Game $56 Preview
First Screen Viewing
Predators v. Canadiens – 6pm
It’s only PK’s second visit back to Montreal after their incredibly stupid trade of him, so most of the tears should be shed. But last time the Montreal sycophants could hide behind the Habs and Shea Weber having a good year at the time. Neither is true now. and PK still plays on what is probably the West’s best team. PK is likely to play deep in to May again, while this time the Canadiens will be sitting at home for the entire of the playoffs. It’s kind of awesome. PK is too good of a human to dunk this on the Canadiens, but he should. I hope he brings the Cup back to Montreal.
Second Screen Viewing
Avalanche vs. Hurricanes – 7pm
Two teams scrapping for the last playoff spot in their conferences. This one would be more spicy if Nathan MacKinnon were playing but here’s what you get. The Canes have been on it of late and are hovering one point outside the playoffs. And they’re our special boys. So get on the train. You’re gonna need someone else this spring.
Other Games
Sabres vs. Bruins – 6pm
Senators vs. Leafs – 6pm
Kings vs. Lightning – 6pm
Devils vs. Blue Jackets – 6pm
Flyers vs. Coyotes – 7pm
Oilers vs. Sharks – 9pm
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 24-22-8 Wild 29-19-6
PUCK DROP: 7pm
TV: NBCSN Chicago, NHL Network outside the 606
NONE OF THEM LOOK LIKE MARY WINSTEAD IN FARGO: Zone Coverage MN
I suppose the Hawks themselves won’t feel this way. But now that it seemingly doesn’t matter, now that the playoffs are nothing more than a fuzzy concept to them, now that the pressure would seemingly be off, can the Hawks actually play enjoyable hockey again? Just say, “Fuck it, it’s free cake” and go out there and do shit?
Because that’s what’s probably been so dispiriting about this latest stretch. I don’t know that the Hawks have played badly, but you could easily see how tight they were as soon as things weren’t going their way. It wasn’t even leading goals. When they didn’t take two or three-goal leads that their play at times warranted, you could see anus-puckering. Well, not literally. That’d be gross. But you get it. They’ve looked like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, which in some ways it was. Or is. Not sure which.
Which is unlike the Hawks. This is most of the same core group that has stared down playoff deficits and kind of just giggled at the hysteria around it. Maybe something broke in their mentality when they didn’t quite come back from 3-1 down against the Blues two years ago. Maybe it broke last spring. Maybe the vets sense they don’t have it any more. Whatever it is, it’s been a hard watch.
So tonight, and in the next three, away from the expectant and increasingly bitter (and less and less full) United Center, maybe the Hawks can escape some of that malaise. Maybe the juice of another building, where every turnover or missed power play doesn’t elicit groans and jeers, they can be a just a touch freer. They could certainly use it.
They’ll find another pretty angsty team in the Wild, as they’re coming off blowing a three-goal lead at home to the dead-on-arrival Coyotes on Thursday. They did get a point out of it, but when you don’t get two against Arizona that’s bad, and when you blow a three-goal lead to them to cost yourself that point that’s criminal. They’ll have the cayenne pepper on their balls tonight, you would figure, as their hold on the last playoff spot is tenuous at best with all of the Flames, Ducks, and Avs nipping at their heels.
The Wild haven’t been able to get healthy all season, and will be without Jonas Brodin tonight and the next couple weeks to continue that theme. But they’re finally fully healthy at forward, and sport a good three lines that can hurt you. Mikko Koivu may be reserving space in a Twin Cities retirement home soon, but he still keeps the puck in the right areas and has been a nuisance to the Hawks for longer than I’d care to remember. Neiderreiter and Staal are the biggest threats on the team on the line behind that, and Mortimer Parise and Charlie Coyle are skating on the third line right now. We’d laugh, but we’d also kill for depth resembling anything like that on the Hawks.
Behind that it’s been something of a coming out party for Matthew Dumba lately. He’s got 19 points in his last 29 games, and finally appears free to be aggressive and kick it on up the ice with his speed and try and make stuff happen. That gives the Wild two dynamic puck-movers along with Jared Spurgeon, who’s been quietly excellent as he always is. Dumba is better buttressed by Brodin but will have to make do with Olofsson for the immediate future.
