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Preseason Game #6 – We’ve Been Blind to This Before – Hawks 4, Blue Jackets 1

By Rose Rankin September 29, 2018 1975 0

OK, this was the Blue Jackets’ B-team so temper your excitement when you see that score. That being said, the Hawks were not terrible tonight, and at times they were downright watchable. Again, I think we need to consider the competition but the Hawks did get shelled by the Ottawa fucking Senators not long ago, so if beating the scrubs of one of the scrubbiest teams is where we have to start, so be it. To the bullets:

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

– Cam Ward was not awful. He finished the night with a .938 SV%, but I hesitate to say he looked good, that number notwithstanding. The Jackets only managed 17 shots, and the one he let in was on a penalty kill that shouldn’t have ever happened (more on that later). So he did the job, yes, but he didn’t look especially confident or solid in net. Regardless, it was a much better showing than his last game. If this is the best level of competition he can handle, we’re truly fucked. But he was better.

– In the first, both Brent Seabrook and Artem Anisimov scored, and although I haven’t insulted or criticized them enough for that to count as an actual Fels Motherfuck, it was damn close. Obviously I’m glad to see them contribute, but I was a little concerned about how this will convince Q of his own genius in the ANNETTE FRONTPRESENCE department. David Kampf screened Korpisalo on the first goal by Seabrook, and after basically calling him wadded beef yesterday, that also is close to Motherfuck status.

– I think everyone was relieved to see Brandon Saad back on the second line. And that line was great—they finished with a 50 CF% but that dropped precipitously in the third when I think they stopped caring/trying. Through the second it was over 62%. Their passing and puck movement right around the top of the crease was textbook, and Saad’s goal in the second was a taste of what will hopefully come to pass this year for the three of them. Kane’s goal (also in the second) came at the end of a power play and wasn’t with Saad and Schmaltz but it looked absolutely effortless. So at least there’s that.

– The defense was also not awful. Well, Seabrook did trip over his own feet and fall down in the corner in the third, but in other breaking news, water is wet. HJ (remember, this is Jokiharju’s official nickname) had an 81 CF% with Duncan Keith tonight, and while it was clear that Keith had to clean up a few messes for his young counterpart, I was delighted to see HJ stay on the top pairing and get time and space to figure shit out. Even Seabrook and Brandon Manning had a 69 CF% (NICE). Sorry to sound like a broken record, but it was against shit competition. But the defense only gave up those aforementioned 17 shots, so it definitely could have been worse.

– There was still plenty of stupid out there tonight. Andreas Martinsen took an idiotic and dangerous boarding penalty on Dan Desalvo, which led to the power play on which the Jackets ended Cam Ward’s illustrious shutout. It was just oafish and unnecessary, and while the Martinsen-Kruger-Hayden line was mostly serviceable, the penalty leading directly to a goal will hopefully get this moron demoted and one of the other bubble guys can slum it on the fourth line. Is Dylan Sikura really that much worse? Seems doubtful.

So they ended the preseason on a high note, and now can exact revenge against Ottawa on Thursday (haha yeah right). Can they beat AHL-caliber guys whose head coach didn’t even show up for the game? Yes. Can they beat an actual NHL team? We’ll find out. As Foley and Eddie did not fail to remind us, tickets are still available, folks.

Photo credit: USA Today via Second City Hockey

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Your Four-Time Reigning Offseason Champs

By Sam Fels September 29, 2018 1992 0

That’s probably not fair. Because for once, Jim Nill and the Dallas Stars didn’t do something in the summer that had every hockey writer falling off their chairs and onto a Timbo’s wrapper(s). That’s usually been the M.O. in Texas. Whether it was signing Ben Bishop or trading for Jason Spezza or Tyler Seguin or whatever draft pick it was this time, it felt like very summer they were telling us the Dallas Stars had “arrived.” Arrived at what exactly I couldn’t tell you, because they’ve won one playoff series in 10 years. At least no one is expecting them to do that again.

