Game #82 Preview
Like a day at the Robert Crown Center, this game leaves us cold, bored, and completely disenfranchised about things that are supposed to be fun. The good news is that none of it mattered, and it’s now almost over. To the bullets.
– This was less a hockey game and more a farewell to one of the most important Blackhawks of this era, Patrick Sharp. He got a nice video montage both before the game and in the third, and was slotted on the top line next to Kane, in hopes that he’d be able to recreate some of the magic of his younger years. While it’s no surprise that nothing really happened, it was a nice gesture from the organization. It hardly matters that Sharp was the worst possession player for the Hawks by far. Given that Colorado lost last night, the outcome of this game was window dressing, so giving Sharp a good sendoff was about as good as it was going to get.
It might be easy to forget just how good Sharp was for the Hawks in his prime, but I’m not going to take that away from whoever does his year-end wrap. All I’ll say is I’ll miss what Sharp once was and am glad to see him retire as a Hawk, which I assume is what he’ll do following tomorrow’s game.
– J-F Berube looked good until he didn’t, which is about par for the course. Crawford can’t come back quickly enough.
– One positive from this game was the chemistry between DeBrincat and Sikura. Sikura fed DeBrincat a few nice opportunities tonight, the best of which coming in the first period. Sikura took advantage of a Carter Hutton turnover behind the net and fed DeBrincat for a high-danger zone shot that Hutton managed to stuff. Then, in the second, DeBrincat returned the favor with a crisp pass through the Royal Road to Sikura, who also got stuffed by Hutton. The only real question is who’s going to center these two, because Ejdsell looks like a sore thumb out there with them. He’s going to need to progress by leaps and bounds if he wants to be the guy for these two.
– Duncan Keith had one of his worst games in recent memory tonight. He had three turnovers by the second period, and never looked comfortable on the ice. Again, this was a meaningless game, but watching Keith struggle as badly as he did is never fun. Like most of us, he’s obviously ready for this year to end.
– Connor Murphy also had a bad game, which makes two stinkers in a row for him. Only Duncan Keith had a worse possession night for Hawks defenseman, and what was worst about Murphy’s night was his regression into balloon hands in his own zone. He’s got a lot of potential as a defensive defenseman I think, but his struggles to exit his own zone are going to need to improve if he wants to stake his claim as the Top 4 guy we all think he can be.
– Outside of the Sharp farewell tour, this game was drudgery. The Hawks had 13 shots about midway through the third, and never looked alive at all out there. They finished with 20 shots, but I’d be hard pressed to describe any more than two. The highlight of the game was the two free chalupas and one cheesy gordita crunch I got in my Taco Bell order, which are currently calling my name from the microwave, the disgusting animal I am.
That’s it for the home games this year. In a game against a desperate rival, the Hawks rolled over, which doesn’t really deserve anything more than a shoulder shrug at this point. The last one’s tomorrow, and you should join Adam Hess for that one.
It’s been a pleasure writing for you all about this Hawks this year, despite the performances on the ice. We’ll be back at it for the playoffs and postmortems soon enough.
Beer du Jour: Dogfish Head Oak-Aged Siracua Nera.
Line of the Night: I didn’t catch the actual quote, but Brian Campbell suggested that the Hawks need a “character guy” like Andrew Shaw or Danny Carcillo during one of the intermissions. The perfect summary of this brat-fart season.
vs 
Game Time: 7:30 CDT
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago
METH: SLGT
And so it’s come to this, the home finale where the only thing left to do is to shit all over the the Blues and what remains of their playoff hopes. And that might be all right if just for tonight.
It’s still SLGametime.com. Don’t worry, after this you won’t hear from them until October.
Oh hey look, your team sucks too. What happened there? We haven’t seen you in a while so we kind of lost track.
Here’s the Reader’s Digest version. The Blues were one of the best teams in the NHL in October and November. Then early in December Jaden Schwartz took a shot off his boot in Detroit. Fucking figures. Broken foot, missed significant time. The Blues had basically become a one-line team with him, Brayden Schenn and Vladimir Tarasenko. Without little Schwartzy, the forward lines became a patchwork quilt of crap. At the same time, Jake Allen forgot how to make saves. Starter Hutton pushed him for playing time and Allen responded by allowing a shit ton of goals. The story line for the middle of the season became, “Thank god the Blues got off to such a good start so they are still safely in playoff position.” Then when Schwartz came back, they still couldn’t score. The team basically believed they were still the squad from the first two months. Every night they came out and played the same exact game and it didn’t work. It took fans booing and giving Allen sarcastic cheers for making an easy save after allowing four or five for the players to basically speak up and say, “We suck.” There’s been a little resurgence in the last 10 days or so, sparked by a return of the forecheck. Alex Steen and Kyle Brodziak (a pending UFA who chose to leave a Mike Yeo team before and remains unsigned even though he’s been one of the most consistent guys on the team all season) have become a nice little wrecking crew dragging Patrik Berglund’s useless ass down the ice. Allen has been forced to play better while Hutton recovers from a puck to the back of the head injury in practice. Bu there are 12 games left including tonight and they’re three points back of the Stars with a game in hand, but the Ducks are still ahead of them and the Flames right behind. It’s going to be a close call. Thankfully the schedule has some easy games on the schedule, including three with Chicago.