Strange for the Wild as they’ve been hot of late despite Dubnyk being only ok. They’re 9-3-3 since the turn of the calendar while Dubs is only carrying a .914 SV% in that time. It’s been pretty simple, either they score three goals or more, or they lose. Given that the forwards are all healthy again, while they don’t have what you think of as a premier scorer, they get it from enough places to get by for now. Though Staal is making a fist of being that frontline scoring, with 16 points in his last 15 games. Granlund has been coming right along with him on that line. So they’re the ones to watch tonight.
For the Hawks, Carl Dahlstrom looks to be making his NHL debut tonight, paired with Connor Murphy ahead of Michal Kempny. I’d get upset about this because both Gustafsson and Seabrook have been defensive sinkholes, but at this point the emotion seems like a waste. Let’s just see what Dahlstrom can do because what can it hurt? Glass Jeff gets the start, and Patrick Sharp looks to be the forward scratch so Lance Bouma can come out of mothballs and that’s a sentence I just typed and now I want to hurl things around my room and out of my digestive track and good lord there’s 27 more games of this!
The Hawks have generally played well against the Wild this year. beating them twice and losing twice in games they outplayed the Wild. They could use more of that tonight for sure. We’re not going to ask for any higher meaning out of this one. We’d just like to not want to numb ourselves after this one is over. Doesn’t seem like much to ask.
Game #55 Preview
Being a GM in this league isn’t easy. You have exactly no margin for error, and you have to take that and balance the desires of owner, coaches, fans, press, and try and craft a hockey team out of it. You can do all that, and then there just might be two teams in your division better than you anyway and it’s all for naught. And then once you come up empty, the league does not make it easy to start over. Flexibility is a daft concept in the NHL.
And that’s where Minnesota GM Chuck Fletcher finds himself. Perhaps it was his idea to sign Ryan Suter and Zach Parise until the sun swallows us all for a dump truck of money. Perhaps it was a directive from the owner after having nondescript, unsuccessful teams forever under Jacques Lemaire. Whatever it was, Fletcher is pretty much fucked right now. Which might see him let go this summer when his contract runs out as well.
The Wild aren’t going anywhere. They’re locked into competing for the last wild card spot at best this year. Maybe, if things bounce right, they sneak in, Dubnyk gets hot, and they can win a round or two. But that’s all built on hope, and Dubnyk has never shined in the playoffs. The difference between him and Jay Gallon last year is the biggest reason they didn’t move to the second round then.
And really, Fletcher is locked into bringing this team back next year. There’s no significant money coming off the books. Chris Stewart, Matt Cullen, and Daniel Winnik are the only forwards whose deals are up after this season, for just north of $3 million. There are no d-men who are up. And to make it even better, Jason Zucker and Matt Dumba are restricted free agents this summer. Because they’re RFAs they won’t break the bank, but they’ll be due more than the $4.5 million combined they make now (Dumba could reasonably ask for that himself).
So what do you do? This Wild team still needs a #1 center before it can even think of going anywhere, and those cost north of $8 million or more. No one is going to trade for those Parise or Suter deals, and Parise might be permanently broken after back surgery and just five points in 15 games so far. Nino Neiderreiter or Mikael Granlund would certainly drum up interest around the league, but if you trade them for a forward aren’t you just running in place? You’re supposed to build around guys like that.
You could hope that someone takes Mikko Koivu off your hands, but no one wants to pay near $6 million for two more years for what is essentially a checking center now. The window to trade Jonas Brodin has probably passed. Maybe Luke Kunin is a kid who can do something for you, but if he were something special we’d probably know by now. Dmitri Sokolov is lighting up the OHL, but everyone lights up the OHL. And because the Wild have floated around the bottom of the playoff picture for so long, it’s really hard to find help in the draft in the 15-20 range as they’ve been.
