Hawks
Notes: Life it seems to fade away…getting farther every day…
Ducks
Notes: Toward the end of their last game, Ritiche and Rakell switched spots so look for that tonight…it’s Getzlaf’s 1,000th game. Celebrate by walking around your house doing a whole lot of not much before tossing your spouse a peanut butter cup every 12 minutes…they really miss Manson, who dovetailed with Hampus! Hampus! far better than the monolith Gudbranson will…
After watching this game I had to sleep on it. And get an extra hour. There’s another one of these tonight, not to mention a Bears game, so let’s just get to it:
–The story was supposed to be Adam Boqvist‘s debut, so let’s address that right out of the gate even though his performance wasn’t all that exciting. In fact, his numbers with Duncan Keith weren’t great (37 CF% with Keith) but there were flashes of what could be future brilliance. On his lone SOG, he had a lovely maneuver in the second period that was set up by a Kirby Dach pass, showing that there may be hope after all with the next generation. Boqvist didn’t quite finish that attempt but it still left everyone’s pants a bit tighter. Overall he was fine, he at least tried moving the puck, but the possession situation was an issue. At one point he and Keith spent a full three minutes pinned in their own zone because neither they nor Kampf could get control of the puck. Luckily Crawford bailed them all out but whether or not he stays paired with Keith, Boqvist needs to at least get the puck before he can move it up the ice.
–And that really gets to the larger issue in last night’s game, which was the Hawks’ general inability to be functional. Should we be losing our minds over a kid’s shitty possession numbers in his debut game? No. But the complete lack of control by the entire team was downright disturbing. Letting this awful Kings team keep the puck for minutes on end, giving up 49 shots on goal (yes, you read that right), taking endless penalties, being completely incapable of exiting their own zone—these are still major problems this team has to deal with, and no excitement over a couple of rookies can mask that. Not anymore, at least.
–And the reason all this mediocrity didn’t result in the Hawks getting completely embarrassed was…wait for it…the goaltending. Duh, of course it was. In an odd bit of theater, the officials made Corey Crawford leave the ice early in the first period for concussion protocol after he took a shot off the facemask. This was immediately after the Kings’ second goal in less than 5 minutes, so it briefly seemed like Coach Cool Youth Pastor was pulling him (which would have been dumb because he got hung out to dry defensively on both of the first two goals, well, actually on all of them). I guess it’s a nice gesture to have “concussion spotters?” Who knows what level of vigilance that actually entails. But, Robin Lehner came in and made 5 saves on 5 shots in 5 minutes. While I love the numeric synchronicity, can we stop and ask why the fuck they’re GIVING UP A SHOT PER MINUTE? To one of the league’s worst teams? It’s mind-boggling.
Crawford then came back in and proceeded to be lights out, with the very unfair exception of the overtime winner that just dribbled behind him and he didn’t realize it after making an initial save. The barrages he faced in the second and third periods could have put the Kings up by a touchdown. So the good news is he wasn’t concussed apparently, and he found his groove after the unexpected break. He and Lehner are truly a ridiculous duo this team gets to put out there—a level of talent that this organization doesn’t really deserve.
–Dominik Kubalik looked damn good and was key to the first two goals, scoring the first and assisting on the second. David Kampf didn’t look so good, and that was disappointing because if Kane is going to be on that line, Kampf needs to be defensively competent. I realize that if you look at the box score, you’ll see Kampf scored that second goal on the assist from Kubalik, and yes that was pretty much the highlight of the game. Jack Campbell did his best imitation of break dancing late in the first and made a save on a nifty Toews move. He tried getting acrobatic again while playing the puck and Kubalik stole it and set up Kampft. So it’s not that Kampf sucks, it’s just he had a 28.6 CF% at evens and couldn’t get out of his own zone. Kane and Kubalik have a share of this blame too, of course, but we need Kampf to be leading the way on that.
–But the lines got all scrambled by the third anyway, so who really knows or cares? Just showing CCYP has no real answers.
–Slater Koekkoek sucks, OK? He just sucks. You already knew that, but watching him fall on his ass as Michael Amadio scored was performance art at its best. And let’s not forget that Andrew Shaw getting beat along the boards led to that third goal. But tell me again about how Shaw’s energy helps the team. While we’re at it, can we stop with the nonsense of playing Dach with oafs and bums? How playing with Andrew Shaw and Zack Smith is going to help his development is beyond me.
–Hey, Jonathan Toews was sorta back to a semblance of his old self! The tying goal was of course huge, but he had a couple other good chances including the break-dancing-inducing one in the first. This team needs offense, so if Toews is going to show that this first month has been just a temporary slump, there’s no time like the present.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying last night…the Hawks were just bad except for Crawford and a few flashes from others. If this is them making an effort, then it’s going to be a long rest of the season. We knew that anyway I guess, but…onward and upward?