I’ll give them this, I’m really all for teams hiring coaches from outside the normal, old-boys, well-I-drank-with-him-in-an-airport-bar-in-Manitoba crew. Jim Montgomery turned Denver into one of the premier hockey programs in the country, clearly has a knack for developing players, and it’s worth a shot. Sure, it hasn’t gone all that well with David Hakstol in Philly, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a try.

What’s he got in his team? Let’s do the scooping.

20170-2018: 42-32-8 92 points 235 GF 225 GA 51.0 CF% 53.5 xGF% 7.6 SH% .927 SV%

Goalies: THE BISHOP! We was too late…

We’re only two years removed from Ben Bishop being a Vezina finalist, and deservedly so. But the intervening years have just kind of been “meh,”with a .910 split between Tampa and LA and a just a tick above league average .916 in Dallas last year. If he were truly special, one has to wonder if the Lightning would have been so happy to turn the job over to Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Bishop will turn 32 this season, so he’s not ancient. He’s had groin problems the past few seasons, which for a goalie who is 6-6 isn’t ideal. It’s very unlikely that Bishop will sink this team, and there’s still a chance that he finds that Vezina finalist form he’s produced on two different occasions. Though this isn’t the Lightning he’s behind, and it’s a pretty leaky defense, now that Ken Hitchcock isn’t prioritizing it.

Backing him up is Anton Khudobin, Khubes was more than serviceable as Tuukka Rask’s backup last year, and he’s actually the last goalie to not turn into masticated potatoes in Carolina, all the way back in 2014. He’s never been a guy you want to turn a whole season over to, but if Bishop gets hurt for a few weeks he can get you out of it. And he can certainly give you the 20-25 starts needed to keep the starter fresh through the season. Sadly, this is not the Niemi-Lehtonen Axis Of Confusion it was before at the American Airlines Center.

Defense: It’s the same defense as it’s been, except they added Roman Polak to it, which is not something anyone would do if you were trying to make it better. It will be anchored by Esa Lindell and John Klingberg’s moderately-poor-man’s Erik Karlsson act. It’s been a few years now where Klingberg has dominated possession and put up a fine collection of points, so we have to concede he is one of the league’s best even though you can go games without noticing him. His style is just kind of understated, and yet he remains perhaps the best passer from the back end in the league today.

Stephen Johns and Marc Methot will be the second pairing, at least until some part on Methot goes “TWANG!” which it always does. The underlyings haven’t been kind to Johns, but it is he who both Lindy Ruff and Hitch trusted with the tougher shifts than Klingberg, and Montgomery probably won’t be different. He provides the platform for Klingberg, much like Vlasic and Braun did for Burns in San Jose until this season. He’s also been paired with a collection of stiffs since he arrived.

The third pairing is where it gets ugly, and literally so, as that’s where Polak and youngster Dillon Heatherington reside. These are both monoliths, and in Polak’s case one that can’t move. If Montgomery is smart he’ll play the other two pairings 25 minutes a night and try and keep these doofuses off the ice as much as possible. But if Methot gets hurt, which he will, one of these heavy bags is going to have to take harder shifts with Johns, and that’s where it might go balls-up for this team.

It’s not a bad blue line, it’s just awfully thin. They have to stay healthy. And why isn’t Julius Honka part of this? If they replace one of the security guys on the third pairing with Honka and let him run wild, then this has a chance to be a real strength of the team.

Forwards: Montgomery is going to have the same problem the two veteran coaches had before him. There’s a great top line here in Jamie Benn (and his fear of all things southern), Tyler Seguin, and Alex Radulov. But below that there’s borderline mummy in Jason Spezza and a raft of younger players who have just been “not quite” their whole careers. Matthias Janmark, Radek Faksa, Devin Shore, Brett Ritchie are names we’ve heard for a while who promise to break through this time because now they get it, and then April rolls around and they all have 35 points and the Stars are out of it again. Let’s just say they have to prove it to be nice.

Valeri Nichushkin, who in his rookie year looked like he was going to tear the sky off the world at times and then just was kind of there, has returned from a sabbatical in the KHL. Injuries didn’t help him, as he missed a whole season in his first go. He didn’t really do dick in Russia either, so counting on him to be the secondary scoring the Stars have been crying out for for three seasons is probably folly.

