Everything Else

It’s Not a Cage if You’re Feeling Like a Resident – Hawks 1, Coyotes 4

By Rose Rankin 2238 0

You don’t need me to tell you what was important about tonight—but I will anyway, it was Corey Crawford coming back. And despite what the score was, he looked just fine. It was the usual suspects being the pieces of crap that they are that led to the loss, but you don’t need me to tell you that, either. To the bullets:

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

–After goal-a-thons in recent games tonight’s effort seemed rather anemic on offense. This could have easily been at least 2-0 Hawks at the end of the first, had it not been for Fortnite’s total lack of finish. Kane set him up beautifully multiple times, but to no avail. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him demoted back down to the third or fourth line after tonight’s performance (although it’s just as likely Q loves him and will keep him on the second line, so who knows). A poorly timed post by Schmaltz in the second period was another example of the Hawks being snake-bitten.

–Don’t take that to mean that there was no plain ‘ole incompetence tonight—that would be far too generous. Back to Nick Schmaltz, he had a pretty shitty game, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, his CF% ended up being 52.9, but that was a rebound from the mid-30s he had going in the first period, and he pulled his classic pass-when-he-should-shoot early in the third, which basically wasted a huge amount of time and space that could have been a good opportunity.

–But the real tale of woe here is Brandon Manning and Chris Kunitz and how horrible they truly are. We’ve already beaten this dead horse that they suck, but it’s hard to overstate just how much. Even with the aforementioned anemic offense, this game would have been tied at 1 (at worst), had it not been for Manning completely misplaying a 2-on-1 in the first and hanging Crawford out to dry, and had Kunitz not made a shitty, stupid pass attempt late in the third that Clayton Keller (GET A FIRST NAME, ASSHOLE) picked off and scored on to basically put the game out of reach. So after not being able to score a 5-on-5 goal yet this season, the fucking Coyotes found their even-strength mojo thanks to our useless clods who Quenneville refuses to sit, despite the availability of Brandon Davidson, Victor Ejdsell, and ANYONE ELSE FROM ROCKFORD AT THIS POINT.

–Alright, enough of what sucked. The silver lining was that really Crawford looked pretty good. Sure, there were a couple saves where he just barely got a toe on the puck, and in the second there was a terrifying moment where he half-somersaulted out of the crease and I held my head in my hands like I was trying to protect his brain by steadying my own, but all in all he was solid. That includes some great point-blank saves like the one he had on Grabner in the third, which at that point kept it a one-goal game (till Kunitz shat the bed). I’m guessing it’ll take a little while for him to be fully comfortable, and there’s always the chance he’ll regress after dealing with contact or other unforseen issues, but for a first outing after 10 months, this was a very good sign.

–You know who else had a good game? Erik Gustafsson. That’s not a huge shock as he’s been generally playing well, but tonight he had the lone goal after textbook passing from Toews and Top Cat during a 4-on-4 stint, and he made two huge shot blocks to bail out Crawford in the first and second periods.

–I can’t be mad about Raanta having a good game. And when Hjalmarsson was getting misty-eyed after his ovation I was basically at the point of yelling I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING at the tv. And I can’t be mad about Our Cousin Vinny scoring two goals either. I want to be mad because this loss is extremely aggravating, but of course it’s these guys who I can’t hate.

So the Hawks were dealt their first regulation loss of the season, and to the fucking Coyotes (did I already complain and call them that? I did, didn’t I?). It was bound to happen at some point, but the fact that it came at the hands of The Team of Hawks Rejects and on the night Crow finally came back makes it all the more painful. There are still positives to walk away with, though, and with a barrage of games coming up that’s what we’ll do. Onward and upward.

Beer: Lagunitas Sumpin’ Easy Ale

Line of the Night: “Good players get a stick on it.” –Steve Konroyd, throwing shade at Alexandre Fortin after he missed yet another great pass from Kane 

Photo credit: Chicago Tribune

Everything Else

Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight – October 18th

By Sam Fels 1099 0

First Screen Viewing

Penguins vs. Maple Leafs – 6pm

Well, no way the Toronto media and fanbase will make far too much of this if the Leafs collect yet another win against what is still seen as the standard-bearer of the East. It’s been something of a wonky start for the Pens, who have found a way to lose to the Canadiens and Canucks consecutively. Systematically everything seems to be ok, but being without Matt Murray is a real problem. And it’s highly likely to be disaster against a Maple Leafs top-six that is doing it just to see the look on their face right now.

