Every morning, we cut right to the heart of what happened in the previous night’s playoff action.
Boston eliminates Toronto: Fuckin’ predictable.
San Jose eliminates Vegas: HOLY FUCK!
vs. 
RECORDS: Dodgers 15-9 Cubs 10-10
GAMETIMES: Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:05, Thursday at 1:20
TV: NBCSN Tuesday and Thursday, WGN Wednesday
THINK BLUE: True Blue LA
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Walker Buehler vs. Cole Hamels
Ross Stripling vs. TBD (possibly Lester, possibly Hendricks)
DODGERS PROBABLE LINEUP
Joc Pederson – LF
Corey Seager – SS
Justin Turner – 3B
Cody Bellinger – RF
A.J. Pollock – CF
Max Muncy – 1B
Enrique Hernandez – 2B
Austin Barnes – C
(note: with lefties on tap, Freese could start at first, Taylor could move into the outfield with Bellinger moving to first, or some combo thereof)
PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP
Daniel Descalso – 2B
Kris Bryant – 3B
Anthony Rizzo – 1B
Javier Baez – SS
Jason Heyward – CF
Kyle Schwarber – LF
Ben Zobrist – RF
(note: Could see Bryant move to right with Bote at 3rd)
If the Cubs had gotten somewhat healthy by getting to face some dregs and drain-scrapings in Arizona and Miami, and to a lesser extent the Angels shorn of Mike Trout, that all changes tonight as the Cubs welcome the National League’s aristocrats in the form of the Los Angeles Dodgers. If you want to know how the Dodgers have ascended to the top of the league’s standings, I’ll refer you to John Paul Jones’s impression of all drummers who were foolishly compared to John Bonham, “UGH. BASH. UGH. BASH.”
The Dodgers are second in the NL in homers to the Brewers. They lead in runs, and only trail the Mariners in all of baseball. They’re second in OBP. First in slugging. First in wOBA. So yeah, they pack something of a punch.
The Dodgers are led by the infuriatingly good and handsome Cody Bellinger, who you’ll never convince me doesn’t have Rohypnol somewhere in his house, who already has 11 homers, is slugging around .900, and is carrying a wRC+ of 252. So don’t pitch to him. Corey Seager has returned from missing all of 2018 and is doing Corey Seager things. Joc Pederson and his moon-face are having a career year, as he’s got 10 homers as well. Even Enrique Hernandez, the one you know as the one you’d like to hit with a tire iron, is slugging .551. There are very few places to hide. Pollock is struggling but has historically killed the Cubs. Tormund Turner hasn’t hit his stride yet but always looks like he’s about to. Austin Barnes seems to be the only breather here. And that’s before they bring Bruce Banner’s brother Chris Taylor off the bench.
What the Dodgers haven’t gotten is the starting pitching they were expecting, but once they do it’s a problem for America. It’s been fine, and certainly good enough when they’re turning every game into pop-a-shot. Walker Buehler has been let down by his defense a bit, has seen an ungodly number of runners score instead of stranded, and his strikeouts are down just a touch. But you’d bet on him figuring it out. Clayton Kershaw isn’t really a descendant of Zeus anymore, but you’d bet on him finding a way to carry a sub-3.00 ERA anyway. Ross Stripling is getting a ton of grounders, Julio Urias has started to look like what they said he would three years ago, Ryu has been even better, and Rich Hill isn’t even around yet to scream and make sure everyone knows just how much he cares. It seems like every season the Dodgers have seven or eight starters and none are worse than a #3. Fuck these guys, seriously.
If there’s one problem area, it’s in the pen. The Dodgers signed Joe Kelly to try and bandage that from last year, except Joe Kelly has always sucked no matter how many lame-ass YouTube videos he comes up with or how much he parades around his ring that the Red Sox were terrified of letting him try and contribute to. Kenley Jansen hasn’t been automatic this season, and neither has human filibuster Pedro Baez. Caleb Ferguson has been the best weapon out of there so far.