Outlook: The Stars didn’t miss out by much last year. You can squint and see where things might improve for them. Maybe Bishop has one more brilliant season in him. Maybe being free of Hitchcock-shackles turns the defensive corps into more of a weapon, especially if Honka flowers. Maybe those kids just were too suppressed under Hitch (and you can easily see why). But they had their chance under Ruff too and never did quite enough.

The top line will score. Klingberg will be great. If they can get one or two others in on the fun, they could sneak back into the playoffs. If anyone important gets hurt, they’ll be sunk.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Colorado Avalanche

By John Pullega September 28, 2018 1737 0

Few teams have ridden the roller coaster as hard as the Colorado Avalanche. You probably remember them best as the ruptured polyp in the direct center of the Blackhawks’s asscrack over the past five years, when, no matter how bad they were, they always seemed a little bit faster than the Hawks. You’ll certainly remember Patrick Roy swinging his shit-filled diaper over his head like a slingshot night in and night out as he slobbered the 2013–14 iteration of this team to a 112-point first-round bounce, only to have the entire team fuck off to the land of wind and ghosts over his next two years because he’s a gigantic horse’s ass.

This team has been Jared Bednar’s for the last two years, and after finishing dead last in his first year, they spasmed a playoff appearance last year on the backs of Nathan MacKinnon and noted woman beater Semyon Varlamov. Word around town is that they have playoff aspirations this year as well, so let’s see if there’s enough oil in this buggy to get them there.

2017–18

43 W, 30 L, 9 OT, 95 PTS

257 GF, 237 GA, 22.0% PP, 83.3% PK

47.59 CF%, 10.5 SH%, .917 SV%

Goalies: For as long as they’ve mattered, the Big Foot has relied on stellar goaltending to keep them afloat. And credit to Joe Sakic for understanding that this is now a goaltender league, because on top of having an NHL-caliber piece of dogshit in Varlamov, he went out and got a 1A goalie in Philipp Grubauer. The idea is to keep Dogshit at around 50 games, which is typically where he’s done his best work. Last year saw Dogshit post a strong .923 SV% at evens and an outrageous 90.7 SV% on the kill, which went a long way in jettisoning the Avs to the fourth-best PK slot in the league.

With Grubauer backing Dogshit up for when he gets hurt or arrested, the Avs managed to get even better in net. You’ll remember Grubauer as the guy who started for the Caps early in their playoff run last year when Braden Holtby started to run out of gas. Grubauer’s regular season numbers at evens were outstanding, with a .931 in 35 games. His short-handed percentage sat at a pedestrian .870.

Barring injury, this is where the Avs are going to thrive, because even if Dogshit gets hurt, they have one of the best backups you can ask for in Grubauer. When your backup is tossing a .923 in all situations, it’s hard to worry.

Defensemen: Now this is where it gets dicey. Professional golf-cart crasher Erik Johnson will lead the Avs with his milquetoast interpretation of hockey defense, and he’ll be mostly fine doing it. Last year saw him pairing primarily with Nikita Zadorov in a shutdown pairing role, with the two of them posting 5v5 CF%s of around 48% while spending most of their time in the defensive zone. Also of note is young Grease Lightning Sam Girard, who at just 20 years old looks to explode on the scene this year. He potted 20 points in 68 games as a 19-year-old last year. When you think about how defensemen in the NHL will look in the next decade, Girard is probably as fitting a prototype as you’ll find. He can move the puck, has good vision, and his skating is legitimately artistic. The only real knock against him is he’s a bit light in the ass at 5’10” 160, but we’ve seen before that with the right skill set, size doesn’t matter much. And Girard has that skill set. He’s likely to pair with Johnson on the top pairing this year.

After that though, you look at the Avs blue line like a loogie dangling from the ceiling of the Blue Line. Ian Cole was brought in to do whatever it is that Ian Cole does, which is be a defensive defenseman? Tyson Barrie will continue to get to the wrong spot really, really quickly, and yet be a nightmare on breakouts. If Patrik Nemeth, Mark Barberio, or Mark Alt do anything for you, see a doctor. Overall, the blue line is a Hot Pocket, simultaneously ice cold and scalding hot and never quite cooked even.

