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Game #57 – Hawks vs. Knights Douchebag Du Jour: The Vegas Flu

By Sam Fels February 13, 2018 1808 0

There are a lot of annoying things about the Vegas Golden Knights. As our colleague Slak pointed out on a podcast, the only league that has expansion teams at the top of the standings is MLS and that league is a joke. So that’s top. The Twitter feed, the coverage, wherever you want to start.

But there can’t be a bigger indictment of hockey players than the fact that the Knights have the best home record in the league. Yes, they’ve been a surprise. They should not have been this surprise. And that’s because NHL players can’t be asked to act like a fucking professional for one goddamn night.

It’s like hockey players have never heard of Las Vegas before. They know they can go there in the offseason or on bye weeks or All Star breaks, right? Or do they not know that New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, and Miami are also great places to go out? There’s nothing in Vegas you can’t do in NYC. And don’t say gambling, because if you’ve never been in a back alley dice game in Queens then you haven’t been to New York.

Like seriously, you have a game to play. Vegas has tons of great restaurants. Have a nice dinner, and then go out after the game. Scrap your travel until the next day. It’s not hard.

Maybe I don’t understand what it’s like to be young, rich, and good looking (I was never any of these). Maybe all of the temptations of Sin City, some of which are just out of reach for the plebes like us, are just too alluring. Maybe you just can’t say no. Maybe this will be a problem for any football teams that arrive there soon enough when the Raiders move. Then again, football coaches would never allow that shit and would probably keep their teams out in the desert until an hour before kickoff.

And the Hawks had done this before. It was always a stop on the Circus trip between legs, and yet they always seemed to have a good record on the Circus Trip. Because they didn’t have to play. I don’t think it’s asking much to treat it like a business trip. Anyone who’s done the convention thing in Vegas knows you save the good stuff until the end otherwise you end up blowing millions of the company’s money and you now have a business-hooker.

But getting hockey players to act over the age of 12 has always been a challenge.

Game #57 Preview

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Game #57 – Hawks vs. Knights: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

By Sam Fels February 13, 2018 1538 0

Game #57 Preview

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Game #57 – Hawks vs. Knights: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels February 13, 2018 1634 0

Game #57 Preview

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You There With The Flamethrower. Let’s Talk For A Minute

By Sam Fels February 13, 2018 2798 0

It would be folly to try and talk everyone off the ledge after last night. When you get pumped by the NHL’s worst team, there’s nowhere to hide. You’re pissed off. You should be. No matter the holes in the lineup, and even without Crawford, it shouldn’t look like this. There’s no excuse for this. There seems to be little excuse for 25 goals in 13 games. There’s simply no excuse for just how listless they’ve looked of late. For a team that prided itself on never panicking and never being beaten, they sure look like they accepted their fate (COOAAACHHHHH!) long ago. That was a team last night that didn’t look like it cared much.

So you want everyone fired. Understandable. You’re in a rage. Yeah, fair. It wasn’t that long ago that we saw stuff like this every year, but you’re accustomed to different. They’ve told you to be accustomed to different. This isn’t that. You want changes. You very well may get them.

But before we take a torch to it all, let’s breathe. Last night was an example of where we’ve been since Crawford got hurt. The 1st period was bad, and I can’t explain that away. But in the second, they showed some spice. They got a goal, had the momentum, and you really would have bet on them finding an equalizer.

But just like happened in Vancouver, and a few other times, whether it was a defensive mistake or goalie one, the Hawks let in a bad goal. And you can just see the life go out of them. There’s a real, “Why even bother?” air about them when stuff like this has happened. The fight goes out. And when you feel like your efforts are always going to be undone by something in your own end due to your own incompetence, it’s probably hard to muster up a ton of get-up-and-go.

Still, you want coach and GM fired. Ok, let’s go through that. I’m not sure Q can do any more with this roster than he has, whatever our complaints are, but it sure does feel like we’re at a point where firing Q doesn’t even have that much to do with him. Just a new voice and some new ideas might be welcome simply because they’re new. I don’t know who that would be–Brad Lauer as an assistant to Jon Cooper seems like a good start but it could be anyone–but it appears that Q doesn’t get the same response he did and he’s out of cards to play.