For the Cubs, they’re likely to try and stack their lefties against the Dodgers, as the main threats of Seager, Bellinger, and Pederson all hit from that side and with Turner still finding it they don’t have much of a counter. It’s just less bad with a lefty, not advantageous. Lester is eligible to come off the DL for Thursday’s matinee, though that isn’t much of a landing for him. The Cubs will see three tricky-to-tough righties, which means Anthony Rizzo coming in from the cold would be welcome. Of course, when the Cubs get into their pen, and the Dodgers will almost assuredly make sure the starters aren’t around that long, it’s going to be an adventure and a half right into hell.
There probably is no path out of the National League without seeing these guys. Might as well see how you stack up.
Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe my motherfuck powers have gone beyond what I thought. I’ll wear it if I have to.
It only took me about a season and a half to declare Kris Bryant the greatest Cub ever. Or that he would be. And that wasn’t even much of a statement. His first three seasons saw him pile up 20.6 WAR, collect a Rookie Of The Year and MVP, and he wasn’t even 26 yet. What he projected from there was quite simply nothing the Northside had ever seen before. If you trust WAR, the best Cub of all-time is Cap Anson at 81.8 over his career. Bryant was essentially a quarter of the way there in just three seasons. In the modern era it was Ron Santo with 71.9, and again, Bryan was almost a third of the way to that with just three seasons. It would have taken him about a decade to beat these totals into the dirt.
Then last year happens, and we can all forgive an injury-riddled season. Before June, when Bryant first went on the shelf, he was baseball murder too. Shoulder injuries are a problem for someone who, y’know, swings for a living. Bad couple months. Can write that off. Just a blip. They told us so. Fine. Everything will be fine. I SAID EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.
And we’re only a month into this season. So to draw any conclusions would be silly. And yet I can’t help but notice my hand moving towards my collar in anticipation of having to be called upon to tug it.
A slash line of .230/.345/.365 isn’t exactly what we’ve come to expect. It’s not court jester material, but Bryant putting up what Jason Heyward had been wasn’t part of the plan.
And you probably know me by now to know that I go looking for rotten luck to explain that sort of thing. Can’t be found here. Bryant’s BABIP is .296, which is far lower than his career .343 mark but not a ridiculously low mark in the grand scheme of things.
And the thing is, Bryant isn’t hitting the ball hard enough to argue that he should be getting better luck. Bryant is hitting fewer fly balls than he ever has, and more grounders than ever. This is not an optimal combo. He’s never been an expansive line-drive hitter, but that percentage is down too. Which would be fine if the fly balls weren’t as well. Perhaps more depressing, is that his hard-contact rate is at a career-low 30.9%. Which isn’t really out of line with his past three years, but far below his MVP-level of 40.3%.
If it’s hard numbers you need, his exit-velocity average is a little above last year and in line with 2017, but a couple ticks below his fist-in-the-face-of-god ’15 and ’16. And his launch angle is dirt-surfing compared with the rest of his career, as we mentioned there are more and more baseballs with grass stains on them when he’s done with them.
So what’s going on here?
Last season, when Bryant came back, it was clear he couldn’t really handle good velocity. Which in today’s game is something of an issue, as every joker and palooka in the bullpen that gets pointed at by a somewhat awake manager waddling to the mound comes armed with good velocity. In his first three years, you didn’t throw fastballs to Bryant. At least not ones he could get to. He hit .298 and slugged .593 against them. His ISO was .295 (ISO being slugging minus batting average). He also mullered sinkers, because low in the zone is his (and consequently our) erogenous zone, hitting .348 against them and slugging .530.
These numbers started to slip when he got hurt in June of last year. From June on last year, he hit .263 and slugged .500 against fastballs, which is hardly embarrassing. But his power on sinkers really started to fade, dropping to .344. The numbers sink just a little more if you only look at September 1st of last year through the rest of the season after his extended absence.
Sorry to say the numbers have only gotten worse this year. He’s hitting .206 against fastballs and slugging .353. His numbers against sinkers have returned to marvelous, but he’s not seeing as many of them because he can’t deal with the fastball nearly as well.
When looking at location, it’s not a brighter picture. Here is Bryant’s whiff-rate on fastballs by location in his first three seasons:
And now this year:
It used to be you had to go high in the zone or above it to get a fastball by him. Now you just have to get it in the zone and he’s struggling.