Forwards: The first line for the Avs is insane. Nathan MacKinnon isn’t even fucking 25 yet and was arguably the best centerman in the West last year. Now that Patrick Roy isn’t spreading his GET MEAN diaper rash to Gabriel Landeskog, he can focus on everything else he does well, which is really everything. Mikko Rantanen scored 84 points as a 21-year-old last year and could be a 30-goal scorer if he keeps up his 15–16% shooting rate (do you remember laughter?). You’re looking at 200–250 points from this top line.

After that, it’s much less robust. Alex Kerfoot projects to anchor the second line on the left wing. His 43 points as a rookie last year were impressive. Tyson Jost could never quite put it together last year, which is exactly the kind of player you want centering your second line. JT Compher is fast and nothing more. Sven Andrighetto is the same person with a harder to spell name. Their shutdown line of Matt Calvert–Carl Soderberg–Matt Nieto will be a sandpaper lullaby. The Avs are high on their first-round pick Martin Kaut, and it’s possible he’s called up mid-season, depending on how the Avs shake out. Kaut is touted for his offense, which is precisely what the Avs will need down the stretch, given their hot-potato possession tendencies.

Outlook: The Avs are a get-up-and-go team. They do not give a fuck about possession, and with all the offensive firepower on the first line coupled with rock-solid goaltending, they really don’t need to. If Kerfoot and Jost put it together and Kaut manages to make the team down the line, the Avs will have a bit more cushion to work with offensively. You can see them squeaking into the playoffs again this year.

And they’ll also have the best shot at Jack Hughes in the upcoming draft, with Ottawa’s farcical leadership’s complete inability to do anything right ever keeping this year’s pick so they could draft Keith Tkachuk’s other garbage son. Come this time next year, the Avalanche might be a legit contender.

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Their Emblems Built of Garbage – ’18-’19 Blackhawks Player Previews: David Kampf

By Rose Rankin September 28, 2018 1783 0

More like David CAN’T, AMIRITE? I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. But it was right there on a tee. You would have done it too. OK anyway, David Kampf is one of those on-the-bubble guys who could play on the bottom six, could be sent down to the Ice Hogs, and will probably do a bit of both. He’s naturally a center and it would seem the Hawks are settled on Toews, Anisimov and Kruger, (and hopefully Schmaltz, wtf THIS ONE IS EASY GUYS) so Kampf will likely play wing, unless someone on that list totally craps the bed or Q continues with this nonsense of Schmaltz on the wing (both are a real possibility). Let’s look closer:

2017-18 Stats

46 GP – 4 G – 7 A

51.6 CF% – 46.0 oZS% – 54.0 dZS%

12:48 Avg. TOI

A Brief History. A fresh-faced youngster from the Czech Republic, Kampf turned out to be a serviceable bottom-six guy last season. He centered Sharp and Top Cat, and at times Top Cat and Our Cousin Vinny (skypoint) during Q’s obnoxious third-line experimentation. He was also competent in the defensive zone, taking the majority of his starts there while maintaining a respectable 51.6 CF%. His point totals weren’t lighting the world on fire, but for a bottom-six guy that’s kind of what you’re stuck with. He had 11 points in 46 games with the Hawks, and 19 in 45 games total with the Hogs during the season, including the AHL playoffs. He even scored his first-ever NHL goal on his birthday—how fucking adorable is that?

It Was the Best of Times. The best-case scenario here kinda depends on who you are. If you’re David Kampf, it would be for Anisimov to get hurt or just to suck something awful, and he ends up as the 3C. Now, if Anisimov gets hurt, meh, that happened last year and Kampf filled in just fine. But if he sucks something awful for the amount of time it takes Q to finally demote him and his wide dick to the press box, it’s going to be quite painful for the rest of us.