If it wasn’t so punitive, buyouts would be an option here. But because they’re spread out for so long, it’s not an option for Parise or Koivu, and wouldn’t provide that much relief. It should be something that the player doesn’t have to agree to but doesn’t punish the team so harshly if they agree. But that’s not the world we live in.
This is the devil in “going for it.” The Wild thought the signing of Parise and Suter meant they were amongst the big boys. They haven’t seen a conference final or a division championship. And now the Wild can’t even tear it down if they wanted to. If they traded Granlund and/or Neiderreiter, at that point you might as well keep going. Sell off Coyle and Staal and try in include Koivu in something. But when have you seen a team do that?
Parise and Suter have been on the Wild for six seasons now. That’s about the cycle every team gets. But thanks to the system, the Wild are stuck in this one, going nowhere, with no escape. Basically, they’re living your life.
Game #55 Preview
Ben Remington is one half of Giles And The Goalie podcast, and ZoneCoverageMN.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenRemington.
How big is Jonas Brodin’s injury?
I mean it’s not a small deal, but I’m not super convinced it’s a huge deal either. Brodin had been better lately, but was otherwise having a pretty bad season, after he was protected in the Expansion Draft. It means more ice time for the young offensive dynamo/defensively challenged Mike Reilly, which I’m not opposed to. Gustav Olofsson is almost a Brodin clone, and he’ll slide into the second pair, and I think it’ll be alright.
Injuries have really hampered this team, but they really can’t use Brodin’s injury as yet another crutch, given his body of work this season.
There was some talk that Eric Staal would be on the trade block before the deadline. Where did that come from?
No sure, exactly. Is HFboards still around?
I mean, logically it makes a little sense, if the Wild were to decide to sell. He’s got a year left on an incredible contract, and teams would be salivating over that. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any kind of push to re-sign him, because he’s hitting his mid 30’s, probably due a huge pay raise, and the Wild seem to have some in house centers they want to give more time to eventually. I wouldn’t be shocked to see him dealt, but the return better curl my toes and expose my O face. It’s crazy to think about shipping out your best player without trying to re-sign him, but if you have a pretty good idea that you won’t be able to afford him anyway, there are worse courses of action, I suppose.
Matt Dumba has 19 points in his last 29 games. Is this finally his arrival?
I think so. He got off to a slow start but has really been solid generating offense for most of the season, which is why so many of us wanted him protected over Brodin. He’s only 23, and has shown some incredible stuff that has somewhat outweighed the occasional miscue. I think he’s just scratching the surface on offense, and with his shot could be a Burns-Lite (or even full flavor, who knows).
What are the Wild going to do before the deadline? They have to at least push it, right?
I think so, but I’m not expecting much, given their dire cap situation. The big contracts aren’t going anywhere, so anything beyond getting a bottom 6 forward type I’d be surprised by. I’m also a little terrified of Chuck Fletcher making a blockbuster deal at the deadline, since he’s on the last year of his contract and there’s tons of uncertainty on if he’ll be back.
There’s been talk of them unloading Foligno, which is hilarious given what they paid for him and the contract they gave him. By hilarious I mean depressing, but I’d also be almost as happy about as when they fired Kyle Quincey into the sun.
Where do the Wild go after this season? They’re kind of contractually committed to this group but it’s getting older. Is this cycle complete?
Ha, well, yeah, I think? I think they’ll keep taking puncher’s chances at the playoffs every year with this core, but it’s hard to see them doing any real damage unless something drastic happens. Dubnyk is the type of goalie to get red hot for a stretch and carry this team, but we just haven’t seen that in the playoffs, or really this season, aside for his three game shutout streak. If Kirill Kaprisov comes over soon, that could change the whole complexion of this team, but something something Russia something something.
All in all I think this team is very much stuck in a rut through most of the Parise/Suter contracts, barring a miracle. It’ll be interesting to see how they try to build around their corpses in 5 years.
Game #55 Preview
The first time we wrote this section about a player on the Wild this season, it was Chris Stewart. We don’t like to repeat ourselves, but we don’t get to take a victory lap very often. Back then, Stewart was in the middle of a goal-scoring binge based on a stupid shooting percentage. And of course, there were plenty of stories about how Stewart had “turned a new leaf” and “was a new player” instead of the same dolt that he’s always been who just happened to see goalies waving at his shots slightly more often than they did in the past.