If there’s any sliver of light, it’s that Bryant seems to be seeing offspeed pitches much better. His whiff per swing rates at change-ups and curves have dropped dramatically. And his average and slugging against them are much higher than they’ve ever been. So if I wanted to be rose-colored, and you know I do, this could be an adjustment to a change in approach. Bryant could be waiting back more to not be flummoxed by the slower breaking pitches that used to dodge him, but hence is on his heels for heat. At best, that’s just a guess.
Both Bryant and the Cubs have taken every opportunity to stress that he’s healthy, which always gets my lady-doth-protest-too-much antennae up and alert. The weak contact against fastballs is alarming, because he’s going to get more and more of them, and if everything isn’t quite right then that’s what he would struggle with.
We could all use a Galactus arrival soon.
So what banner are you going to raise now, assholes?
The Nashville Predators, everyone’s darling and if you don’t believe just ask them, have once again bitten the dust before doing anything anyone will remember. And this is truly their nature. Aside from that run in ’17, this is what the Predators do. They’re that veritable “dangerous team no one wants to play” until they run into a team that doesn’t seem to mind terribly in the first two rounds and off they go before any kind of silverware is in the building. And hey, maybe that’s enough for fans who maybe don’t notice while they’re telling everyone who won’t listen that they’re the wildest fans in the league. I always wonder how they cram the 11,000 back into that car they smash outside so they can go back to the shed. Must be quite the sight.
As no hockey writer wants to endanger their free moonshine and grilled pigeon, you won’t hear a bad word about another flameout far too early for a team with this cap situation. But let’s go back through entrenched throbbing brain David Poile’s moves to make this team a Cup-winner, shall we?
Kyle Turris is signed for another five years, and for their investment the Preds have gotten 20 goals and 65 points in 120 regular season games and a solitary playoff goal in two years, and a bewildered gape while he was second best to Radek Goddamn Faksa this spring. Look, when the Ottawa Senators are offering up their consistently fourth-highest scorer, you have to jump on it, ok?
Poile’s other center, Treat Boy Ryan Dough-hansen has managed 44 goals in three years and 179 points. This year, Nashville’s “first ever true #1 center” ranked 35th among centers in scoring. Hey, that averages out to mean only four teams have two better centers! Over the past three seasons, he ranks 31st among centers, behind luminaries like Ryan Getzlaf (hasn’t cared in five years), Brayden Schenn (now a wing), Sean Couturier (checking center), Jonathan Toews (was told he is ready to be a white walker), and Eric Staal (a million years old and playing in a wasteland). That David Poile sure can spot a pivot!
Oh but it doesn’t stop there. Various pundits couldn’t help but have to change their shorts when Poile added tried and tested PLAYOFF GRIT with Wayne Simmonds (never seen a conference final) and Brian Boyle (an ent with no wisdom). Simmonds was on the fourth line within five games and Boyle had a stupid look on his face when something wasn’t falling off of him. Sure can win a draw in the 2nd period, though.
That Mikael Granlund sure looked like he’d fit in. He scored one goal.
All of this would be more than enough rope to hang Poile with, and then you throw in his penchant for stocking the Preds with a true shithead or three every season and you wonder how this guy hasn’t been chucked into the river. Don’t worry, Poile will get more spins at the wheel because due to Southern hospitality/incompetence he can’t actually ever be fired. Maybe one day Preds fans will figure out they’ve only had one and a half true top line forwards for like four years. Maybe after the next standing ovation they’re told to give during a TV timeout.
It’s ok, Preds fans will tell you, Matt Duchene and his glorious record of success are already on their way to Music City in the summer. Funny how that will work when the Preds have all of eight dollars under the cap to spend. That’ll happen when you pay Ryan Ellis for looking great against bums and then are shocked when he can’t handle a top-pairing role. Whoopsie daisy!
The Preds are that team and fanbse that has carried itself with a completely unearned arrogance and are going to look awfully stupid when they continue to be first and second-round kindling. One Final appearance and suddenly these guys think they’ve redefined the sport. The Devils have the same amount of appearances. So do the Sharks. And the Hurricanes. And the Ducks, and the latter two actually bothered to win it. The Flyers have the same. The Canucks. The Rangers. And yet Nashville will have you believe they’re a traditional power. Maybe the next Cody McLeod acquisition will push them over. God knows they’ll try.