So this has to be it for this Jay Gallon bullshit, right?
I want to agree. I want to say he needs to find a quality realtor. I want to say the Blues front office believes he needs a change of scenery. But the guy is in the first year of a four-year contract extension for a $4.3 million a year cap hit. They signed him to the deal soon after trading Brian Elliott in 2016. It didn’t take effect until this season. They tried to make him the starter multiple times as career backup Elliott continued to outplay him. And now career backup Hutton has done the same. At every turn, the Blues have chosen to stick with Allen. And he’s shown he does not have the capacity to be a steady, reliable and consistent NHL goaltender. His positioning is bad, his focus worse. Watch tonight how many times the Hawks try to go short side. There’s a really good reason, it’s soft as Charmin. There were bullshit rumors that Montreal was interested in him, but it was a companion piece to a bullshit rumor that the Blues wanted Carey Price’s $10 million a year cap hit starting next season. Anyway, there’s a Finnish kid who looks like he’s the real deal named Ville Husso. He probably won’t start tonight after Allen got the OT win last night in St. Louis, but he’s only been trusted to wear stylish hats on the bench while Hutton has been hurt. By the way, Hutton is a free agent and probably has earned a nice little contract for a team who needs a stopgap guy while youngsters mature. So Allen, when he probably returns next fall, will probably have to fight off Husso for playing time. So yeah, expect Husso to get starts next season.
Doug Armstrong is gonna get canned for all this, no?
He has been the general manager since 2010. His team got to the Western Conference Final and two wins from playing for that big shiny silver thing. That was in the 2016 playoffs. Last year they got outplayed by the Wild and still won in the first round. They got rolled by the Predators in the second. This year they will be lucky to make the playoffs. These two step-back seasons coincided with the final two years in Armstrong’s contract. This season, he signed a four-year extension. With and option for a fifth! Let’s cover a few quick highlights. Thought Ryan Miller was the option when his career numbers were slightly worse than Elliott’s. Didn’t end well. Gave Jay Bouwmeester (Jabe O’Meester?) a five-year, more than $5 million a year contract extension for his early to mid 30s after he played about a million games in a row. He’s out six months with a hip injury. He gave Steve Ott $2 million a year for a couple years. He extended Berglund and Sobotka just 12 months ago and then was heavily rumored to be trying to move their embarrassing contracts at the deadline. He passed on a new contract for David Backes saying it was too much money for a player his age. And then a few months later gave an identical deal to Steen, who has underwhelmed to say the least. He protected Ryan Reaves and let David Perron go to Vegas in the expansion draft. Perron has set career numbers in assists and points. Here’s the biggest issue. The Blues have spent close to the cap every year since the current ownership group took over in January 2013 coming out of the last mini lockout. So that’s trying to win now, right? But in recent seasons he hasn’t tried to add in season, especially at the deadline. They’ve traded Kevin Shattenkirk and Paul Stastny at the last two deadlines. And he has refused to trade one of four highly regarded prospects saying he wants to protect the team’s future. In other words, he’s trying to win now. And build for the future. But he hasn’t committed fully to either. When you try to use all strategies, you don’t actually have a strategy. And as the Blues have imploded since early December, we have four or five years more to look forward to. Still shorter than the Seabrook contract length, though.