Since October, Stewart has two goals. He’s played three games in the past month, mostly being a healthy scratch now that the Wild are getting back to fully healthy at forward. Because that’s what he is.
We’ve dealt with this locally, of course. How many stories did you see in the season’s first two months about Tommy Wingels and Lance Bouma just because they goofed a couple goals, even though every other marker indicated they were the same doofi they’d been their whole careers? Richard Panik, anyone?
This is another thing that seems unique to hockey. In baseball when some punter car-accidents his way to 10 homers in a month, everyone points to BABIP or fly ball rate or luck or might even start whispering about PEDs, though that isn’t really fair. Everyone knows that once the plate-appearances pile up, everything will almost certainly flatten out. Unless you’re Micah Hoffpauir and there are still Cubs fans who think he’d have been better than Anthony Rizzo.
Stewart is the same chucklehead that even the Blues or Sabres didn’t want much to do with. Maybe next time some idiot finds the net more than you’d expect in October, local scribes won’t suddenly be voting him Comeback Player Of The Year, an award hockey doesn’t even have.
Game #55 Preview
First Screen Viewing
Penguins vs. Stars – 7:30
The league’s hottest team in the Penguins, and not far behind them are the Stars. You saw how they can close out a game last night, except they’ll try to do it against a much more powerful scoring machine in Pittsburgh. The Pens are 10-4 since the calendar turned, and the Stars aren’t much worse as you heard Foley say last night. Penguins forwards vs. the Stars defense. It’s all your irresistible force cliches in a game that you could want.
Second Screen Viewing
Blues vs. Jets – 7pm
After destroying the Avs last night the Blues punt it up north to see the Jets, a team they’re still clinging around for the division lead. Mark Scheifele is rumored to be making his return tonight, which is kind of scary that the Jets have been able to be this good without him. The Blues have played more games than both the Jets and Preds so if they have plans of sticking around they’re going to have to get awfully hot awfully fast and beat the teams around them. Should be tasty.
Other Games
Red Wings vs. Islanders – 6pm
Flames vs. Rangers – 6pm
Blue Jackets vs. Capitals – 6pm
Kings vs. Panthers – 6:30
Canucks vs. Hurricanes – 6:30
Oilers vs. Ducks – 9pm
Carping off Good Sir Pullega’s wrap last night, I’ve basically sat here all morning and thought how last night’s game was the perfect showcase for everything that has gone wrong or afflicts the Hawks this season. And seeing as how it very well could be the final nail in this season’s coffin, it makes it even more poignant. But as you know I love to say, you love last night’s game. It says everything you want to say.
Let’s go through it:
1. Goaltending
We can break down the deficiencies on the Hawks roster from here until the end of the world (currently scheduled for next month), but you’re not going to get past this. Thanks to the CBA and the flattening cap, it’s nearly impossible to get your roster of skaters that much more talented than anyone else. It’s why most teams look the same. Even where you think there are gaps, they’re not as big as you think.
So it’s a goalie league. Look at the top of the standings. Tampa, Boston, Nashville, Winnipeg, Vegas, they’re all getting Vezina-level goaltending or close to it. You cannot base success without it now. It may be a devilish task to find 18 skaters that can separate you from the pack, so it’s a hell of a lot easier to find one goalie.
And the Hawks had it, but now they don’t, and you see the results. You’re tempted to not hang Forsberg completely out to dry as after all the Hawks only scored two goals. But goals change games. If he doesn’t let Pitlick’s blast in, the Hawks go into the third tied. Maybe the Stars are still tempted to lock it down as they did in the third anyway, get their point, and take their chances in the extra frame. But probably not as hard core. Maybe with just a slight loosening or a mistake the Hawks can find another goal. One goal changes the complexion of everything.
