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Duclair! Get Your Ass Out Here You’re Holdin’ Up The Show!

By Sam Fels 2670 0

You’ll just have to take my word for it, but just a couple days ago and Matt McClure and I were wasting time instead of working as we usually are doing, we speculated about things the Hawks might do trade-wise. We know Stan Bowman has usually preferred to makes his moves before the deadline, when prices are a tad cheaper and there’s less competition. That’s how Michael Frolik came here. You add in the fact that the Hawks might not be able to wait until the deadline because of the shape they’re in (oh you don’t know…) and you can see why there was some urgency here. We thought the Hawks weren’t going to give up any real pieces or make a big splash, and the beaten favorite is something they love to try.

We said Anthony Duclair seemed like a likely target.

Well, we got one right. Anthony Duclair is headed to Chicago along with Adam Clendening, the prodigal son, in exchange for Richard Panik and Laurent Dauphin.

The headline here is Duclair, who somehow is still only 22 even though you’ve been hearing his name for years. The attraction to Duclair is obvious. He’s swift, and though only 5-11 plays a much bigger game, and there is a high amount of skill here. This is a player who managed 20 goals at age 20 in Arizona, where he was on the top line and facing tougher competition than he probably should have because quite simply there wasn’t anyone else to.

The red flags are clear, though. He followed that season up with a barf-belch of a ’16-’17 that saw him get sent down for a portion of the season. Duclair has nine goals in 33 games this year, which is not nothing, but there is more to be mined. If he wants it to be, which seems to be the rep with him. The Hawks are right in thinking that if he can’t put it together here, especially with a coach showing new patience in young players, that it’s never going to happen.

Duclair’s best season two years ago came while playing with Max Domi, and there are options for him to do that here. He’s a left shot so playing him with Kane doesn’t really add up, but he could be hellish on a forecheck with Saad and Toews or give DeBrincat and Kampf/Anisimov more to work with than Sharp. It would sadly keep Top Cat on the right side when he should be on the left but Duclair can flip as well.

All of Duclair’s metrics this year are well ahead of the Yotes’ team rates, though that really isn’t much of a claim. More encouragingly, Duclair’s scoring rate at even-strength is the highest of his career right now, at 0.84 per 60. He’s also averaging more attempts and individual scoring chances at evens than he ever has, and more shots. He’s not quite getting the luck shooting-percentage-wise at evens that he did two years ago, but the process is there if the results are not. And oh yes, he’s averaging way more hits per 60 than he ever has, if you’re into that sort of thing.

While it would be fun to sit here and laugh about how Richard Panik turned into Richard Panik again, the reality is the Hawks got him for basically nothing (we still love you, Jeremy Morin), turned him into a younger, cheaper, more talented player that can be part of the solution for a long time here. You can’t argue with that.

The two minor leaguers won’t matter. Laurent Dauphin showed a little in the preseason, but either didn’t show enough in Rockford, or Kampf has shown enough to leap ahead of him on the depth chart, or they’re now convinced Schmaltz is a center which locks down three center spots on the big club for the foreseeable future, or all of the above. Clendening is Rockford depth, because I have to imagine Gustafsson or Pokka or both are going to be involved in future deals. If they were going to be anything, we’d probably know by now.

There is risk in this. You can see similarities between Duclair and Tomas Jurco, though Jurco never had the success in the NHL that Duclair had two years ago. High-talented guys who have just not put it together full-time yet that teams are ready to move on from. If motivation or focus is the problem, sticking him in that dressing room should be a cure he’s looking for. We’ll excuse him if he and many others didn’t quite bring it while playing out the string in the desert in front of friends and family only. He’ll get no such luxury here.

It has potential to be a blockbuster deal. If it’s the opposite, Duclair goes RFA in the summer and you have all of Panik’s cap space to play with. So… why the fuck not?

 

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Game #43 – Wild vs. Hawks: Spotlight – Parise Is Burning

By Sam Fels 2834 0

Immeasurable ink has been spilled, in the parlance of our times, about the raging insanity of the contracts handed out to Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. It seems so quaint now, as it was five and a half years ago now that they were given matching 13-year deals that run through 2025. We’ll have two more presidential elections before these are off the books (and won’t those be fun for all?)

Suter has basically done what you’d expect for a top pairing d-man, and for a cap hit of $7.5 that looks pretty reasonable at the moment. Though he probably won’t be doing what he is now at age 40, of course. However, in a world where Doughty and Karlsson are going to make north of $11 or $12 million soon, and Shea Weber makes more, you won’t fold up and melt thinking about Suter’s hit.

