in a much dumber context, Trouba to the Jets defense is like syrup to waffles. Sure, the waffles are ok without it, maybe even good depending on the quality of the other ingredients you have, but syrup just makes the entire dish so much better. Jacob Trouba is syrup.
With only 12 games to go…what do you foresee for the Jets come the spring?
Increased health going into the playoffs for one thing, a first round series where the Jets have home ice and which should be a win because I think they match up well against Minnesota, Dallas or Colorado and then a second round where the limits of my heart being able to function properly will be severely tested.
Game #71 Preview
We understand that this is a Canadian thing. They’re all a little touchy about not being the first place on a lot of people’s tourism list… aside from Montreal. Which only makes the other Canadian cities even more tetchy.
But no one takes it to the levels of the residents of one Winnipeg, Manitoba. You may remember that a little while back, a stupid little vignette by the San Jose Sharks production team made it clear that the Sharks players didn’t much care for going to Winnipeg. This of course sparked an outrage, with the Winnpeggers (Winnipegians?) touting the three restaurants they have and the movie theater that’s open on Fridays and Saturdays. Of course it’s just like every other city on the continent!
What we know of course, is that it’s not. It’s ridiculously cold. It’s not very big, as its population is only 778k, putting it on par with places like Columbus, Ft. Worth, and Charlotte. At least the last one has some decent BBQ!
What do you think of when you think of Winnipeg? Cold. People being miserable from the cold. And players and teams getting the hell out of there just about as soon as they can. Broadcasters wistfully telling stories about wishing to be hit by a bus rather than be outside any longer. Their greatest player, Dale Hawerchuk, beat it for Buffalo, for fuck’s sake. Teemu Selanne couldn’t wait to high-tail it to California. Just wait until Blake Wheeler is a free agent and wonders what it might be like to drive to practice in something warmer than -14.
Montreal has world class restaurants (and strip clubs, so we’re told). Toronto is a worldly city, apparently. Vancouver is one of the more aesthetically breathtaking cities in the world. Even Calgary has a fucking rodeo. Winnipeg? Winter storm warnings and darkness.
And that’s ok. You can take pride in that. You’re hardy souls. You don’t hear the people of Duluth proclaiming to be a world destination. Or Fargo, and they even got a movie and TV show named after them (though you’ll notice either actually took place there because…GAH!). Boise, Idaho doesn’t either and that place is apparently cool.
It’s cool, Winnipeg. Lots of places suck. Buffalo sucks. Detroit sucks. Ottawa seems kind of a drag. You’ll survive without acclaim. We promise.
Game #71 Preview
We here at the FFUD offices have always railed against the NHL standings. The presence of the OTL point, the now gimmick 3-on-3 overtime, and shootouts in general have always given the league false parity. It’s rewarded genuinely bad teams while screwing over some actually good teams. It’s certainly skewed how some things are viewed. For instance. last year’s Hawks-Preds series was a 1 vs. 8 in the standings, but in reality the Predators only had four less regulation wins than the Hawks. It wasn’t that kind of gap, but the Hawks prowess in overtime saw the gap in points. And as the Preds quickly proved, that gap was basically utter horseshit.
What’s funny is how hard the NHL makes this to look up. You can’t look up regulation wins on the main site, because they don’t want you to see that. You can only get ROW, but again, overtime is basically a bullshit, carnival game now so it’s hardly a measure of what kind of team you are. It just measures how many 2-on-1s it takes you to score. So you kind of have to Excel it from HockeyReference, which I’ve done here and perhaps not perfectly. So excuse me if I’ve fucked up. Here’s the list of straight regulations wins this season:
It makes for interesting reading on some levels. On the local level…well, not so much. If you throw out everything that happens after 60 minutes (just like all my late-night encounters HAHAHAHA SO VERY DROLL!), the Hawks are 23-32. Yikes. Anyway you slice that, it’s U-G-L-Y YOU AIN’T GOT NO ALIBI. That’s what happens when your goaltending and blue line blow, I suppose. So the Hawks can’t claim much bad luck overall, at least when it comes to overtime and such.
At the top of the standings you see the teams you’d expect. What’s also a bit curious for those of the red and black persuasion is that the other six Central teams are all in the top ten in regulation wins. Which shows you just how bad of a year it was for the Hawks to choose an off year. In the Metro or Pacific, they may have been far better off.
The Metro is funny, as the Penguins have the most regulation wins in that division but only the 12th most in the NHL. The Hurricanes only have one less win in 60 than the Penguins, but won’t sniff the playoffs because they’re getting clocked in overtime. Which you could say is fair because they lack true, top line scoring. Or you could say it’s a damn farce because 3-on-3 is a joke. It’s a little infuriating for Hawks fans I guess, because the Hawks only have one less regulation win than the Jackets and two less than the Devils and Flyers, and all three of those teams are competing for playoff spots while the Hawks have had a thumb in their ass for a month or more now.
Anyway, food for thought for you.
This week we discuss possibly trading Duncan Keith, the top line, the Bruins, the upcoming playoffs, and the Bears because that was way more fun than anything that came before it. Enjoy!