Second Screen Viewing

Avalanche vs. Devils – 6pm

Two of the faster and younger teams will have a track meet in the swamp. The Devils are the only other unbeaten-in-regulation team, and they’re unbeaten overall. The Avs have collected eight points of 12 on offer, and are getting more than just Nathan MacKinnon going all WMD on everyone. Not that he’s been a stiff, as he’s got eight points. Mikko Ratanen has nine, Carl Soderberg has five, as do ThreeYaksAndADog and Alex Kerfoot. They’re a little more varied than last year, at least so far. There will be goals, except both Varlamov and Kinkaid have been magic tricks in net. There will be action, let’s say.

Other Games

Flyers vs. Blue Jackets – 6pm

Red Wings vs. Lightning – 6:30

Canucks vs. Jets – 7pm

Bruins vs. Oilers – 8pm

Islanders vs. Kings – 9:30

Sabres vs. Sharks – 9:30

Everything Else

Game #6 – Coyotes vs. Hawks Preview: Come Inside Where It’s Ok

By Sam Fels 1889 0

 vs. 

RECORDS: Coyotes 1-4-0   Hawks 3-0-2

PUCK DROP: 7:30pm

TV: NBCSN Chicago

YOUNG GIRL THEY CALL THEM THE DESERT DOGS: Five For Howling

Well, tonight got a touch more interesting, didn’t it?

No point in waiting around. Tonight marks the return of one Corey Crawford to the Hawks crease, and he’s bringing all sorts of actual hope and expectation with him. While the start for the Hawks has been tremendous fun, it hasn’t carried any feeling of a sea change or entrenched positive vibes/hope. It’s just been kind of empty entertainment. But the return of Crawford makes all of that a real possibility. Don’t fool yourself, he is that good and he is that important.

That’s if he’s full-strength, and the worry or skepticism of that is basically in a blinking-sign-over-the-Kennedy stage. At camp it was suggested he might need a game or two in Winnebago County to knock off some ring rust. That has been scrapped, either by how good he’s looked in practice or by need or by both. We still don’t know that a stiff breeze or any kind of contact isn’t going to put him back on the shelf, and if he goes back on the shelf there’s a real worry that it might be for good. And of course, it’s been 10 months since he’s played, so even if he’s sharp and even if he’s completely clear of his brain injury problems, there has to be some feel to be gained back. He’s not going to be Crow just yet, unless it’s by some miracle or he’s Wolverine.

There’s also the question of how Crow is being handled. There’s been an odd and uncomfortable back and forth between he and the team for months now. I want to say that since camp opened they’ve let Crow call the shots here, but just yesterday you had Quenneville saying, “We’ll see how he feels in the morning but we expect him to play.” Is that because Crow expects that or because they do and he’s going along with it? With the Hawks it’s hard to know. You don’t want to feel like the team is pushing him back at a slightly faster pace than he would like, but you can’t say for sure they aren’t either.

On the other side, and this has only ever been a theory of mine, but with this type of injury and recovery I wonder if you don’t know if you’re 100% until you get out there. Like, he’s been dealing with stuff for so long that marked improvement could be mistaken for total improvement, just because it’s better than where you’ve been. Again, Crow and the Hawks might not know until he gets out there and tries. That’s what happened with Jonathan Toews many years ago when he was dealing with this. He came back for the playoffs, he thought he was fine, and then admitted later he didn’t really feel all the way back until the summer. We’ll all find out together.

It may seem like a soft-landing for Crow to debut against the Coyotes, but looks can be deceiving. Yes, the Yotes only have one win. Yes, they haven’t scored an even-strength goal yet. But it’s not the process’s fault. Arizona has simply crushed the opponent in every game, possession-wise. In every game they’ve carried at least a 54% Corsi-percentage. Their expected-goal percentage over five games is 52.3%. But like a night with far too much whiskey, they can’t finish. Like, at all. They have three goals in five games, two on the power play and one short-handed.