It’s Parise’s that’s still perplexing. What NHL GMs don’t want to notice, or admit, or even know, is that most forwards peak somewhere around age 25 or 26. There are always exceptions, but that’s the general rule. The decline after that isn’t sharp, and you’ll get almost a plateau from 25 to 27 or 28 or so. It’s after 30 that things tend to go south like a spring breaker, but really what you see at ages 24-26 is generally as good as it’s going to get for a forward, who have to basically sprint all over the ice every shift. A d-man can adjust his game with better positioning, anticipation, and streamlining. This is what you’ve seen Suter do, as though he racks up some of the heaviest minutes in the league he barely looks like he’s moving at times while having everything under control. Sure, a forward, and especially a scorer like Parise, can become more of a spot-up sniper as he ages, but that changes his overall effect on proceedings.

When Parise was signed to this elephantine contract, he was 28. In most ways, he had already had his best years. And even in his simple counting stats, you can see that. Parise has only once come anywhere close to his 38 goals of ’09-’10 while donning the green of the Wild, and certainly has never approached the 45 he poured in the year before that when he was 24. 33 is the best he’s done in St. Paul. And since that three years ago he slipped to 25 and then 19 last year.

Nothing in the underlying numbers should make Wild fans feel any better. His peak years in The Swamp saw him score over a goal per 60 minutes at even strength, again at 24 and 25. The best he’s done in Minny is 0.98 in ’14-’15. His points-per-60 at evens have never gotten near the 2.3 and 2.8 he managed in his peak as a Devil. In New Jersey he would take 12-13 shots per game at evens. He’s never managed more than 11 in Minnesota, and the past two years he couldn’t even get to double-digits. You’ll find the same story with his overall attempts.

The only encouraging this is that since arriving in the Land O’ Lakes he’s managed to up the rate he gets scoring chances and high-danger chances, which speaks to a more active and anticipating mind. Of course, some of that the past two years can be explained by a switch to Bruce Boudreau, who plays a more high-tempo, if not less-organized, way than Mike Yeo did. But the difference is probably negligible.

All of this makes one wonder why you’d throw any serious years at an unrestricted free agent forward at all. A real players union, if they had any fear that NHL GMs would figure this out, would push for free agency a lot sooner. But they don’t have to fear that. Still, next summer’s big ticket is John Tavares, who is already 27. You’ll get some really good years out of any deal he signs, but you’re probably not going to get anything better than he’s already done. These are just how things go.

For more info on player aging curves, check this article out.

 

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Game #43 – Wild vs. Hawks: Q&A With Giles Ferrell…Because He Couldn’t Find Anything Else To Do

By Sam Fels 1878 0

Giles Ferrell writes for ZoneCoverage.com and hosts the weekly Giles and The Goalie podcast. Follow him on Twitter @gilesferrell. 

The Wild find themselves kind of in the same predicament as the Hawks. Can’t seem to get off the ground for more than a game or two in a row but also don’t lose enough to fall out of it. What’s the biggest problem of late?
Finding their identity. Minnesota has none and we are over halfway in the season. They have been hurt for a large chunk of the season and now they have a full roster so there is hope they will find their stride. Now with that said, they looked to be hitting the mark last week before they went into Colorado and had the crap absolutely kicked out of them. 

Why is Zach Parise skating on what appears to be a third line? Or is Eriksson Ek the best center for him and that’s just how it goes?
More of that has to do with the fact Parise missed half the season with a back injury. Once he gets back up to full speed, it would not surprise me in the slightest to see him get bumped up to the top six. But for now, the hope is he can ignite Eriksson Ek – Minnesota’s 2015 first round pick who is on pace for two goals this year. 

Devan Dubnyk had a .940 in December. Despite getting blasted in Colorado last Saturday, do you feel like he’s rounding back into what you’re used to seeing?
No doubt Dubnyk is coming back into form that Minnesota has known him to be. He has been inconsistent most of the year, but right before he went down with an injury he started to right the ship. Since his return he has picked up right where he left off – sans the Colorado game – and perhaps that has to do with his backup Alex Stalock pushing for more game time with his good play this year. 

Is Jason Zucker or Matt Dumba pricing themselves out of a return to Minnesota this summer? Or can they shift some things around and make it ok?
A month ago I would have said Zucker might be a guy the Wild move because he might simply cost too much, but now a month long drought has brought his next contract back down to earth. After a torrid October, Dumba has been lighting it up and will probably be a very expensive signing for the Wild this offseason, being he can score and is a right shot. Dumba’s trade value come summer might be sky high, but it would be a crippling blow to the Wild blue line if they moved him.What will the Wild be looking to do before the deadline?