There’s been all sorts of weirdness with the lines lately, and not that any of it should be taken as gospel, but another decent outcome would be for Kampf to play wing on Kruger’s line, hopefully with someone not named Andreas Martinsen. He could center the third line with Brandon Saad and Chris Kunitz (for the record I am against this idea of Saad on the third line but it seems to be a thing happening, shitty performance last night notwithstanding), he could center Dylan Sikura and John Hayden, or there could be some other random combination. The bottom six are still a game of Tetris right now where no one’s entirely sure who will fit where except for Kruger as one of the two centers. But if Kampf is decent enough to contribute in any meaningful way, that will be a win for the Hawks. Penalty killing would be nice, given his apparent comfort in the defensive zone and not-wretched faceoff numbers. At 6’2” and a shade under 200 lbs. he’s not a complete oaf and seems to have decent speed.

It Was the BLURST of Times. Conversely, the worst-case scenario would be that Kampf is the one who sucks something awful and he lands a permanent spot on the Ice Hogs. The Hawks could use depth in the forward corps…I know it’s not as dismal as the defensive situation, but this team will be lucky to make the playoffs and we need pleasant surprises and lucky breaks wherever we can find them. Having another young prospect turn out to be a quadruple-A guy does nothing for anyone.

Prediction. Kampf will likely be closer to quadruple-A than anything else. Maybe I’m just being a pessimist (duh), but I think he’ll fill up space when Anisimov gets hurt—which he will, he has the last few years and it’s going to happen again—but Kampf won’t break out for a crazy number of goals or anything like that. He’ll score about 15 points, will be a decent journeyman, and probably not much else. Not that I got anything against the guy—I actually think it’s cute how Jan Rutta is his little translator friend, because if I had to give interviews in a foreign language I would be terrified beyond belief and I admire anyone who figures out a way to get through it (this makes me hate Rutta less at the same time). But I’m a black-hearted realist as well, so I’m taking the under on this one.

Previous Player Previews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Brent Seabrook

Brandon Manning

Jan Rutta

Erik Gustafsson

Henri Jokiharju

Nick Schmaltz

Chris Kunitz

Victor Ejdsell

Brandon Saad

John Hayden

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Preseason Game #5 – Ottawanna Go Ta Bed – Hawks 1, Senators 2

By John Pullega September 27, 2018 1839 0

Tonight’s preseason game was as invigorating as a toenail-clipping party. That’s about par for the course when both Ottawa is involved and Garbage Dick is on the sidelines. We did learn a little bit in this game though, so let’s get through it.

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

– In true FFUD form, just a few hours after Hess wrote about how you’ll never really notice John Hayden out there, John Hayden was probably the most noticeable Hawk for most of the game. The Hayden–Marcus Kruger–Andreas Martinsen line was by far the best performer on the ice for the Hawks tonight, which is both good and bad: Good in that it’s always encouraging to see the fourth line dominate possession like they did, bad in that your fourth line probably shouldn’t ever be the most noticeable line, especially against a team contending for the first overall pick (IF THEY STILL HAD IT THAT IS). Hayden’s performance got him bumped up to the “second” line with Schmaltz and Anisimov later in the game, and while he wasn’t as noticeable in that role, he sure earned it.

– With Hayden moving up, Dylan Sikura got bumped down to the fourth line in the second half of the game. The hawk-eyed Mark Lazerus suggested that this could potentially be a death knell for Sikura’s hopes of breaking camp, especially with Luke Johnson and David Kampf playing relatively lights out. It’ll be a huge disappointment if Sikura has to start in the AHL, as just about everyone assumed he would be an offensive contributor out of the gate. Something to keep an eye on.

– Anton Forsberg only gave up two goals, and the first one was on blown coverage from “Hard J” Henri Jokiharju and Dominik Kahun. The second was on a Joe Louis Arena-esque bounce off the end boards. Overall, he looked decent, but he always looks like an eighth grader nervously asking his crush to dance with him when under pressure. There’s a loudness to his playing style that always has you on edge it seems.

– Jokiharju is going to have a pretty steep learning curve to overcome on the defensive side of the puck, but that’s not the end of the world. His offensive instincts are there. He ended up with a 45 CF% on the night, spending most of his time with Keith.