At some point though, all that possession and chance-generation is going to count. This isn’t a team completely bereft of scoring touch, though the injury absences of Alex Galchenyuk (The American With The Russian Name Who Used To Be a Canadien) and Christian Dvorak aren’t helping. Clayton Keller and Dylan Strome are where you’d look first. Derek Stepan is starting to get up there and was never what he was billed as but he’s far from helpless. Michael Grabner has gotten very rich off scoring 25 goals that no one can remember. It’s hardly a murderer’s row, but again, they’re doing most things right.

And they should get goaltending. Antti Raanta has had a slowish start to the season, but has been marvelous the past two seasons when healthy. There were even some stumping him as a dark-horse, boxcars-paying Vezina candidate. Might want to pump the brakes on that, but he will improve from his current. .903 SV%.

The defense has been good too, as the Yotes have only surrendered 11 goals in five games. Jakob Chychrun is out injured, but Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jason Demers, our lost son Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Kevin Connauton make for a competent at worst unit.

As for the Hawks, aside from the Crawford apparition the lineup stays the same. They only threatened Brandon Saad with a scratch, but he stays in. If he is a ghost tonight, then he might be staring at the pressbox for one or both of the games this weekend. So don’t do that. Everything else is as is.

Perhaps this is the beginning of something real. Perhaps it’s just a false dawn. But it’s definitely more lively than a normal tilt against Arizona in October would have been.

 

Game #6 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #6 – Coyotes vs. Hawks Spotlight: Is OEL A “Yeah, But Who Gives A Sh*t” Guy?

By Sam Fels 1738 0

We used to spend a lot of our time, an alarming amount, devising trades to get our favorite players to the Hawks. Most of that time was devoted to Jarome Iginla back in the day. Darnell Nurse is another. This list could go on.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson made quite a few appearances in those fantasies. While he might not be the best skater in the league, he is certainly the most pleasing to the eye. To go along with his ever so smooth stride that just makes you weak in places you can’t be weak in, he has keen passing vision and the sense to run a power play from the point. He’s potted 20+ goals a couple times, so he had a good shot that he can get through. He’s managed 39 or more points (or that pace in the case of 2013) seven straight seasons. The underlying numbers are terrific. And he’s still somehow only 27.

And yet, the Coyotes always suck. So one has to wonder…do you have to give a shit about Ekman-Larsson?

To be sure, the Coyotes utter incompetence since 2012 doesn’t have much to do with OEL as it does their inability to put any talent around him, or all the trust they put in Mike Smith after whatever rabbits foot/horseshoe/monkey’s paw he had lodged in his colon in 2012 fell out and sunk the whole operation. There’s always been a “project” and a “plan,” but it never seems to get off the whiteboard. Everybody’s got a plan… as Mike Tyson told you.

You can’t help but wonder if OEL was THAT good, the Coyotes would have at least sniffed the playoffs somewhere around here. Erik Karlsson has certainly dragged not that much more to relevance. Ok, OEL isn’t Erik Karlsson. Who is? And he’s not going to be paid like him, as he signed on for an extension that will pay him $8.2M until 2025, whereas Karlsson will sign for something with eight digits. Fair, fine.

Digging in, OEL’s has always lifted what’s around him, no matter how much septic run-off it’s been. He’s run a relative-CF% of over 4.5% three times in the past six years, and consistently is above his team-rate. His relative-xGF% has consistently risen above those around him as well, including a ridiculous +9.74% in ’15-’16. But again, it didn’t matter.

Maybe it’s just the Coyotes haven’t had anyone to consistently finish the chances that OEL is either creating or providing the platform for. This is a team that had Radim Vrbata as a leading scorer as recently as two seasons ago. A d-man has led them in scoring in four of the past six seasons. No one has eclipsed Clayton Keller‘s 65 points from last year in that time. Clearly, OEL is the one standing around exclaiming, “I’m surrounded by assholes!”

OEL’s importance though can be debated. The last two Cup champs haven’t really had a #1 d-man to speak of. The first version of the Penguins one had Kris Letang, but not much else. This is in stark contrast to how the Hawks, Kings, and Bruins went about things. The Caps basically had four #2-3 d-men in their run last year, and the Knights couldn’t even claim that.

Maybe that’s an aberrations, and there are certainly a lot of ways to skin a cat. The game is moving toward a more forward-heavy system, where d-men are just asked to get the puck out to the neutral zone instead of carrying it themselves or passing it directly to someone. Are OEL’s skill going to be as valued going forward?

