Baseball

Turns Out You Can Change Yoan’s Mind

By Sam Fels 1384 0

As usual at this point in the season, not even a week in, it is folly and silly and other words that end in -lly to draw any grand conclusions. Anyone can have a hot week. Still, with as much riding on Yoan Moncada this season, we’ll forgive any Sox fan from having a chuckle at his first few games of 2019 (and basically we mean Fifth Feather, who needs all the chuckles he can get).

Last year did not go as a first full-season should for Yoan or anyone as prized as he is. He struck out a ton, played second base like he was being attacked by bees, and when he did make contact a bit too much of it was on the ground. Thankfully , this year has started in opposition to all of that.

Moncada has been something of a curious study because he clearly has a very good concept of the zone. He walks over 10% of the time. The natural conclusion is that with that kind of eye he should be able to get the bat to the ball whenever he wants. It doesn’t always work that way, and this is where Adam Dunn flashbacks occur for Sox fans. In addition, Moncada let a lot of pitches just go by him in the zone, only swinging at 60% of pitches in the zone (league-average was 66%). He was a bit too choosy, which if you have a Jewish mother like I did you’ve been yelled at about frequently.

That’s gone out the window so far, as Moncada is swinging at just a tick under 70% of the pitches he’s seen in the zone, and making more contact on them (85% this year to 80% last). Which is leading to some pretty hilarious numbers. The one that jumps out at me is that of Moncada’s contact, only 5% of it has been considered soft. Last year that was at 14%, which isn’t awful but clearly cutting that by nearly two-thirds is something to note. That mark is almost a quarter of the league-average.

To boot, Moncada is getting the ball in the air far more so far, at 52.9% of the time (40% last year). Now, Moncada isn’t going to carry a 22% HR/FB ration all year, and if he does it surely means the end of us all. But clearly, the fly ball revolution has now absorbed him into the cause.

As far as approach, a big difference we’ve seen this year so far is that Moncada isn’t helpless against a change-up. Last year, Moncada whiffed on nearly half the swings he took at change-ups, hit .205 and slugged .351. This year, on an admitted limited sample, he’s only swung and missed at 11% of the swings he’s taken, is hitting .500 and slugging 1.000. The obvious conclusion is that Moncada isn’t jumping at the ball the same way and being content to take a fastball out to left. Not rally the case here, as Moncada doesn’t really do much when he hits the opposite way but is murdering the ball when he pulls it. Either way, the Sox will take it.

If exit-velocity is your thing, Moncada’s average has risen from 90.6 MPH to 96.1 this year. Last year, the leading average exit-velocity was 94.7. So yeah, he’s cracking eight different kinds of shit out Rawlingses everywhere. Also, if you’re into this kind of thing, his barrel-percentage is nearly double so far over last year.

Again, anyone can have a hot week. And his .467 BABIP is not anything less than astronomical. But the changes in approach and the volume of contact (loud, not amount) suggests he will always carry a higher BABIP than normal, and that these changes are around for a while.

Baseball

You Get What You Pay For, And Life Is Real High-Priced

By Sam Fels 1523 0

Put a couple beers in a Cubs fan right now, never that hard of a task, and I bet a good portion of them would tell you there’s a level of schadenfreude with the team right now. After they spent the offseason crying poor, the front office pointing fingers every outward but certainly not inward, and everything else, the Cubs are being undone by what they ignored and arrogantly thought would fix itself, the bullpen. And it being this early in the season, and only four games, it hasn’t come anywhere close to derailing the season. You can just see how it might.

At the top, and as I’ve repeated all offseason, you can remake a bullpen on the fly. The Nationals did it just two years ago (with Brandon Kintzler as part of that). The Red Sox simply ignored their bullpen in the postseason last year. There will be a bevy of guys on teams out of it who for no reason whatsoever are throwing 97 with a slider from nowhere that you can have for B-level and C-level prospects. This is probably what the Cubs will do, and most likely they’ll be fine. It just didn’t have to be like this.

I had wondered if Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer knew about the budget Tom Ricketts was going to hand them at the outset of the offseason. But as was pointed out to me on Twitter, the fact that they sent Drew Smyly away to extend Cole Hamels probably indicates that they did. So one has to ask if that really was the right move. Because if the thinking was that the pen as currently constructed was going to just right itself, it makes you think that pitching isn’t just a spotty mark on the record of this regime, but a clear blindspot. Remember, we’re still waiting for the first pitcher Theo has drafted to actually come up for air and do something here. Hendricks and Edwards Jr. are trades, and we’ll get to the latter soon.