You can be sure in the next day or two there will be “whispers” that PK Subban is the problem, that his dating of Lindsey Vonn and his suits mean he’s not committed to the cause, that he’s a dressing room issue, because hockey and the South form a perfect nexus of the tried and trusted tradition of “When in doubt, blame the black guy.” It certainly couldn’t be that Subban was the only one who figured out how to bust the Dallas trap while good clean boy Roman Josi was trying to remove Jamie Benn’s skate from his colon. Perish the thought.
Once again, while the Preds try to claim their strength in numbers is higher than that of any star power, they’ve lost because they don’t have the star power. This year it was Seguin and Benn. Last year it was the entire Winnipeg top nine. The year before that it was Crosby and Malkin. We could keep going. Pavelski and Thornton and Couture put them to the sword in ’16. Keith and Kane the year before. Maybe you’d think they’d learn? But that would go against what they do in the Confederacy, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and the little matter of teams figuring out that once Ol’ Shit Hip has to move side-to-side, he starts to sound like a car stripped of its converter.
This is what you are, Predators. Your hockey’s Trail Blazers, a funny little quirk of the league’s geography but never meant to be around when things matter. Except you’re not nearly as cool. But look at this way, Rocco Grimaldi has even more time to figure out which Planned Parenthood he’ll spend his summer outside yelling or for Poile to find another sex criminal to sign to his second line. Some traditions never die.
The Blackhawks were badly in need of a serviceable backup goaltender for the 2018-19 season. after Anton Forsberg and Jeff Glass did their best swiss cheese impression in 2017-18. So Stan Bowman went out and signed Cam Ward. After which, the Blackhawks were still badly in need of a serviceable backup goaltender for the 2018-19 season. Let’s do this!
33 GP – .897 SV% – 3.67 GAA
.912 SV% at Evens – .793 SV% on the PK
It Comes With a Free Frogurt
If he had actually come with a free Frogurt, that would’ve been the number one most positive thing about Cam Ward’s stint with the Blackhawks in 2018-19. For someone whose now been through 14 NHL seasons and is 35 years old, expecting anything other than backup level production would’ve been foolhardy, but Ward did have his moments, I suppose. He carried a good load of the play for the Hawks when Crawford was out, although maybe he shouldn’t have. He stole a few games here and there. But really, trying to project Ward as much more than a disappointment this year would be pretty tough to do.
At the very least, Ward managed to have a .919 SV% at 5v5 play (the above Evens number is all even strength situations), which was better than even Corey Crawford‘s mark of .916. So when the game was being played as intended, he was fine, but you would still hope to see a little better for a team that had playoff hopes, or at least wanted you to think they did. And again, he kept this team in some games and even stole them a win or three, with three 40+ save efforts in wins during February. So it wasn’t all bad. But, it was more bad than good. Let’s get there already.
The Frogurt is Also Cursed
If I wasn’t following a theme, that would’ve said “Mostly Cursed,” but alas I am a team player. The first problem with Ward was not even one of his own fault or doing, and that was that he had an NMC in his deal, which meant the Hawks were stuck with him all season long regardless of how it worked out. Even if this season went to shit, which there plenty of times when it seemed like it would/could, they didn’t even have the chance to see if some contender in need of goalie help down the stretch would give up a pick for Ward. Not that mid- or late-round picks in the NHL are worth much, but certainly more than a bad goalie on your roster for no reason. Yet here we are, still having to talk about him because he was here all year for no reason.
On top of that, Ward’s play was just mostly underwhelming even knowing that expecting much more than replacement level was a fool’s errand. He couldn’t even break .900 on his total SV% on the year. That was big time tanked by his atrocious play on the penalty kill, which was certainly not helped by the Blackhawks atrocious penalty killing units, but to be below .800 there is just embarrassing as well. No one has a good save percentage on the PK, but to be that bad is inexcusable even with the bad PK.
Ward is also the king of soft goals, and I shit you not it felt like almost half of the goals I watched him give up this year were ones he should’ve had. He just didn’t play angles very well, and his movement is certainly not natural anymore given that he’s up there in age (for athletes) and has a lot of mileage on him already. But he clearly didn’t have it anymore, and it showed most of the year. Even as someone who was in favor of the Hawks finishing out of the playoffs to have a shot at the lottery (and I’ve been validated, bitches), it’s hard not to wonder if the Hawks could’ve been playing hockey these last two weeks if they’d had a better backup playing than Ward. But we will get to that tomorrow.