That’s hard to judge. The Predators have built through the blue line and got a conference championship and a Presidents’ Trophy out of it. They very well might have gotten a Cup out of it if their goalie hadn’t upchucked a kitten at the worst possible times in those playoff runs.

Still, one wonders if OEL has true, #1, foot-in-the-ass-of-the-world potential in him, if the Coyotes ever become relevant again. If he did, you feel like you would have seen it. Maybe we will in the coming years as Strome, Keller, Chychrun, and others start to finally develop. The Yotes had better hope so, otherwise they’re going to have to pay someone on top of Ekman-Larsson’s haul. And that can get itchy for a team that has an internal budget.

 

Game #6 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #6 – Coyotes vs. Hawks Q&A: Rose Ford From FiveForHowling.com

By Sam Fels 1968 0

Rose Ford is the editor of FiveForHowling.com. Follow her on Twitter @RoseColoredFact.

The Coyotes have had an even weirder start to the season than the Hawks. Their underlying numbers are great, and yet they haven’t scored an even-strength goal in five games. How do you manage that?

If you mean how does the team manage that, the answer is they are cursed. Last October the Coyotes couldn’t buy a save but were scoring 2.5 goals per game. This season their shot suppression and goaltending are great (90.09 sv%) but they’re only scoring 0.6 goals per game. Any time it starts to look like something good is about to happen for the team some other shoe drops.  As for how the fans manage it some are being patient, it is only five games; others are concerned, teams can still play their way out of the playoffs early; and some are ready to panic and want to fire and trade everyone.

The big move of the summer was trading Max Domi for Alex Galchenyuk. Galchenyuk has yet to suit up due to injury, but can you assess the trade anyway because we like making people do unfair things?

The Galchenyuk trade is largely regarded as a win for Arizona’s GM John Chayka. In the fanbase’s view he traded a winger to get a center that has consistently scored 40 or more points in the last four seasons. Max Domi was very much a fan favorite in Arizona for his outgoing personality and friendliness toward the fans, so many will miss him. Most folks recognize that he wasn’t primarily a scorer and scoring is something the team desperately needs, even more so now. If Galchenyuk can consistently get on the scoreboard the fans will like him just as much. It also helps that they are other players on the team that have similar playmaking abilities as Domi, like Dylan Strome.

Dylan Strome spent a majority of last year in the AHL, where he put up 53 points in 50 games. Should we be expecting big things from him this year?

The fanbase hasn’t always been so patient waiting for Dylan Strome to show that he can be an NHL player, let alone a top six center. This season fans are finally starting to see some payoff for the team’s patience. He scored the Coyotes’ first goal and is utterly dominating the league in faceoffs for a player of his age. Although expectations should be tempered it’s difficult not to hope this is his year to shine.

Does Rick Tocchet have any idea what he’s doing? It’s ok you can tell us…

Rick Tocchet had one hell of a baptism by fire last season when he went from the back-to-back cup champions to a team that had 43% roster turnover, six entry-level contract players, and a whole new coaching staff and system. His style of play is a heck of a lot more exciting and entertaining than Dave Tippett’s. Honestly though, ask again after game 25.

Game #6 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #6 – Coyotes vs. Hawks Douchebag Du Jour: Panik In The Stony Lonesome

By Sam Fels 1663 0

It seems like it was about a million years ago, but in the 2016-2017 season, Richard Panik scored 22 goals for the Hawks. This was after he managed six in a 30-game audition the year before. It led to a lot of noise about how the Hawks might be able to live without Marian Hossa, which left us trying to pick up the pieces of our jaw that had shattered when it hit the floor at terminal velocity. It was genuinely thought around here by some, where we think there’s a gas leak, that Panik was a genuine power forward.

He certainly looked the part at times, but once the Hawks handed him millions instead of thousands, suddenly everyone discovered he was a raging asshole. The Hawks shipped him out in the middle of last season, even though he was somewhat productive with 16 points in 37 games. We’ve never seen the Hawks’ beat tap dance on someone’s exit quite the way they did when Panik was given the thumb.

Then he went to the desert and got way drunk, getting arrested after not leaving a nightclub he was kicked out of, always a power move. The highlight of which had to be Panik continuously screaming at the arresting officers that he played for the Coyotes. If anyone in Arizona gave a flying fuck about the Yotes, it wouldn’t be seen as a hockey outpost to discard your trash that everyone in the dressing room is about ready to knife.