Here’s the other thing. It might be that the players would respond to some new assistants. We know Q’s choices for assistants haven’t exactly been glittering. Mike Kitchen – moron. They had to fire him for Q because the players despised him for so long. Jamie Kompon – moron. Kevin Dineen – we thought he wasn’t a moron, but then you look at this power play and you wonder. Ulf Samuelsson – judging by how the defense is playing, you’d have to guess he’s a moron. Maybe the players have seen through this.

You want Stan gone, too. Fair, I see why. It feels like he built a creaky roster wholly dependent on his goalie and the one thing that couldn’t happen happened. I would counter that many teams are in this position, and have before, but you’re not used to it. Fine.

This is where the Hawks lack of transparency hurts. Again, if Stan had come out at training camp and told everyone that this season, while they want to be competitive and be in the playoffs, what the main goal is is turning over the roster beneath the veterans. They have to blood in Top Cat and Schmaltz and Duclair and Forsling and Dahlstrom and Gustafsson and find out what they have. Then you wouldn’t much argue with what’s gone on here.

Ok, the Saad trade hasn’t worked out the way we thought. I also wouldn’t judge it on one year. Maybe this is what Saad is, but at 24 I don’t want to conclude that. If Panarin were still here, I doubt the Hawks are more than one or two points better. You still wouldn’t really have a bottom six. The defense would still be a mess.

Don’t even start with me about Hjalmarsson and Murphy. Murphy at worst has given the Hawks everything Hammer would have, and likely more. He’s just been the victim of his coach acting like a child. That’s not why this team kinda sucks. If not fully sucks.

So to me, firing Stan in the middle of a rebuild-on-the-fly to try and squeeze one more run out of this window isn’t sensical. If you want to fire him for previous mistakes–Johns, Teuvo, Danault–it seems like odd timing. And some of those, or all of them were parts of trades to either go for it, placate his coach, deal with contracts that he might not have had a full say over, or all of the above. Again, some of this is self-inflicted.

There’s the inability to develop a d-man. Well, there’s Johns but that’s about it. Forsling shouldn’t be given up on. We should see what Dahlstrom has. Neither look to be top pairing material, and the Hawks are going to have to find their own Charlie McAvoy or Mikail Sergachev or the like to take the heat off Keith. They haven’t proven they can find that.

You wanted a more active summer. Ok, but the problem was, as previously discussed, that with Hossa having to be LTIR’d you couldn’t really use his money. They could have used that space in the summer, and then just had no flexibility during the season. I’m not sure what d-man would have helped.

If indeed this is what this season was, without them stating it, I feel like you need to see it out. I’m not sure when it’s complete. Sikura and Jokharju? Whoever they draft this June is up? I would guess Stan gets a coaching hire and then two seasons to see where they are. Then you can blow it up.

All I ask is that next fall, they tell you exactly what it is they’re trying to do here.

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Game #56 – I’ve Woken Up, I’m In Our Bed, But There’s No Breathing Body There Beside Me – Hawks 1, Coyotes 6

By John Pullega February 12, 2018 2536 0

Box Score

Hockey Stats

Natural Stat Trick

Tonight’s effort killed whatever sliver of hope there was left for a playoff run this year. I could go on about how the numbers say the Hawks should have won, or point to the fact that the team shot 2% tonight despite taking 38 shots, but it doesn’t matter. All we could have asked for was an effort, and aside from two players, what we got was one of the saddest displays of Blackhawks hockey in recent memory.

There’s more to clean up than we have time for, but let’s try. To the bullets.

– It’s been a long, long time since Hawks fans have had to deal with this kind of answerless floundering. I find that when that happens, the best you can do is look to the positives. And one of the shining beams of hope for next year and beyond is, without a doubt, Alex DeBrincat. Despite playing with the somehow-dangling-trade-bait that are Bouma and Wingels, DeBrincat showcased the skill that is going to make him a star in this league. He was the only consistently noticeable Hawks forward tonight, making plays by himself and scoring the Hawks’s lone goal.