Wild fans cringe at the fact that GM Chuck Fletcher has a first round pick at his disposal to use, and he is reportedly in the final year of his contract. He did so last year, and that yielded one lousy playoff win for his team. I’m not sure the Wild will do much of anything before the deadline. The prospect cupboard is getting bare, they are right on the cap, and they might have a few internal options in the AHL they would try instead of making a move. Maybe they will get a bottom six player at the deadline, but otherwise Minnesota might be more inclined to stand pat.

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Game #43 – Wild vs. Hawks: Douchebag Du Jour – That F***ing Horn

By Sam Fels 3770 0

Yeah, we know. It’s a hockey blog. But with the Minnesota Vikings about to embark on their journey that is most likely to end in a Super Bowl trip in their history, we’re going to take a departure. The only thing that Bears and Packers fans have in common, other than stains on their suits, is a deep hatred of that fucking horn. You know it. You’ve heard it for years. Be it the Metrodome, or that brief sojourn to the University of Minnesota that still wonderfully has parts of Brett Favre’s brain on it, to the Bird Murder Dome they play in now, that horn has soundtracked a few of your Sundays every year of  your life.

It greets every first down, every big play, every touchdown the Purple have managed to put up. Even when you don’t think you’re hearing it, you’re hearing it.

BAAROOOOOOOOOOO!

And then you see the overfed, norse-wannabees in the stands who’d rather be watching the Gophers play hockey anyway but will pretend for the moment. And they’ll tell you what a hardy people they are while their football team plays indoors and their baseball team plays outdoors in April and May. And they’ll wheel out 209-year-old Bud Grant and he’ll strip down to his fucking golf shirt as if that isn’t a sign of anything other than lunacy. Also Bud Grant never won dick, like pretty much every other Minnesota coach in any sport save Tom Kelly who was able to parlay the Metrodome’s awful setting for baseball into two World Series wins without winning a game on the road.

You hear that horn and it’s Chris Carter running wild in the secondary among confused and helpless Bears’ secondaries. It’s Harbaugh’s interception and Ditka’s tirade. It’s Randy Moss laughing at anyone trying to cover him. It’s Kordell Stewart on 4th down called by John Shoop. It’s whatever collapse they could come up with this time. It’s that terrible turf and the weird lighting and Ragnar (who then had a contract demand which is just hilarious. He also rode a Harley which are made in Milwaukee by Packers fans.

That goddamn horn. At least we have Raymont Harris and Jeff Graham running over them on New Year’s Day in 1995. And that horn will blow when they blow it to the Falcons again in the NFC Championship Game anyway.

 

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Game #42 – Hawks vs. Senators Preview/Architectural Rendering: Kanata, ON. Doo Doo Do Do Do…

By Sam Fels 2062 0

 vs. 

RECORDS: Hawks 20-15-6   Senators  14-17-9

PUCK DROP: 6:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT: Brian 5or6

Well this seems like a momentous day for really weird reasons. We’ll get to that in a second. After getting to recalibrate their weapons by firing on the stationary target that is the Edmonton Oilers, the Hawks can double that up by doing so against the Eastern Conference version, the Ottawa Senators. And they may get to do it against a severely hampered Senators team, and believe me when I tell you this team didn’t have a lot to hamp. With the 2nd half of the season kicking off tonight, this would be a good way to get it started the right way. Then again, the Hawks couldn’t have started the first half off any better (TEN! TEN! TEN!), and look where that got them.

No reason to not start off with the biggest piece of news, and that is Brent Seabrook will be a healthy scratch tonight for the first time…well, ever. I don’t recall this happening in his rookie year, though it might have and we’ve just blocked most of that season from our memories. In fact, Seabrook has been something of a rock of durability, missing only 11 games in the ensuing 11 years since. But you can’t say that Seabrook hasn’t earned this, and the Hawks pairings would make a lot more sense if they looked something like:

Keith-Murphy

Forsling-Kempny

Oesterle-Rutta

Of course, that’s not what they’ll look like tonight as Oesterle will stay with Keith, the two kids together, and Kempny and Murphy returning to their natural sides on the second pairing. This way Q doesn’t have to rearrange three pairings. While Murphy took the blame for Friday’s loss unfairly, Seabrook has been this all season and now can’t even get the space to do the things he does well, i.e. shoot and pass. He’s been either slow or uncaring or both down low in his own zone, and that’s just not good enough. At the moment, he’s not one of the best six d-men the Hawks can send out there.

The hope is that this shows Seabrook that he’s not untouchable and has no guarantees. At almost 33, he’s never going to be what he was but he can certainly be more than he is. At that age he really should be able to handle third pairing or even sheltered second pairing minutes ok, and he hasn’t done that all season without Connor Murphy (CONNOR MURPHY!) saving his ass. Seabrook will draw back in soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, and there better be a fire under his ass when he does.