– Thank fuck Alex DeBrincat is 5’7” and fell to the Hawks in the draft last year (with the pick they got for Andrew Shaw. Never forget that.). The pass he conjured through Chabot’s legs on the Jonathan Toews goal slipped past three Senators total, and was simply a sight to behold. They may have brought Saad in to reinvigorate The Captain, but Top Cat on his left side is going to be the Michelangelo to his Renaissance.

– I’ve been pissing and moaning about Brandon Saad on the third line with Chris Kunitz and Luke Johnson since it’s been announced, but his play was deserving of his status tonight. He had a few unforced turnovers early and never really got into a groove. He finished with a disappointing 44.44 CF%. There might be a couple of mitigating factors here: Namely, Kunitz and Johnson are grinders and Saad was playing on his off wing, which he’s never really done, but that’s not much of an excuse. With the Nick Schmaltz–Artem Anisimov–Sikura line being the only line to be more of a ghost out there, I still think putting Saad with Schmaltz and Patrick Kane will be best for everyone, but his performance tonight didn’t inspire confidence. The Fels Motherfuck knows no bounds, apparently.

– Let’s cut this “Nick Schmaltz on the wing” horseshit out now.

Join us next week when we watch the Hawks play the fucking Senators again, because nothing worth doing ever comes easy.

Everything Else

You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: A Team In Vancouver That Apparently Exists

By Sam Fels September 27, 2018 1534 0

You would think it would be hard to not think about the Vancouver Canucks anymore. After all, we’ve been through so much together. Maybe it’s their isolate placing on the continent. All tucked away down there. But that can’t be it. At least not solely it. Maybe it’s that their rebuild is too shrouded is monumentally dumb signings that mean they’ll never be relevant. Which is fine. Maybe it’s without the Sedins I can’t really identify anyone who’s there, nor do I care to.

This is how it used to be with the Canucks. They played in either a really dark arena or then moved into a really brightly lit one. They wore bad uniforms, and that’s really all you knew about them. They were the extras for the real show, which was the Oilers or Kings or Avalanche or whatever else.

What’s funny, and perfect, about the Canucks is that what sprung them out of anonymity is Todd Bertuzzi assaulting Steve McCarthy. No one thought about them before, and after that we weren’t able to get rid of them until now. And mostly it was for additional, cowardly, despicable acts. No one’s ever really marveled at anything they’ve done hockey-wise.

It’s kind of amazing that this organization ever figured out how to contend. Although the truth is they never did. The Canucks only run of consequence came when the Wings got too old, the Hawks had their first cap problems, and the Kings hadn’t matured yet. It also helped they played in the worst division in hockey history before realignment, and that includes the one made completely up of expansion teams in 1967. Once the Hawks recovered and the Kings figured it out and one or two other teams became good, the paper tiger that has been the Nucks in their entire existence folded back into the shadows. Where they belong.

So let’s run through whatever this is and get on with our lives.

2017-2018: 31-40-11 72 points 218 GF 264 GA 47.6 CF% 46.5 xGF% 7.2 SH% .921 SV%

Goalies: Contrary to popular belief, Jakob Markstrom is not the substitute teacher from the Simpsons that Lisa became infatuated with. He apparently plays goalie for the Canucks. And much like the rest of the team, he was indistinguishable from the scenery. He put up a .912, which is just a tick under league average. IT was his first full season as a starter. He turns 29 during the season, so I think we can probably say this is what he is. They’ll be pining for Thatcher Demko pretty quickly.

Backing him up will be Anders Nilsson. He was good is spot-duty in Buffalo two years ago. He wasn’t in Vancouver last year. He’ll be 29 as well this season. Again, these are placeholders for Demko to replace, if he can.

Defense: Alex Edler and his magical flying elbows are still somehow here. So is Chris Tanev, who clearly should have been traded last year as he was the only piece they could have gotten anything for. Tanev has two years left oin his deal so the deadline would be THE TIME to move him, which you can be assured the Canucks will biff.

For some reason they have a second pairing of Michael Del Zotto and Erik Gudbranson, possibly to construct the most-overhyped-in-the-past pairing in the league. Both of these guys belong on a third-pairing if that, and that they’ll be getting more minutes for the blue and green shows what kind of season they’re headed for. Troy Stetcher might be good…or it might be a term for some living room device that only rich people have. I’m not really sure.