Ok, but there are more than a few promising kids here, right? Like, the Blues conceivably could turn this around next year…
Do yourself a favor and look up highlight videos of Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas. Have hard liquor nearby. They are destroying the OHL this season. Both played at the World Juniors for Canada. They have legit top-line talent. They are teenagers. There is still plenty of time for the Blues to fuck them up, trust me. With the last pick of the first round last June, the Blues used the first-round pick they got from Pittsburgh in the Reaves trade (WTF, indeed), and chose injured Russian Klim Kostin. He’s been one of the youngest guys in the AHL this year at San Antonio. He has all-world skill. Either scouts are xenophobic and dislike Russians, or he does have a little bit of a work ethic issue. And the other member of the Untouchable Four is Tage Thompson who will bring his bird legs to United Center tonight. He has size, reach, vision and velvety soft hands. He also weighs less than your sister, gets pushed off the puck by a light breeze and has more deer frozen in the headlights moments in NHL games than we can remember. He’s a work in progress. While all four of these guys are important, the subtraction of Stastny is more so. Can you believe his cap hit was $7 million? And if the Blues can convince Bouwmeester to be more like Marian Hossa and pretend to be injured all year (with a real hip injury instead of a make believe equipment allergy), they could put all of his $5.3 million cap hit on long term IR. That’s $12.3 million. Maybe they can find a taker for Car Gunnarsson and his almost $3 million and maybe John Tavares likes deep-fried ravioli and I know it’s a pipe dream, but you probably don’t want to envision Tarasenko and Tavares coming down the ice with the puck in Chicago for years to come, I’m just saying. Bottom line: Blues have legit prospects not far from impact status and potentially a difference-making amount of cap space to work with. Granted, we’re talking about the St. Louis Blues. We get that, trust me.
We kept asking our friends in Minnesota about this but they were never sure. Is Mike Yeo a Moron or Not A Moron?
I mentioned the Brodziak situation. He’s played well enough to warrant promotion to the third line. He knows his role and he has played it well and consistently all season. And yet it seems like he will test free agency for a second time after playing for Yeo. It’s not his fault Schwartz got hurt in December. It wasn’t his fault he has to play Sobotka, Berglund and Dmitrij Jaskin as the three forwards on his second power play unit, he has to play the guys put on his roster. And by the way, Tarasenko left the game Saturday night in the first period after a shot to the jaw. You’ll really be saying, “Who the fuck is that Blue?” if he’s not able to go tonight. I think he’s handled the goaltending debacle as well as possible. His lines sometimes make no sense. But again, the hand he’s dealt. Do I think he was the difference in winning a playoff round last year? Hell no. Do I think he could have prevented such a fall in the standings this season? Meh. You probably think the Blues are a bunch of assholes. They played that way much of January and February. Remember, Steen and Berglund and Pietrangelo have played for four head coaches for the Blues. Tuning out Ken Hitchcock and giving the new coach a momentary boost wasn’t just expected, it’s how they’ve operated their entire careers in St. Louis. That’s not on Yeo. And while saying you can’t blame him for shit going bad, it’s not like I can sit here and tell you he’s done anything to turn it around. The only thing that’s been noticeable has been his calm demeanor since he got here. And maybe that’s bad because these guys needed to get fired up several times and didn’t. Maybe they needed fire from the head coach, and they haven’t gotten it, at least in public. Hey Blackhawks, fire the mustache and we’ll put out a red carpet in St. Louis. It’ll be like “Quantum Leap.” The Blues could put right what once went wrong and makeup for firing Q when the team was resetting with an ownership change (not even the current owners) and turning over players across the entire organization. I know it’s not happening, he’s the new Ditka. But we know how that ended. Finally, fuck Patrick Kane, it’s fun watching Captain Serious be average and we will finally admit Corey Crawford is good. You’re welcome. Have fun at the draft lottery.
Game #81 Preview
Full disclosure, I’m named after a flower. Sure, there was a great-aunt Rose somewhere back in my family tree, but she was long gone by the time my parents picked my name. Kids at school used to taunt me that I was a flower child and my parents must be hippies, which was bait I didn’t take since nothing could be further from the truth. So I get it that having an unusual name can give kids a reason to pick on you, and as we don’t really choose our names, that isn’t really fair criticism.
However, that won’t stop me from asking, what the fuck kind of name is Tage? That’s not a name. That’s not even a word. That’s not like a Kayden, or Madison, or Mackenzie, all of which have become inexplicably popular lately. Kayden (spelled in a million different ways) has become ubiquitous and so we’re stuck with it, kind of like what happened with the name Stacy back when I was a kid (you never heard of any Stacys in Laura Ingalls Wilder books or Little Women, so when the fuck did that one come around?) Madison…well, I may laugh at the idea of naming a child after a street and/or last name of a very old, dead white guy, but if you’re really trying to prove your Hawks fandom, I guess it could be worse. And we all have that rando friend from college who now has a kid named Mackenzie, boy or girl, doesn’t matter. Come on, you know you do.
But Tage? That sounds like a joke Rob Delaney made on Twitter about his muscular sons. It’s not a clever approximation of another existing name (Bruce was a common name, switching out the vowel for a Y made it Bryce, which is different but better). It’s not a random noun that sounds kinda cool as a name, possibly in the vein of parents like mine, who aren’t necessarily hippies but want something unique (Juniper, Piper, words you would find in a dictionary even if they’re not exactly your thing).