As for the rest of the lineup it looks like Tomas Jurco will be the forward scratched as the suddenly spiky Patrick Sharp sticks around.

None of this should matter of course, because the Senators are the NHL’s little league right fielder with the glove on his head twirling in a cirlce. They’re second-bottom in the East and three points adrift of the team above them, the Canadiens. And while this isn’t much of a roster outside Karlsson, it’s not helped by SUPER GENIUS Guy Boucher running a system suited for 1999 and boring the shit out of everyone involved. And the system doesn’t work when it’s not getting lights-out goaltending, and Craig Anderson is 36. This a team that doesn’t really have a top-liner anywhere unless you count Matt Duchene, and he’s basically a top line wing playing center and a really good rhythm guitarist at center instead of a lead.

Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman are great second line scoring wingers too, but now that Bobby Ryan is turning colors in the sun they need them to be first line scorers and that’s just not who they are. Karlsson can only do so much.

Making it even better for the Hawks tonight is that several Sens are either sick or hurt and gametime decisions. Duchene (you’re holdin’ up the show!), Oduya, Ceci, Brassard all might not make the bell tonight, though all could play as well. This is not a juggernaut. This team is bottom 10 in goals per game, goals against per game, and shot for per game. They do limit shots against them ok thanks to Boucher’s strangulation of anything interesting that might happen, but Anderson just hasn’t been up to the challenge of stopping the ones they do see. Again, 36.

No excuses here. The Hawks have to get this one, and they really have to sweep the week before the bye hits and teams pass or get farther away from them simply because they’re not playing. They’ve missed enough hanging curves of late with losses to Vancouver, blowing a lead against  Vegas when they had played the night before, and arguably missing the first 30 minutes against a wonky Calgary team. No more bullshit.

 

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Game #42 – Hawks vs. Senators: Spotlight – Erik Karlsson, The Treasure We Need To Save

By Sam Fels 1914 0

At this point, it feels like either the hockey world has taken Erik Karlsson for granted, or the discussion is just about whether or not he should be traded. Before doing anything, it’s important to once again go over just the insanity that is Erik Sven Gunnar Karlsson. Yes, there are tons of Zevon references to be made there. Erik The Sven Gunnar Karlsson, he killed to earn his living.

Since coming into the league in the ’10-’11 season, Karlsson has four 70+ point seasons (and another 66-point one for good measure0> That’s over nine seasons now. In that time, only two other d-men have had that many points in season. Brent Burns did it twice, and Victor Hedman last year. Karlsson has FOUR. Keep that in mind. He probably would have had a fifth at that pace if he didn’t miss most of the lockout season with a shredded achilles, and even then his Logan-healing abilities brought him back far sooner than it should have.

Let’s take two years ago. Karlsson had 82 points, the first time a d-man cracked 80 points since 2006 and only the second time since 1996. He carried a +7 in Corsi-relative and a +3 in Expected Goals-relative. He led his team in scoring by 21 points. And yet they still gave the Norris to Drew Doughty because he’d been to a Tim Horton’s in his teens, where he assuredly marked the bathroom with really shitty graffiti that was almost assuredly unintentionally misspelled.

Save his rookie year and last year where his ankle turned into an origami demonstration, Karlsson has always kicked his team’s rates in the head and carried this team. And that’s the unfortunate part, is that Karlsson has barely ever had a teammate worthy of him, or coach. Karlsson somehow willed this team to a conference final last year, along with Craig Anderson, but that’s just about as good as a look as he will get in Ottawa. And this is where the heated debate begins.

All hockey fans, with no disrespect to Ottawa fans, need Karlsson out of Ottawa. Having this Ferrari being handled by Guy Boucher with only a few prime years left is akin to getting your Wagyu ribeye well-done. If Karlsson were a Predator he could seriously take a run at 100 points. Swap him with Hedman and he would almost certainly get there. This is simply a waste of a beautiful gift, to have this playing in a trap and trying to set up Derick Fucking Brassard. This is a team trying to find reverse on a Russian tank.

But if you’re the Senators, and you know you’re going nowhere fast, what can you do? Karlsson has one more season after this one on his contract, and then he goes UFA. He’s going to get $12 million a year from someone, as well he should. Maybe the Senators have already told him they’ll give him that, and Karlsson does love Ottawa so much he has already made it clear he’ll take it. Then again, given that the soft-spoken Karlsson felt the need to publicly make it clear he’s not taking any hometown discount, you’d have to believe these things haven’t been discussed at all.