Looking back over the schedule since Crow went out, you can find a lot of points that Crow might have gotten them. Upon first glance: new year’s eve against Calgary, Jan. 5th against Vegas, Jan. 10th vs. Minnesota, home to the Leafs, maybe in Vancouver, both games recently against the Flames, and last night. Even conservatively, that’s 7-8 points on the board. How much better would things look? Even boil that down to five and it’s a totally different outlook.
And again, Forsberg is merely a backup. He’s not supposed to save your season. How many teams even have a backup that could? Maybe Saros in Nashville? Do we know that for sure? Khudobin in Boston? We saw what he looked like as a starter in the past. Kuemper is doing a fine impression in LA, but he also remains Darcy Kuemper. Let’s just say it’s rare.
I can’t help but think of Montreal a couple years ago when Carey Price basically missed the whole season. Metrically, and by other measures, the Habs were good that year. But none of it mattered because they didn’t get the saves they were accustomed to getting and needed. Ever. And that was that. Price comes back the next year, they’re basically the same team, and they win the division. When you have a Price-caliber goalie, and that’s what Crawford is despite Pierre McGuire forever muddying the perception of him, there’s simply nothing you can do to make up for the loss of him. It’s pretty simple.
2. The lack of a puck-mover
You saw this last night when the Stars went full-Jabba The Hitch in the 3rd. The Hawks didn’t have any answers. They’re not a team built to dump and chase and rugby their way into chances and goals. And that’s fine if you have a quick and creative blue line. The Hawks do not.
Duncan Keith was never PK Subban or Erik Karlsson. Keith’s springing of the offense in the past was his insane ability to create turnovers just ahead of each blue line with a burst of a first step that simply no one else in the league had. He then immediately got the puck up to the forwards with the other team caught in bad positions. He was not a “wheel it out from behind his own net and carry it 160 feet through three guys” guy. It’s why he’s never been a power play QB either. Well, now he doesn’t have that first step, and is still recalibrating his game to that. At times he’s trying to Roger Federer things and try and force even earlier than he did in the past. But that’s often ending in a mess. And he can’t recover like he could.
Beyond that, there’s just no one else. Gustafsson and Forsling were too busy getting buried in their own end to be that guy. Seabrook… well, if he can’t make the pass from his own circles you know how this goes. Kempy is more in the Oduya model in that he can use his wheels to get out of trouble in his own end but is offensively limited. It’s simply not in Murphy’s job description.
So a team can simply stand up at its line, with no fear of being beaten, and force the Hawks to put it in the corners. Which is where…
3. Lack of a forecheck
Here’s the thing. You don’t have to be a really big team to be a good forechecking one. You just have to be quick and determined. The Hawks were never big but could make this work in the past, though it helped that they had Keith or Oduya or a younger Seabrook and Hammer also ready to force things at the blue line as well and squeezing space. They also had Marian Hossa.
Now? Not so much. And I don’t know that it has to be this way. It’s what Saad was supposed to help with. Hinostroza certainly is willing and fast, though maybe just not strong enough. It’s in Duclair too, and he did cause a couple turnovers last night. It’s still supposed to be a Toews specialty. That’s basically someone on every line.
And yet the Hawks remain remarkable easy to break out against, and the defense behind that much easier to get through once teams do. Granted, this is a Hitchcock team and 1-6 the Stars are as solid on defense as you’ll find. But you still have to find a way to even threaten.
I don’t know if they just don’t want to, or they just gave up on weights in the gym or something, but it really shouldn’t look like this. And it shouldn’t look like them trying to come up with Rembrandts at the blue line trying to avoid this and just giving up the puck there instead. When you have a lead against the Hawks, if you just make them go 200 feet there’s nothing they can do. When they can’t play on the rush, they have no answers.
Sadly, the last two things don’t look like they can be fixed in the coming years either, as they are linked. The Hawks don’t have a puck-moving d-man anywhere near ready, unless they plan to toss Jokiharju into the league at 19 (and maybe he could do that but boy is that an ask). Come next October I’d certainly be more than intrigued at what Top Cat, Schmaltz, Hinostroza, Kampf look like with the experience, along with the addition of Sikura and maybe one or two others. But until the Hawks come up with a definitive answer on their blue line, it’s probably all for naught.