Panik caused a lot of annoying takes here in Chicago, when we had to keep pointing out that there was a reason he was an NHL journeyman. He’ll wear out his welcome in Arizona soon enough, if he hasn’t already.

 

Game #6 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

History Is Told By The Winners

By Sam Fels 2286 0

It’s not that it matters much, because it’s so far in the past. Doing revisionist stuff isn’t really healthy or prudent, but sometimes I can’t help it. And however it went down, the Blackhawks hiring of Joel Quenneville will go down as a seminal moment in Hawks history. It clearly could not have worked out better, no matter what our complaints and grievances have been along the way.

But I gotta tell ya, this “Oral History Of Quenneville’s Hiring” by Scott Powers is hilarious in parts. And that’s no fault of Scott’s, who is a friend and supporter of ours. He’s just recording what people said. What those people said though is just…oh my god, I can’t even.

Let’s go through some of it, shall we?

John McDonough, Blackhawks president: I can’t recall exactly, but I didn’t think we had a great camp. I don’t think I was alone in that thinking.

Right here, second quote of the article. I nearly fell off the couch reading this. Remember that when John McDonough was hired, which was less than a year before Savard’s firing and Q’s hiring, he made it clear he was not part of hockey operations. That wasn’t his duty or bag. He wanted you to know that. He would leave that to the hockey people.

So now all of the sudden he thinks the Hawks are having a bad camp? I mean, yeah, sure, he’s in the building and he’s watching practice and games I guess but…HOW THE FUCK WOULD HE KNOW?! What’s he comparing it to? He’d been in the job less than a year! What, did he do what he did for the Hawks game presentation and go around to every other team’s training camp and rip off what they were doing?

Again, this worked out incredibly well. But either McDonough is again trying to throw himself all over the credit for this hire, and/or he’s lying to you now or he was lying to you then. Or both! I just couldn’t let this one go.

Whenever something has gone right on the ice, McDonough does a reasonable impression of Usain Bolt to get in the way of any praise. This reminds me of the video of their second Cup win, when everyone is being interviewed about the 17 seconds. And McD is there to tell you the Bruins should have taken a timeout after Bickell’s goal. Oh, you think so, Toe McDonough? Your advanced hockey mind told you that?

Dale Tallon, Blackhawks general manager: It was kind of the end of the year and moving into the summer and into training camp, you hear things, and you develop and gather information and you go from there. It’s a day-to-day situation in our business. You’re only as good as your last game it seems.

You can see where Tallon knew he was fucked. Read between the lines here and what he’s saying is that McDonough and Rocky Wirtz hired Scotty Bowman as a consultant, because neither of them knew hockey from their ass, and essentially what Bowman told them was I can’t tell you what you’ve got on your roster until you’ve got a real coach running a real system, something Savard wasn’t and wasn’t doing. Oh and my son happens to be in the front office…

Remember that Tallon was also kind of forced to have Savard replace Trent Yawney. Savard was foisted upon SEVEN DIFFERENT COACHES as an assistant by Bill Wirtz. He was the pet project. When Tallon wanted to fire Yawney, Wirtz wasn’t about to pay two separate head coaches, so it was finally time to anoint Savvy. I’m not sure it was Tallon’s first choice, but it was his only choice. But it was yet another thing they could cuff to him when it came time to torpedo him a year later.

Brent Seabrook, Blackhawks defenseman: I remember playing like, I think Dunc (Duncan Keith), Soupy (Brian Campbell) and myself we all played 30 minutes a night the first three games and one of those was back to back. I remember being exhausted. So I don’t know if that was anything or what it was. It was probably nothing, probably just trying to win games.

You can see the problem. Also, under Savvy a lot of other teams thought the Hawks were horribly conditioned. You might recall a lot of blown leads the season before.

Stan Bowman, Blackhawks assistant general manager: The vibe that I remember was this didn’t have a feel like it was going to work in terms of Savy’s strengths as a coach, and I had known him for a long time because he had been with us for a while as an assistant coach. I just think sometimes your strength as an assistant doesn’t always translate over into being a strength of a head coach.