And even if the Senators want to offer that, and that’s unlikely, does Karlsson want to take it? He’s been past the second round only once, and the future is not exactly bright in Ottawa with their shithead owner crying poor, demanding a new arena when he’s not shaming his own fanbase, and has already starting making goo-goo eyes at Quebec, assuming he can given all the facelifts. The Senators are bottoming out this year and there doesn’t appear to be much help on the way unless GM Pierre Dorion can pull some real miracles in shipping off Mark Stone/Bobby Ryan/whatever else.

If you really want to reset a team, you cash in a piece like Karlsson. His trade value will never be higher than it is right now. A team that acquires him gets two playoff runs with him, and if they’re in the middle or closer to the end of the window that might be worth the ransom you’d have to give up. We’ve talked about the Hawks offering their entire prospect line, but Dylan Sikura plus ballast probably isn’t near enough.

Who else? The Oilers probably could figure out something, but with their payroll next year can they even afford one year of Karlsson after this? The Leafs are an obvious fit, but the world would end if the Sens were to trade Karlsson there. The Islanders in a bid to woo John Tavares? Do they have enough?

The bigger complication is figuring out what Karlsson would be worth. In a world where Matt Duchene netted the Avs three prospects and a raft of picks, what’s Karlsson? This arguably the best player on the planet, where Duchene is a decent #1 center and a better left winger. Three NHL-ready or already young NHL players would probably have to be a starting point. Along with three or four draft picks. It would have to be Herschel Walker-esque. What GM has the balls?

In our dreams, or nightmares, had Stan Bowman been able to manage assets like Teuvo, Johns, and Danault properly, they would have the pieces. But now you’d almost certainly have to include one of if not both Schmaltz and DeBrincat, and then what kind of team would Karlsson be joining anyway?

In truth, the Senators might be fucked. They either trade the best in their history (and it’s not even close) for 75 cents on the dollar at best, or they ride out the last year and a half and watch him walk for nothing because he wants to win something and play in a system that rewards what he does. 75 cents on the dollar probably doesn’t rebuild an organization, and it certainly doesn’t get more people to drive out in the Sea of Green where Canadian Tire Center is to watch dreck-on-ice.

So looks like for another year and a half, our beautiful treasure will remain buried in the muck.

 

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Game #42 – Hawks vs. Senators: Q&A With Brian. Nope, That’s It. Just Brian

By Sam Fels 2181 0

We don’t know where exactly we found @Brian5or6. That’s the case with most of our friends. We just ended up this way. Anyway, you can read his stuff at Brian5or6.com. 

 

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Game #42 – Hawks vs. Senators: Douchebag Du Jour – The One. The Only. The King.

By Sam Fels 2198 0

There’s something sad, at least a little, about Alex Burrows ending his complete anal fissure of a career away from Vancouver. Don’t get us wrong, it’s hilarious that he was a deadline pickup that did utterly nothing because he’s always been shit and now the Senators are stuck with him. Eugene Melnyk couldn’t deserve more.

But there was something so symbiotic with Burrows being on the Canucks during their rise to not quite enough and their fall back down into irrelevance. Because Burrows was the Canucks, wasn’t he? A dirty, entitled chicken shit who somehow goofed his way into success by standing still. All those huge goal-scoring seasons, nothing more than just standing still while the Sedins banked pucks off of him into the net. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was a REAL TOUGH GUY as long as you weren’t looking or there were two linesmen holding you. That whole Canucks team did a lot of yapping but when it came time to actually fight? Always lost.

And that was the thing about the Canucks. Was that 2011 team really that good? Or did they just stand still while the Hawks lost everyone to the cap and that Sharks team got older? And the Kings weren’t quite ready? Because once the Kings and Hawks were, the Canucks have been an afterthought.

And really, so has Burrows. He’s been surpassed by other pests, and now he’s not even a good joke. He’s an old jobber now. Even the romantic story Canucks fans tried to rationalize him with doesn’t ring true. The whole never drafted so he became an actual danger on the ice to make it… really, who gives a shit now? Not when first round picks like Tom Wilson are doing the same thing.

Burrows is 36 now, and somehow has another year left on his deal. He should be back in the AHL by now, where he’s really always belonged. But as long as teams are as shitty as the Senators and coached by stuck-in-the-late-90s doofuses like Guy Boucher, we supposed Alex Burrowses will still have a place.

We’d say you were a worthy adversary once, Alex, but you never were. And your one big moment was only to save the biggest choke in NHL playoff history, and it only led to your biggest heartbreak. That thought keeps our feet warm at night.

Slay this dragon, motherfucker.

 

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