If the point of having him on a line with Bouma and Wingels was to make them look good, mission accomplished. And if you’re into palace intrigue, DeBrincat made mention of how the team had to “come out ready to play” against a team like Arizona during the second intermission. It’s both encouraging and disheartening to hear a 20-year-old rookie have to state the obvious with such obvious frustration and implied responsibility, but it’s been that kind of year.

– The other bright spot tonight was Erik Gustafsson. He found himself QB’ing the power play after Jordan Oesterle turned back into Jordan Oesterle, and he managed to look decent doing it. His entries were passable, at the very least. He also had a few aggressive pinches that make you think he might have some offensive instincts, and even rang a shot off the post late in the second.

– Now, to the bad. Let’s start with the obvious: The third goal allowed by Forsberg was not only the dagger for the game but also the season. After he let a horrid-angle shot slip under his legs, you could see everyone but DeBrincat and Gustafsson shrug and wonder whether the losing streak will apply to the tables after tomorrow night’s game. Glass Jeff was no better, but what did you expect? Makes you long for the days when the worst we had to deal with was laughing at the jamokes who said Crawford had a weak glove hand.

– If Jordan Oesterle doesn’t sit tomorrow, I’m kicking whoever’s driving the FIRE Q bandwagon out of the seat and flooring that fucker straight down Madison St. with my bare red ass blowing farts until someone answers my call. His complete disregard for the basic tenets of defensiveness led directly to the first two goals. On the first goal, after Anisimov lost the faceoff into his skates, Schmaltz managed to find the puck. He reached his stick out to poke it to Oesterle, who somehow overskated it, leaving Rieder all alone to streak behind the goal, pass it out to Chychrun, whose shot deflected off Domi and in. On the second, he set up Keller just perfectly by ringing a pass directly to his stick behind the net. He had a nice 20-game run or whatever it was, but at the end of the day, Jordan Oesterle couldn’t cut it on an Edmonton team who thought Adam Larsson was an equivalent comp for Taylor Hall. It’s time to quit sniffing the model airplane glue, Q.

– Speaking of firing Q, tonight was the first night where I seriously thought about who’s going to replace him after this year. This isn’t to say that Q is a bad coach, or that he will go down in Hawks lore as anything but the legend he is. But the kind of failure we’re seeing is probably going to require a bigger fish than Mike Kitchen to be sacrificed. Whether that’s fair is another question for another time, but tonight’s effort was the exclamation point on the most disappointing year the Hawks have had during this dynasty run, and it’s easier to fire a coach to send a message than just about anything else.

I wish I had answers for you all. I know that “Team shooting percentage is way down” doesn’t make this year suck any less. I know that hearkening back to all the Cups this team has won won’t make this year just go away. But while this year might be a lost cause, there are still a bunch of young players to watch as the year closes, including DeBrincat, Duclair, Gustafsson, Kampf, Vinnie, Murphy, and yes, even the ghostly Brandon Saad. I still contend that, based on the numbers, this is simply a terribly unlucky year compounded by losing the best player they have in Corey Crawford. Blowing up this roster would be a fool’s errand.

That said, you feel that after an effort like tonight, or like this year in general, there are going to be some paradigm-shifting changes on the horizon.

I’m here for it. We’re here for it. Join us, won’t you?

Beer du Jour: High Life.

Line of the Night: “Let’s see if they can keep it in . . . Nope.” –Foley, describing a power play.

Everything Else

Game #56 – Hawks at Coyotes Preview/Power Jam: Out That Way, It’s Just More Salt

By Sam Fels February 12, 2018 2179 0

vs.