Alas, Cam Ward is gone. May we never deal with him again, and may we drink to forget we dealt with him at all.
Every morning, we tell you everything you need to know about the previous night’s playoff action.
Canes force Game 7 against Caps: Fuckin’ right. Play the fuckin’ game you fucks.
Stars eliminate Predators: Pardon us while we shed a fucking tear for the Preds.
vs. 
RECORDS: White Sox 8-12 Orioles 8-15
GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday at 6:05
TV: WGN Monday, NBCSN Tuesday and Wednesday
CHARM CITY COLLECTIVE: Camden Chat
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Manny Benuelos vs. David Hess
Ervin Santana vs. TBA
PROBABLE SOX LINEUP
Leury Garcia – CF
Yoan Moncada – 3B
Jose Abreu – 1B
Yonder Alonso – DH
Tim Anderson – SS
Nicky Delmonico – LF
James McCann – C
Yolmer Sanchez – 2B
Ryan Cordell – RF
(Note: This is tonight’s lineup, Eloy is just on the bereavement list. Calm down so you don’t end up being the one bereaved)
PROBABLE ORIOLES LINEUP
Joey Rickard – CF
Jonathan Villar – 2B
Trey Mancini – RF
Renato Nunez – DH
Hanser Alberto – 3B
Stevie Wilkerson – LF
Rio Ruiz – 1B
Pedro Severino – C
Richie Martin – SS
If you need to feel better about the Sox position in the baseball world, boy are the next three days for you. They’ll head into the pit of humidity and hoplessness that is Baltimore in the summer for three games, where the Orioles are buys diving headfirst into one of the worst teams in recent memory.
The lead story for the Sox is tonight, where Manny Banuelos will take Lucas Giolito‘s start while he’s on the shelf. There was a time when Banuelos was an untouchable in the Yankees organization, even though he was repeatedly asked for in whatever deadline deal they were making that year. Sadly for Manny, that was like eight years ago. Manuelos had the same problem a lot of pitching prospects have, in that his elbow went kablooey in 2013, and since then he has struggled to carve out a role and health in New York, Atlanta, and now the Southside. He was able to win a relief role out of Arizona, but walks have been a problem which is not something the Sox need more of now. Still, it’s been a long road and at 28 and making his first start in the majors you can’t help but root for a guy like that.
Elsewhere, Eloy Jimenez is on the bereavement list and will be missing for a few days. In his stead the Sox have called up the very handsome and very useless Nicky Delmonico. Your complaints about Eloy’s early-season will evaporate quickly.
Then again, the Sox shouldn’t need much other than to keep intaking oxygen to win this series, as the Orioles are indeed an unfortunate organization. This was a team bent to the incomprehensible and incalculable will of Peter Angelos for too long, taking a couple of goofed playoff appearances for too much and never building a foundation. They never got on base, they never pitched particularly well, and yet thanks to their home ballpark being able to disengage gravity most nights were able to homer their way to over 90 wins a few times. That and Zach Britton one year.
We could go through their lineup and rotation, but you’ve never heard of most of these guys and it’ll probably stay that way. You’ve definitely heard about Chris Davis struggling to breathe at the plate, and he was bad four years ago. The only player in the lineup who might, might matter is Rio Ruiz at third, and he looked like he stalled out at AAA for the Braves last year.
Whatever grouping of otters running a human suit designed as Andrew Cashner is in the rotation, and that should tell you everything. Seven players have attempted to start a game for the Os this year, including Dan Straily and Alex Cobb, two players I was sure had moved on to being gym teachers in the south. The only starter who hasn’t been pop rocks in soda has been John Means, and he’s an opener. Let’s not even get to the pen. It’s just that bad.
But hey, it isn’t May yet. So the humidity won’t be suicide-inducing. The baseball might be.
If hockey ever had its own version of Livia’s Soprano’s funeral, this would be it. Here was an utterly miserable team that made everyone around it utterly miserable, maybe even tried to kill a few of them, so how can anyone be upset they’re gone? It’s what they wanted, it’s what we wanted, and even if it came at the hands of the Blues, pretty much everyone is in agreement this was best for everyone involved. No one’s even pretending anymore.