Because what did the Cubs have coming out of last year? Pedro Strop, who is wonderful and insane and I love him but also has missed big chunks of time with injury two of the past three years and turns 34 this season. It seems to me that the Cubs want to treat their signing of Brandon Morrow as something other than bad, but it very well may be. Morrow only has one full season of being a dominant reliever and a whole lot of injury problems. He’s far from a sure thing, and yet the Cubs are happy to tell you his absence is the main problem in order to do themselves credit, as well as blaming Joe Maddon for having the temerity to pitch him three days in a row at the end of May. The end of May is when a pitcher should be in peak health. If he can’t do it then, he can’t do it, and hence is not a plus piece to have around.

Carl Edwards Jr. is a basketcase and has never proven to be anything else. Brandon Kintzler has one good season, and his ground-ball rate, his main weapon, has been dropping for three straight years. Randy Rosario doesn’t strike anyone out and was bad last year and can only claim to throw with his left hand. They couldn’t honestly sell Tyler Chatwood as anything other than a lottery ticket bought while drunk and using consecutive numbers.

Perhaps they thought they could count on Steve Cishek. Here’s the problem: the history of relievers who crack 80 appearances over the age of 30 is not really encouraging.

Zach Duke did it three years ago at 33, and the next season saw his K/9 rate drop in half and his FIP double. In 2017  Bryan Shaw reached 79 appearances at 29. The next year his walk-rate doubled. Only Joel Peralta survived that threshold in 2013 at that age and came back fine the next year. Or at least his peripherals did, but his ERA was still over 4.00.

The Cubs front office has been acting like the smartest guys in the room for so long now that perhaps they’ve failed to realize they’re getting passed.

Now you can also throw this at the Ricketts, who even if they took the “Look what you’ve done with our money already” tact can’t then tell the front office to go stuff it with such a clear weakness. But is that $13M net-spend on Hamels worth more than two relievers right now? If the multi-year commitment to Andrew Miller made them nervous because he’s already in decline in skill and physically, that’s cool. Don’t want to blow it all on Zach Britton? Fair, or at least understandable. I wasn’t married to Jesse Chavez. He’s a guy.

But maybe Joakim Soria? Only $7.5M per. Seems a better bet than Brad Brach.

It’s important to reserve judgement until we see what the Cubs do over the next few months. Maybe they hated the reliever market in the winter altogether and didn’t want to force it. Fine. But when they say they have the deepest crop of pitchers waiting in Iowa they’ve ever had, why should anyone take that at face value? Again, this isn’t a front office that’s produced a quality reliever or starter yet (Hector Rondon was their Rule 5 pick, but that just means he didn’t come through the system). The Cubs couldn’t wait to tell every beat writer about their technology and gizmos to measure their pitching in the system. But at this point, Cubs fans are more than excused for not wanting the labor pains, just the baby.

Actually, sounds a little like the Hawks and their blue line, doesn’t it?

Everything Else

The Natives Are Getting Restless

By Sam Fels 2064 0

We’ve spent a lot of time reading tea leaves with the Hawks and what they say in the press. You don’t have to decode much to get to the heart of what Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were getting at yesterday:

Kane: “Yeah it’s tough. It’s just crazy that our season’s gonna be over in five days and that’s it for another year. Pretty frustrating, especially when I think a lot of us feel like we’re in our prime and be able to contribute, and had good seasons. But that’s the way it is.

— Scott Powers (@ByScottPowers) April 3, 2019

More Toews: “And the guys that have been here for a while learning that no one really cares what you did years ago. We’ve gotta keep pushing ourselves to get better and better. The league’s getting better, our division’s getting better, so it’s tough. It’s a tough league.”

— Scott Powers (@ByScottPowers) April 3, 2019

Clearly, the two main vets are not exactly thrilled with the front office or some other veterans in the room. Let’s try to unpack it all.

-You can understand why the players might be upset at no reinforcements at the deadline, because they did scrap and claw their way back into contention. You can also understand why any competent front office is not going to give up any prospect or draft pick for a player to maybe help them get labeled by the Flames in the first round. That’s not how you build a team. Players’ emotions often don’t align with the cold calculation of a front office. And that’s fine.