“I thought he was an idiot, so did everyone else, and I certainly wasn’t going to work with him when they gave me this job, which was going to be pretty soon.”

Bergevin: I said to him in the meantime, I said, “Joel, would you like to do some scouting?” He said, “I don’t want to travel, but I could watch games.” He loves hockey obviously, he loves watching games. I said, “That’s perfect. We have a kid in college, playing for CC (Colorado College), I believe, fast guy, I can’t remember his name, winger, left winger (Billy Sweatt).” He said, “I’ll watch some games in Colorado. If Dale wants that, I’ll just be like a part-time scout.”

I love this. They hired Joel Quenneville. To scout Bill Sweatt. Bill Sweatt. This is the story they’re giving you. They want you to believe this. Sidenote: Bill Sweatt just replaced the oil on your car.

Hmmm… I wonder what else might have happened in the fall of 2008 to keep the Hawks from making this move before the season started? What could it be? Just can’t put my finger on it…

To be fair, this arrest was already after camp had begun for the Hawks. So maybe this was the plan all along. But…come on. Look, the Hawks had a buzz, even after missing the playoffs the year before., Everyone around town knew big things were happening. And they were terrified of any bad buzz encroaching upon it. So maybe firing your coach who was the team’s most popular player for a decade and a half wasn’t something they had the total stomach for. Replacing him with someone who just had a DUI would have made it worse. They didn’t want anything to ruin the momentum.

But I’ll let you decide what you believe more.

Brent Sopel, Blackhawks defenseman: Having Joel on the staff, you knew something was going to happen at some point and time. You don’t bring Joel Quenneville, a guy who had been around the league and was known for what he had done all those years, you don’t put him on a staff. I felt at some point and time he was going to be the coach. When that was? Was that going to be in two weeks, two months, two years? But that was the feeling that I got.

Torchetti: I think we kind of got our ears up. I think everybody knew that.

Now here are two people giving you the straight dope.

McDonough: I think it was a combination of both. I think the decision that we were going to do this, this was imminent, but it helped that we felt we had somebody that would be a good fit. We did not plan on going the interim route, bringing somebody in as a temporary. We thought we had the right guy. I think history now says we do have the right guy and it’s worked out.

Don’t pull a muscle patting yourself on the back there, McD.

I mean, this tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it? We’re not going the interim route? You wouldn’t hire a guy you’re going to keep around for years on the fly. You would have done your research. This was the plan.

Rick Dudley: There’s a couple things I believe. I believed we all believed Savy could be successful in the National Hockey League. I believe Dale did. I believe all of us believed that.

How’s that working out?

None of this really matters. It worked out. It was the right move. And maybe one day, 10 years from now, we’ll get the real story and a bunch of other real stories about what really went down with this team. It’s just kind of amazing they’re still pushing the super polished version of events.

But hey, when you do what they’ve done, you get tell your story how you want it.

Everything Else

Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight – 10/16

By Sam Fels 1266 0

First Screen Viewing

Hurricanes vs. Lightning – 6:30

The Canes have been making some noise and throwing up some silly shot-totals at teams. Their only blemish is a loss in Winnipeg on the second of a back-to-back, and that was a tight one. There are no tests in October, but seeing as how the Bolts just disemboweled the Jackets on Saturday by a score of 8-2, you figure you can at least see where you stand at the moment. Not that the Bolts have come out guns-blazing, as they have a shootout win and the always mysterious ass-whooping from the Canucks on their resume as well. Should be up and down enough for ya.

Second Screen Viewing

Stars vs. Devils – 6pm

There’s only one other team besides the Hawks that haven’t lost in regulation, and that’s the Red And Black Of The Swamp. That includes wins over the Capitals and Sharks, as well has horse-donging the Oilers in Sweden. As you saw with the Devils last year, they’re young and quick if not all that talented. The Stars are on the second of a back-to-back, and the one thing they haven’t been is boring. Their five games have seen 33 goals scored, and they’ve won three of them. The Stars are still basically only one line, but it’s a hell of a line, and makes for good TV when you can’t play defense. Which they can’t right now.

Other Games

Avalanche vs. Rangers – 6pm

Panthers vs. Flyers – 6pm

Canucks vs. Penguins – 6pm

Coyotes vs. Wild – 7pm

Oilers vs. Jets – 7pm

Sabres vs. Knights – 9pm