It’s why the Jets were so miserable that makes for interesting debate. The easy out is to pin the blame on Paul Maurice, who seems to tout that he was the NHL’s youngest coach as Mr. Fuji’s salt to throw in the eyes of NHL GMs to blind them to the fact that he’s been an utter moron for a decade or more. Maurice got the Hurricanes to two conference final appearances and a Final appearance, and since then all he has to show for his work is Winnipeg’s two series wins last year. The Jets remain one of the dumber and more penalized teams in the league, even though their PK often looked like a set of beached sea lions near a fish trap. His only ploy when things weren’t working has been “MOAR HITZ”despite having maybe the most skilled set of forwards in the league.
Maurice also reportedly made his players hate life, though admittedly this is not a hard thing to do in Manitoba. Mark Scheifele and Blay Kweeler were allowed to do whatever they wanted, while everyone else got shifted up and down the lineup. Then again, they were the only ones to actually produce all season, so if Patrik Laine wants to bitch he could actually, oh I don’t know, MOVE.
This was a team that claimed missing Dustin Byfuglien for half the season harmed its defense irreparably, even though Buff has all the interest in playing defense of those aforementioned sea lions. And both scenes look strikingly similar. And the Jets were so convinced of this they actually made it true, such was Jacob Trouba’s determination to get out of town he’ll drive his value and salary to Trevor van Riemsdyk levels.
The Jets were actively trying to get Paul Maurice fired since November, when they stopped playing defense altogether, but their collection of talent and the inattentiveness of GM Kevin ShovelDayOff prevented them from doing so midseason. ShovelDayOff’s answer was to acquire Captain Stairwell Kevin Hayes, who was desperate to bolt New York. Did anyone think he would invest in Winnipeg after that? His five-year deal in Florida or Los Angeles, after begging unsuccessfully for the Bruins to sign him so he can go back to throwing up on BU freshmen at Fuller’s, is almost preordained at this point.
But it has to be more than the coach, right? This team that was about as electric as could be last year doesn’t just simply turn into the Wild simply because of one overbearing, overmatched coach. There has to be something else. And it’s probably living in Winnipeg. Patrik Laine might have torpedoed his own value simply because the thought of committing to a frozen bomb shelter for his 20s was so depressing he’s going to be showing up in Robert Smith eyeliner to training camp. It clearly has killed the will and zest of Nikolaj Ehlers, who was hastily trying to rearrange his nameplate to “Ennui” since Christmas.
And much like other teams that have already bitten it, this is the team they’re going to have. Laine and Connor are going to eat up most of the space they have, even if they try and commute from Duluth or anywhere that doesn’t pull their soul out through their nose. Letting Trouba and Myers walk might allow them to reconstruct a defense that’s been playing with things they found at an empty construction site all season, but ShovelDayOff is the same GM who brought in Kulkov and Myers and other fuckwits that got them here in the first place. And Byfuglien will be 35, so his lazy jaunts back into his own zone five seconds late will just become lazy jaunts back into the neutral zone that are five seconds late. But hey, we’ll always have that time he slew-footed Chris Pronger with the Hawks up four in Game 5 that gave every Grabowksi and white-hat in Chicago an erection they hadn’t seen in years.
It’s not just their season we don’t mourn the loss of. It’s their time in the spotlight. There was only ever going to be a short shelf life on Winnipeg itself not smothering the life out of a possibly-great team. You can’t drive to another town to use their airport every few days before you just can’t anymore. And so it seems to be with the Jets. Five years from now they’ll be planing their move to Portland.
How do you say goodbye to something you barely knew was there?
Sure, Calgary was the West’s #1 seed, and you probably treat that revelation with an, ‘Oh…riiiight,” response. You knew it, somewhere in the back of your mind, and then forgot it, much like whether or not there was cream cheese in the fridge. You’re just as likely to buy more and then come home to realize you have even more cream cheese you’re probably not ever going to get to. And that’s the Flames. They’re in the fridge, but you always forget, and they’re just in the door until they go green.