Everything you need if you’ve decided to waste your time tonight for this game.
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 3-6-2 Kings 4-9-0
PUCK DROP: 9:30
TV: NBCSN Chicago
BLEW INTO TOWN ABOUT AN HOUR AGO: Jewel From The Crown
We’ve remarked on it the past couple years when these two met, but it’s hard to believe that in just over four seasons, these two went from playing possibly the best and highest-paced seven-game series in recent NHL history to a game the rest of the league laughs at and scalpers take the night off. These have been two of the worst teams in the West, two of the worst in hockey, and they’ll get together tonight to do…something at Staples Center. The league is probably delighted this will take place in the dead of night and in the weird shadows where no one might just happen by it.
First the Hawks, who will at least be having a New Toy Night. Adam Boqvist will make his NHL debut, and the Kings are about as soft of a landing as you could ask for one. Many have remarked that there’s at least least an air of desperation about his promotion, if not a full-blown air-raid siren. And there is. But the thing is, the Hawks have to be desperate. Were they two whiff this road trip, the season might be over before Veteran’s Day. And while there might be one or two other d-men in Rockford who can provide more mobility (then again, any glass blower regularly makes products that would) and skill to the Hawks’ blue line, none of them have anywhere near the upside that Boqvist does. None are going to give you anything more than a third-pairing boost. If all the stars were to align for Boqvist, he can be so much more.
He could also be so much less. We don’t know, they don’t know, but the Hawks have played themselves into Hail Mary territory. That doesn’t mean that Jeremy Colliton can’t throw one in the wrong direction or take a sack, which he seems intent on doing with his lineup from practice yesterday. Keith is hardly a babysitter type, and asking him to clean up Boqvist’s messes won’t go well, and it’ll go worse if it has to go the other way. He has two, left-sided d-men who are perfect free safeties for a player like Boqvist in de Haan and Maatta, and has decided to pass on that for what’s behind Door #Stupid.
It gets better, as Patrick Kane is now a third line player and we’ve of course never seen him turn his nose up at such an assignment, and rightly so. The thing is this set-up isn’t too far from being pretty good, if Dach and Shaw were slotted up with Kane and Kubalik-Kampf-Caggiula can be a hybrid 4th line/checking line. We might get all that by the 2nd period.
Anyway, Brent Seabrook is back, and you can probably expect him to be until Connor Murphy returns. What that pairing with him and de Haan is supposed to do besides be an informercial for windburn balm…well, you figure it out.
Luckily for the Hawks, they’ll be playing as big of a mess as they are, if not bigger. Coach Todd McLellan called out his team after they got clubbed by the Hawks last weekend, and they responded by giving up 49 shots to the Canucks and their four players. So yeah, not great. They’ve also had a reshuffle, and McLellan tried to put everyone on notice by scratching deadline fodder Tyler Toffoli. He’s back, probably reminded he’s trying to cash in a big check next summer. Which will make his reaction to Ilya Kovalchuk‘s blank expression and koala-like effort something worth watching.
Despite their shit record, the Kings have actually pushed the play pretty ok this year, as McLellan teams do. They haven’t gotten a save from either Quick or Campbell all season, which has undone whatever good work they’ve produced. And considering the hair ball the Hawks just coughed up and how they’re being aligned tonight, don’t be surprised if the Hawks lose this possession battle. And badly. And if they don’t get some saves from Crawford that they did get from Lehner the past two games… well, you can probably start the foreboding organ music.
Saturday night’s all right for fighting…is it all right for whatever this is?
We, of course, don’t think anyone should ever be sentimental toward Drew Doughty. He looks like when Butthead glued his hair to his face to look older, talks like that as well, and might just be a rapist. We have to accept that Kings fans will forever love him, as that’s just how these things go, as he’s the best d-man in team history since…good lord, Rob Blake? Really? That’s it? So basically he’s the best defenseman the team has ever had. Well there you go.
What the NHL’s CBA has never really allowed for is for teams to be able to treat their current legends like that. But teams can’t help themselves. And probably for good cause. No fan wants to see their most important players leave before they retire and play for someone else. It’s weird, and at the base of it, not really why we got into sports in the first place. You’re seeing it in baseball now, where all the efficiency bros have decided they’re not going to pay players like Mookie Betts or maybe Kris Bryant and players like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado can’t seem to find the list of suitors they should. Baseball’s popularity is at best stagnating. It would be hard to reason these two aren’t connected.