Nope, this one is just stupid. Even on a team of dumbass names (Colton, Jayden, etc.) this one takes the taco. It screams “I’m super-young white guy and all my life everyone made a fuss over my entitled ass.” And while this guy has played about half the year with the Blues, he’s not good enough to make his bizarre name cool: his nine total points (3G/6A) and 49.6 CF% do not a phenom make, and you’d have to be generational-talent good to turn that name into an asset, rather than a pointless curiosity. Besides, look at this fucking guy. That hair has “Tage” written all over it. But if he ever makes a real impact on the Blues roster, expect lots of St. Louis-born babies to be sporting a moniker as dumb as they are.
Game #81 Preview
The keystone combo lives to fight with each other another day.
Coming on the heels of the Blackhawks most exciting win of the season, John McDonough emerged from his palace high atop the United Center to announce to the unwashed that the future Hall-of-Fame coach and (likely) future Hall-of-Fame executive will indeed be back next year.
I get why this may come as a shock, or upsetting to some, but the path for the Blackhawks was chosen at the trade deadline when they shipped off Ryan Hartman amidst whispers that he and the coach did not get along. At the time, the Hawks were playing some of their worst hockey of the season (Hard to believe, I know). They had just lost 9 of 10 and were wrapping up a stretch of 7-13-2 hockey that all but vanquished any hopes of the playoffs.
If the coach had truly lost the room and the front office was looking for an excuse to make a change behind the bench, that was a golden opportunity.
Instead, Hartman was dealt and the slog of the regular season continued.
Since the trade deadline, the Hawks have looked like they did for most of this year: Stretches where they look great and stretches where they look not so great. In between that, there were games where they had absolutely zero chance of winning thanks to goalie play that can only be described as “sub-optimal.” Perhaps others saw it differently, but it seemed like the only time the Hawks ever “quit” on a game was when they realized their goalies weren’t going to give them a chance to win. The games in Winnipeg and against Colorado jump immediately to mind.
It reminds me of when the Hawks ran up against lesser opponents with goaltending issues in previous years. If the Hawks weren’t too busy playing with their food and could jump out to a quick lead, the 2 points would be in the bag by the 2nd period. I guess if you do this long enough, everything comes back around. Time is a flat circle and all that.
In the meanwhile since the deadline, there was still the continued growth of players like Alex DeBrincat, Nick Schmaltz and Vinnie Hinostroza. At the very worst, DeBrincat and Schmaltz have played their first full NHL season and will now be better off for it. Hinostroza has solidified his spot as a NHL regular, whether it be here or somewhere else. Are we painting a clear enough picture for maintaining the coach yet?
Sam has written enough words about Stan Bowman’s job that he could probably write his biography at this point. There’s no need to rehash that and nothing has changed since the trade deadline, save for a few contract extensions. Which, by the way, a team likely wouldn’t let a lame duck general manager do.
That brings us to their current contracts. Joel Quenneville still has two years remaining at $6 million. Stan Bowman was extended in January 2016 and his contract runs through the 2020-2021 season.
For an owner to hit the EJECT button at this stage for either of them, the Hawks would have to be looking at a Phil Emery/Marc Trestman type situation. Seeing as though this was a combination that won three Stanley Cups, brought stability to the franchise for a decade AND were missing their All-Star goalie for the majority of the season, you can understand a little leeway.
This whole episode almost makes me wonder if the Hawks could have learned something from the other teams in town and became more transparent with the media and fanbase. The cap was not going up and last year’s free agent class sucked to high hell. With nothing in the pipeline other than DeBrincat close to providing an impact, it was quite apparent the Hawks were going to be doing some heavy lifting with the roster.
Instead of the now cliched “One Goal” bravado and tough talk of how unacceptable a sweep to Nashville was, imagine if Stan Bowman laid the groundwork for his heavy lifting by preparing the growing pains on the horizon.
Would the Blackhawks have drawn any less fans this year if he said in August, “While we would love to see Connor Murphy be a top pairing defenseman from the start of the season, helping him reach the level of his projections when he was a 1st round pick may take some time and we will be patient with him through the process.”
Would there be a mad rush of season ticket holders looking to cancel their plans if he said “The ultimate goal is always the Stanley Cup but we do recognize in a hard cap league that developing your own talent is critical to sustained success. And developing that talent does come with some growing pains. So while you may see us take one step back in the short-term, we feel confident we’re putting ourselves in position to take three steps forward in the long-term.”
If anything, they probably would have avoided some of this scrutiny and definitely some of the anger. Instead, we’re served this Q & A done by friend of the program Scott Powers where the team president basically says in so many words that there was no long-term plan at the start of this year, and that the people in charge will come up with a new plan and what that new plan will be is going to be great.
Welcome to Halas Hall West.