Honestly, Calgary is the Canadian team that makes up the numbers. They’re not hilariously run and bad like the Senators or Canucks or Oilers. Their fans don’t make the spectacle of themselves that Toronto’s or Winnipeg’s do. They’re not constantly crying for attention and think they invented the sport like Montreal. They’re just there, kicking the horseshit around their town and not really bothered. Oh sure, they’ll have an arena debate every few months just to remind everyone they’re still alive and maybe act like a big boy. But that’s about it.
Oh, how they tried to make their goalie failures everyone’s problem. But they didn’t do it as well as San Jose, and everyone was like, “No, we already have a contender with no goalie in the fridge, thanks.” They tried to claim that Matthew Tkachuk’s upcoming restricted free agency was a real problem, but the Leafs had that market cornered. And they tried to tell you how good Sean Monahan was…until he died right before the first round. Sky point. So they’re left to try and scream about how Mikael Backlund is the most underrated player in the league, and you look at people spending time talking about Mikael Backlund and you can’t help but wonder who hurt them in life.
There was the Mark Giordano Lifetime Appreciation Tour, and his fellow Norris finalists all might be done in the first round. It’s a cursed award. They retired Jarome Iginla’s number. It was an emotional night for those in Calgary to praise their team’s greatest ever player and an emotional night for everyone outside of Calgary how such a gift of a player could toil in a city that was such an afterthought for so long. Connor McDavid watched the ceremony and wept, knowing there was no way his career would go any differently. And he probably won’t even get a couple gold medals to make it better. Enjoy that trade to Carolina when you’re 35, Run CMD. But that’s not why you called.
The Flames were actually entertaining for a while. They spent the first part of the year just not playing defense, and then wondering why Mike Smith couldn’t bail them out. Recurring theme with Bill Peters teams. Then they seemed to figure it out with either Big Save Dave or Smith, except the former went back to being a goalie you’d never heard of and Mike Smith was Mike Smith.
Then Peters, in his first playoff series as coach, showed up with a plan that consisted of, “Uh, do some shit?” It didn’t contain any notes on how to contain Nathan MacKinnon, who proceeded to mirror Nene when he made Joakim Noah’s Defensive Player Of The Year Award look like the dumbest possible decision in NBA history. Nene! You go ahead and accept that Norris there, Gio, though some one is going to have to hold it for you while you’re in the burn unit. Also, Nate went that way.
Of course, the most interesting thing about the Flames was that after all the kvetching about Smith or from Smith, he was clearly the Flames best player in the 1st round. Perhaps they were just too surprised and kept letting the Avs through to barrage Smith to make sure what they were seeing was real. “No, this can’t be right, not after the last six months. Here, J.T., why don’t you go on through and try again and we’ll sort this out.”
Peters answer for all this was…well, we’re still waiting for an answer. Always has to be encouraging for a team and organization when your coach throws his hands in the air right after his team is eliminated when asked what happened. It’s not like his job to know or anything. This is exclusive to hockey coaches. Imagine an NBA coach trying this. Steven A. Smith would turn puce. But hey, Bill is a good Canadian boy so it can’t be his fault he doesn’t know. Hockey’s weird!
What happened was his defense is slow, and while his top six is quick, it’s not MacKinnon quick. And Monahan died. Other than that, everything is fine.
And this is the team they’ll basically have going forward, partially thanks to James Neal having four years left on his deal. Stationary shooters age so well in a speeding-up league, it’s a wonder this didn’t work. Tkachuk will gobble up most of the space, and if he’s anything like his old man will spend the rest of the time gobbling up whatever is on the table in front of him. The Dreaded Laramie is going to become The Bloated Laramie.
So toodles, Flames. You were here, I guess. No one’s sure why. And you still will be in the seasons to come. And no one will know why then, either. It’s the role you play. Sadly, you’re basically the Oilers or Islanders but only a quarter of the faded glory. Nice threads, though. You’ll always have the Oilers to laugh at, and the Canucks, in your weird little Western Canada cabal. It’s probably going to suck when Seattle comes in and is immediately better than all of you. Probably should have done something anyone can remember. Maybe you can get Daymon Langkow to punch Iggy on his lawn again.