RECORDS: Hawks 24-23-8 Coyotes 13-32-10

PUCK DROP: 8pm

TV: NBCSN Chicago

BY THE TIME THEY GOT TO ARIZONA: Five For Howling

It’s been a long time since the Hawks played a game totally in the dark, or one you’d definitely file under “scalper’s night off.” This will harken back to the long-forgotten Bad Old Days, with two last place teams duking it out in front of a probably half-full and indifferent arena. It might feel oddly familiar to you. You may think that you remember such times and that you may have even been at a few of these. Yes, you were. A decade can feel like a long time, but that’s all it was. You may wonder why you’re even bothering now, and then you’ll recall you wondered why you even bothered then. And here we are. Life is nothing but a cycle.

At least the Coyotes will be playing the role of “it could always be worse.” They’re in year 38 of their rebuild, or at least it seems that way. It was six years ago that the Coyotes Mike Smith’d their way to a conference final, and you probably haven’t thought about them since. Neither have they, at least that’s how it looks.

What must be so frustrating for Coyotes fans is that if the Yotes have a plan, it still looks to be in stage one. And they’ve been there for a few years now. And it doesn’t show great potential to get out of there soon. Before the year, the hope must’ve been to see what Domi, Keller, Duclair, Dvorak, and soon the call-up of Chychrun on the back end would portend to the future. Well, Duclair is here now, Domi is apparently on the trade block with his three goals, Dvorak has flattened out, and Keller and Chychrun do look like the real deal but they need a ton of help. Christian Fischer looks like he might be something, but Brendan Perlini and Tobias Rieder haven’t taken the next step. So as of right now, the Yotes might have two tothree pieces to build around. After six years of sucking. That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works.

A huge part of the problem, other than lack of talent, is that Rick Tocchet might not have any idea what he’s doing. Really the only claim he has in his coaching career, other than being his own sportsbook, is that he was a step up from Barry Melrose in Tampa Bay. Which is saying just about the bare minimum about anyone. He was quickly dumped there for Guy Boucher, which tells you all you need to know. It’s not clear that Tocchet has a defined system that he wants these guys playing, or that he has a deft hand at improving young players. Which should be the main goal right now of any Coyotes coach. Considering the players that have looked to stall out…

Usually when a team sucks you can point to goaltending, but Antti Raanta has been fine. Not great, but fine, though he’s missed some time with injury. Since Hjalmarsson and Demers returned from injury, the Yotes even have a decent top four with Chychrun and OEL. They just have nothing up front. It’s not a surprise they’re last in the league in goals. And even with that top four and Raanta they’re second-worst in goals against. They deserve to be adrift at the foot of the standings.

All of this lines them up for Rasmus Dahlin of course, which would lead young hot thing John Chayka some decisions to make. One of those could be made for him if Ekman-Larsson decides he deserves better. There would be markets for both Demers and Hjalmarsson, though someone has to remain behind to babysit Dahlin and Chychrun, should the former arrive. Or he Yotes could try and find a #1 center which quite frankly they’ve never had since Keith Tkachuk couldn’t put down the fork. But years of high picks have got them… this. See, it could be worse.

As for the Hawks… well, I’m not sure anyone cares anymore. Anton Forsberg should regain the net, Corey Crawford is at least with the team but one wonders if it’s even worth bringing him back now. We’ll find out a lot about the Hawks and how they think if he plays again this season or not. Carl Dahlstrom will remain in to do whatever it is he does. He’ll be in for either Kempny or Murphy, which will suck because at this point I don’t see why Jordan Oesterle can’t park himself in the pressbox for a night. Oh right, he needs to QB a critical 5-on-3. Head meet oven.

At this point it should be about professional pride for the Hawks. Yes, things are bad. Yes, the season is almost certainly lost. But if you go into Arizona and spit it, that means you don’t care and everyone is thinking about golf times already. Wouldn’t say much for the leadership of this team. So let’s not do that. And don’t give me the whole “draft position!” spiel. The Hawks aren’t going to be bad enough to get into the bottom five on record and if the NHL is going to rig the bouncing balls to get the #1 pick to the Hawks they can do that from anywhere.

Boy these last two months are going to be fun.

Game $56 Preview