They need help, and they seem excited about Olli Juolevi and one or two other kids. You’ll see some of them before the year is out.

Forwards: It’ll be the first season since 1984 that the Canucks will line up without The Children Of The Corn. Passy and Shooty Twin have moved on to their matching houses with matching yards and matching outfits somewhere in the suburbs of Vancouver or Sweden, not that it matters.

Which means Bo Horvat is now the #1 center. Which means watching this team should be considered community service. Horvat has never lived up to his draft position and probably never will. He’ll get to play with Brock Boeser, or Bose Brocker, or Brick Boser. Whatever his goddamn name he is the only genuine talent anywhere on this roster. His 29 goals were no fluke, and he has one of the best shots in the league.

Elias Pettersson and Nikolay Goldobin are the only other hopes, and Pettersson turned some heads at camp at 19. But if it’s bad contracts you want, boy are you in luck! Can I show you Sam Gagner? Are you interested in a Jay Beagle at $3 million a year to not be anything more than a checking center?Brandon Sutter at over $4 million for a fourth-line center? How about Loui Eriksson for $6 million a year until the sun swallows us all (thankfully) to score 22 goals you’ll never remember? Sven Baertschi at $3 million to do….something?

Oh, and Jake Virtanen is still here. And he still sucks.

Outlook: With Stetcher, Demko, Boeser, Pettersson, and possibly Goldobin, there are some kids here who could possibly make up the next Canucks team that isn’t a fart in the wind. I would imagine Adam Gaudette will be up at some point in the season, and we can only hope he doesn’t prove to be the only reason anyone cares about Dylan Sikura (though that’s more on Dylan). Kole Lind is another they’ll keep an eye on.

But they are hardly enough to wash away the massive amounts of shit you dig out of your eye when you wake up that populates this roster. The goalies aren’t impressive, the defense is terrible, and the forwards don’t have enough scoring or speed or anything else. And the coach might be an idiot. If the talent ever spikes in Arizona, this is an outfit headed for last place.

Not that you’ll notice. Because in every fashion, the Canucks are a dark room.

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: The Knights Who Say Ni

By Sam Fels September 27, 2018 1614 0

We, or maybe just I, spent most of the season bitching about the Vegas Golden Knights, and specifically how stupid they made the league and really the nature of the sport look. Because they didn’t reinvent any wheel here, despite what some would like you to think. They just put together a bunch of fast players, got somewhat lucky when other teams overvalued complete stiffs and gave them useful parts instead, and then told them to get the fuck up the ice as fast as possible and score. And because hockey is decided on such tight margins, you only need a few bounces and a division made up of partially digested foodstuffs to suddenly find yourself with more than 100 points and in a Stanley Cup Final.

But really, the indictment wasn’t on the Knights but on the league that A.) couldn’t see what the Penguins had been doing the previous two years and replicate it and B.) fanbases and front offices who still can’t see how arbitrary all this can be.

It could very easily go sideways on the Knights, and it wouldn’t take too many of those bounces reversing themselves for it to do so. They’re not getting .927 from Fleury again. Wild Bill Karlsson is not shooting 25% again. Without Nate Schmidt, other teams might discover that this blue line actually sucks, though the Knights system and speed shelters it just about as well as any team can.

But they’re also buffeted against that better this year. And the division still requires golf shoes to wade through. We’re goin’ in…to Sin City…

2017-2018: 51-24-7 109 points 272 GF 228 GA 50.9 CF% 50.6 xGF% 8.3 SH% .921 SV%

Goalies: No reason to not run it back from last year, though handing Marc-Andre Fleury the contract extension they did is going to end up with everyone covered in expired pudding (does pudding expire? I can’t even remember the last time I had pudding, honestly. Do adults eat pudding? They do, right? How come I never do? Has it all gotten away from me?).