The perfectly run NHL team would be callous, because it has to be. There’s a hard cap. It’s not like baseball where you can spend over it if you’re willing to part with some of your ungodly profits. Draftees don’t immediately come through like football, and also you can immediately discard anything that’s not working out like the NFL. Your contracts live to their fruition, for good or bad. It’s almost always bad.
In a vacuum, as soon as your players, no matter how prominent, began to age, you’d move them along for younger models. Or you would just let them walk and use the cap space to find cheaper and younger alternatives. You would never let emotion get into it. But is that even possible?
What would Kings fans feel if Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty were allowed to just walk away? These are the two linchpins of their only two Cup teams. Maybe they would all eventually learn to love the next crop the same way. But it’s impossible to think that something wouldn’t be lost in that sense. Surely something about being a fan of a team is its history, and poignantly its recent history. Can you really just discard that?
But by not discarding that, you’re actively hurt the current team. The minute Drew Doughty signed his eight-year extension that pays him $11M a year, he basically turned into a grossly hairy tomato can that looks like the personification of a Mac’s rainbow wheel. He’s been especially horrific this year. All of Doughty’s metrics have ballooned the wrong way. He’s behind the team in everything, and looks like a toddler with a Zippo in his own end. Here’s a list of relative numbers to the rest of the team for you so far this year, all per 60 minutes at evens:
Attempts-for: -11.72
Attempts against – +8.55
xGF – -0.57
xGA – -0.57
Shots for – -4.13
Shots against – +6.56
(JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS)
Doughty’s individual rates have plummeted as well, as he’s creating next to no offense, struggling to haul his bloated carcass around the ice and into the offensive zone. Only seven more years to go!
Perhaps the Kings are counting on a new CBA in a couple years to save them. Perhaps they thought they would get one after this year and got caught cold by the NHLPA’s decision to not re-open it this year. Or maybe they were just too blinded by what Doughty has meant to the Kings, which they probably couldn’t help.
No matter when the Kings feel they’ll matter again, Doughty’s contract is going to be cement shoes made by Dwarven blacksmiths. And much like Brent Seabrook, he’ll become an object of ire for a section of the fanbase, if not a large swath of it. Some of it will be earned, as Doughty clearly has let his game and condition sink. But most of it will be due to signing a contract he was offered.
The Kings will mostly be to blame. But it’s the players who linger long enough to go from hero to villain.
Drew Doughty – It won’t be long now before this turns into the worst contract in the league. Doughty is already on the decline and no longer carries the play the way he used to, nor does he really much care to, and he’ll make $11M until the planet collapses in on itself. For some reason, the Canadian media is desperate to turn his “rivalry” with whatever garbage Tkachuk boy it is up in Calgary into Hagler-Hearns. But these are two players the hockey world has already declared they don’t care much about on two teams they definitely don’t care about, as one is just an entitled rich kid who’ll manage the same empty trophy case his pappy did and the other is a rapist. Doughty might even get to Seabrook-sized soon. At least you’ll have someone to laugh at.
Kyle Clifford – Perhaps no better example of how the Kings learned all the wrong lessons from their last Cup. Clifford has always been a fourth-liner who should have been discarded for a younger model years ago. But because the Kings still believe their stinky breath was the reason they won, he’s been given something of a cult hero status even though he’s slow and his hands are made of gravel. He’s if Andrew Shaw was carrying around a 50 lb weight belt and had his hands cut off.
Ilya Kovalchuk – Man he’s good at cashing a check, though.
Hawks
Notes: Well, this is the definition of “happy horseshit.” It’s not that far away from making sense, but where is the checking line here? Does it have Kane on it? What him play in a pout all game if it is. Dach as a fourth-liner? Maybe it protects him a bit. Watch for Nylander and Kane to switch spots by the 2nd period, assuming Kane doesn’t break his stick over Colliton’s head in the intermission. And the pairings! Oh the pairings! Why would you take Boqvist, a budding cowboy and perhaps going to be one of the biggest cowboys in the league (which can be a good thing) and pair him with someone who thinks he’s still one of the biggest cowboys in the league? Keith isn’t a babysitter. Maatta would be. So would de Haan. This probably won’t last either. Good thing the Kings suck the deepest of pond scum.
Kings
Notes: The Kings themselves are having a reshuffle, which is how you know this is a game amongst the remedial class. They just gave up 49 shots to the Canucks at home, which is worse than whatever it was the Hawks were attempting in Nashville. Martinez and Doughty is really loading up, but Doughty probably needs the help now. Dustin Brown has been a third-liner for at last four years, so that works. Toffoli was a healthy scratch against the Canucks on Wednesday, which is not what you want heading into free agency. This is going to be a mess.