I know we’re all trying to move on from the extended fart sound that was the Hawks’ ’18-19 season, but at FFUD we revel in our misery and the pointlessness of it all, so we’re going to give you our year-end player reviews in all their sadness and glory. And who better to start with than the man, the myth, the legend, Corey Crawford?
39 GP – .908 SV% — 2.93 GAA
.913 SV% at evens – .880 SV% on the PK
Oh Corey Crawford, the linchpin of this team, steeped in drama nearly all year making not one but two comebacks, and proving he’s still among the elite in this league. There were rocky times and a definitive drop in quality for a while, and after the second concussion it was legitimately debated if he could or should come back at all—I openly advocated that he should not, for the record. And yet he proved his worth time and time again and now there are still more questions than answers. Let’s dig in:
It Comes with a Free Frogurt
It is beyond a shadow of a doubt at this point that Crawford is the most important player on the team and that he’s basically a complete badass for all the shit he’s put up with on and off the ice. Remember how at the beginning of the season the organ-I-zation declared him ready to play, which was news to everyone, including to Crawford himself? It seemed like the perfect set-up for Bowman to throw him under the bus in short order. And then when he did come back in mid-October, he wasn’t exactly the Crawford of old, throwing out a .901 SV% and 3.27 GAA at evens in 23 games. On the penalty kill he was a woeful .895.
Yet he was dealing with The Defense From Hell and still managed to have some gems as he got back into form after not playing for 10 fucking months. For example, by mid-November he got his first shutout against the Blues (who admittedly sucked a lot more then than later in the season). Crow stopped 39 of 40 shots against the Wild a couple days later, and played extremely well against a blisteringly fast Flames team, all the while facing anywhere from 30-40 shots nearly every night.
You all know about the second concussion thanks to perennial shithead Evander Kane. What matters for our purposes is how Crawford ignored the (rather logical) calls for him to hang it up, worked his way back, and finished the season better than his first go-round. He put up a .932 SV% and 1.98 GAA at evens over his last 16 games. He also got his only other shutout of the season against Montreal in an effort that deserves every cheesy sportswriting superlative you want to throw at it (perhaps “flawless,” “sparkling,” “textbook,” I can go on here).
Even when the Hawks were in the process of shitting the bed and falling out of the wild card race, it was rarely on Crow’s shoulders. And that includes when he was literally shitting his pants and had to be replaced against the Leafs in the middle of March. Crawford silenced all the doubters (including your truly) about his capabilities in net, his near super-human ability to work his way back from serious injury, and his penchant for competing up until the absolute final whistle.
The Frogurt is Also Cursed
But that doesn’t mean that the injuries haven’t taken a toll—it just means that Crawford is forging ahead as IF they haven’t but that’s not necessarily reality. The Hawks can and should give him the benefit of every doubt and act under the assumption that he’ll start next year and pick things up where he left them, with that .932, not the early-season wobbles. No matter what, though, he needs to address his PK performance (as does the whole team, obviously), and aim for consistency that goes longer than the stretch at the end of this past season.
But, his history of concussions can never be far from the conversation because no one knows what the longer-term ramifications are or what decision he may be forced to take should he sustain another one. On top of that, Crawford pulled a groin muscle in his last game, which isn’t terrifying in and of itself, especially with an entire offseason to heal, but it’s indicative of what happens to everyone in their mid-30s, and particularly to NHL goalies.
Crawford’s contract is up after the 2019-20 season as well, throwing yet another question into the mix. If he doesn’t play well, should they trade him before the deadline and try to get something, anything for him? If he’s playing lights out will he accept a short extension for a couple years since that’s the only wise move the Hawks could make long-term? Can they develop a viable replacement, Collin “Superfluous L” Delia or otherwise, while Crow still takes the majority of the starts? (OK, that was three questions not one but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT.)
All of this is to say that next season very well may be Corey Crawford’s last season as a Blackhawk, for any number of reasons. It makes the imperative for the team to get good NOW that much stronger since it’s impossible to say what the endgame looks like, or if it even would be an endgame next season.
If there were any justice in this world, Crawford would have a Vezina-worthy 2019-2020 season and ride off into the proverbial sunset with at least a conference championship, if not one more Cup to his name. But there is no justice here, so we’ll have to hope he stays healthy, plays at his highest level, and that the Hawks don’t totally fuck up the roster.