I know how it goes whenever I say something definitive, as the “Fels Motherfuck” is becoming Chicago lexicon right up there with “Zorich To Linebacker!” But there’s simply no way Flower gets back to a .927 SV% this year. We have 13 years of data to look at with him. His career-mark is .913. Last year’s spasm of godliness was a career-high by six points. Fleury put together back-to-back .920+ years in Pittsburgh in ’15 and ’16, but bottomed out in ’17 with a .908. What exactly he’ll put up this year is hard to pinpoint, so I’ll go safe and general and say it’s probably between his career mark of .913 and .920. Which is fine. Can the Knights do as much with just “fine” in net? Probably not. But they can still be good.

Fleury’s “Starry Season” masked the fact that the Knights also got highly competent work out of Malcolm Subban, both as a backup and when Fleury was hurt. And Subban had struggled in the AHL his last two seasons there, much less the NHL. He’s still only 24, and we know the learning curve for young goalies is steep and treacherous. Maybe last year is a glimpse of what he can be, but the Knights will not be wanting to turn too much over to him this season.

Defense: Whatever you think of Nate Schmidt’s suspension–and you think it’s ridiculous because it really is given his very plausible and backed-up defense–he’s gone for a quarter of the season. It’s a big miss. Which is weird to say, because we’re fairly sure he was never top-pairing quality, and yet he was in Vegas and they were a good defensive team.

So before delving any further into the Knights’ blue line, it’s important to remember how their system protects what is a unit that lacks talent. They aren’t asked to break themselves out of trouble. They barely have to pass. The defense is merely asked to get the puck out to the neutral zone for the forwards to skate onto. It can be the fly pattern or simply a chip off the glass. And because the forwards are so frenzied and make everything look like Smash TV, the Knights d-men aren’t in the d-zone all that much. Their forwards also help a ton on the backcheck. Because they have to.

Because when you look at a list of names like Colin Miller, Brayden McNabb, Shea Theodore, Deryk Engelland, and Nick Holden, we know everyone pretty much sucks aside from Theodore. And the sample size isn’t huge on him yet. They’re not even that quick. But again, the Knights ask of little of them as possible. So every piece of logic and evidence I have says it’s not a good blue line. But it also might not really matter. Fuck, the Penguins won two Cups with defensive corps that were just above mop-bucket residue. It’s kind of the way things are going.

Forwards: Let’s clear this up right now. Jesse Marchessault and William Karlsson are not combining for 150 points again or 70 goals. I just can’t believe that, because alone Karlsson is not going to shoot 25% again. Seriously, the dude had one of every four shots go in. In the past 10 years, only two players have managed more than one 20%+ shooting season, and they are Alex Tanguay (who somehow did it five times and I don’t know why we even bother trying to figure out this world) and Mike Ribeiro. Karlsson has a date with a Lady named “Regression” and she just ordered the lobster.

Marchessault could actually consider himself a touch unlucky, as even with his 27 goals last year he saw his SH% drop from 15% the year before to 10% last campaign. We’ll see what he is this year. The Knights are simply better supported though for any kind of sinking from the top line because the second line is Alex Tuch–Paul Stastny–Max Pacioretty, which is probably their first line when all is said and done. That’s going to generate more scoring than Tuch-Doofus Du Jour-James Neal. Though with Stastny and Patches, it’s probably not as quick but if Neal found a home in this system, they’ll find a way to get something out of those two as well.

The bottom-six is still comprised of the hopped-up gnats it was last year like Erik HAULA!, Cody Eakin, Tomas Nosek, Oscar Lindberg, Ryan Carpenter, and because they have to give away at least one roster spot to galactic stupidity Ryan Reaves is here (please let Gerard Gallant use him with the goalie pulled again. I need as much mirth in my life as I can get right now). The names don’t do much for you but again, they’re all quick and they’re told to be quicker and most teams can’t live with it with their third-pairings.

Outlook: They’re not the Sharks. Regression is going to hit them in a few spots. But with that second-line and all the games they get against the other teams wandering the countryside with no particular plan or urgency, it’s hard to see them losing the 15-20 points that would make a playoff spot suddenly in jeopardy. Maybe Fleury falls completely apart. Maybe Subban can’t bail him out at all. Maybe Karlsson and Marchessault shoot like 7%. But those seem extreme. Second place seems like home, a comfortable 98-102 points. Who who else in the Pacific can you safely say gets there?

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