Still, it’s got to go deeper than this. We know Kane is maniacal in the offseason about working on his game, and it’s clear Toews is transforming the player he is from last year as well. He’s even said it’s a multi-year process. They saw what happened in the summer, and you can be sure that when those signings were made both Toews and Kane were like, “But those guys suck.” Players know, no matter what they say for public consumption.

It’s also clear that both Kane and Toews know the clock is ticking. Kane’s two best seasons individually have resulted in no playoff series wins. Toews heard he was finished, remade his game and body, had a career year, and did it for a pretty puke-tastic team. Where you could apportion some blame for last year to Toews, you can’t this year. They know they don’t have that many times at-bat being able to catch up to a good fastball. It stands to reason they’re not very interested in wasting another one on the likes of Brandon Manning.

-And it wouldn’t be a huge leap to suggest that Toews’s quote there, about no one caring what you did a few years ago, was meant to land right at the feet of the alternate captains. Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook can run to friendly, Canadian writers all they want to proclaim how much they want to stay, but their play has clearly been making another statement. Last night was another excellent display of Keith drained of fucks to give, which Hess summed up pretty well last night. As I tweeted, his indifference is bordering on open rebellion.

What’s clear, and Bowman has said as much, is that he and McD will go to THE FOUR and lay out what the plan is to not have them go through a season like this again. But that meeting is going to be a lot more contentious than the Hawks were anticipating. Toews and Kane clearly have expectations, and the cards to act on them. Keith is either going to need a serious come-to-Jesus talk from all parties, or he’s going to have to be launched. If Keith is going to continue to clearly demonstrate he thinks his coach is an idiot, that can fester and grow in a dressing room and become a real problem. You know what that looks like? The pre-Berube Blues.

If the Hawks are married to Jeremy Colliton, and I’m not here to tell you they should be but they are, then you can’t have your most decorated player undermining him at every turn. Hess said as much.

This about as pointed as Toews and Kane have ever gotten in the press, so relatively this is basically them shouting. This is what happens when you biff a second straight season. This is what happens when you make a bunch of noise about how this is a playoff team and then don’t do anything to back that up. This is what happens when your players think you’re either lying or incompetent.

The Hawks’ brass already had a serious selling job to do this summer. Turns out the biggest of it might be to their own players.

Everything Else

Game #80 – Blues 3, Hawks 3 (Hawks Win Hackey-Sack) – It’s Still Real To Me, Dammit

By Adam Hess 1948 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Now that the Hawks games mean nothing, it’s hard to imagine getting worked up about these games in any way, and yet seeing them play their asses off and outplaying the Blues, I found myself sitting on my couch feeling like this guy. As a wrestling fan myself, I can empathize with feeling emotionally invested in something you know isn’t what it’s presented as, and tonight that was me, constantly battling this desire for the Hawks to not drop themselves farther down the draft lottery (which, they can’t climb much higher anyway, so that’s dumb too) and rooting like hell for them to beat the Blues. Some things are bigger than logic. Fuck you St. Louis. Let’s do this:

– Just about everyone at this here site was unavailable to some extent tonight, so I took up the sword but still missed the first period. When I got the game on with about 17 left in the second, I was pretty surprised by how competitive and hard the Hawks were playing in this game despite the games now being meaningless as I said before. It was clear from the quotes from Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane today that these guys are pissed off about missing the playoffs again, and they definitely channeled that into a desire to fuck over the Blues and their playoff seeding hopes. There were still plenty of gaffes in here on the Hawks end, and we will talk about a few of them, but seeing them respond was at least notable, I think. If only they had cared about this season a few months ago. Maybe they can actually carry this piss and vinegar into next year.

– It’s still hilarious to me that the Hawks got Dylan Strome for Nick Schmaltz. Not that Schmaltz wasn’t and isn’t a fine player (though now one that is WAY overpaid), but we definitely knew what he was by the time the Hawks sent him to the desert for Strome, who had barely gotten enough of a sniff of the NHL to have any conclusion that he couldn’t hit the ceiling that was once considered very high. And yeah, his shortcomings are there, and have been all year. But dammit if he doesn’t make up for it enough with the vision and hands, and the pass he made to Kane tonight on the third Hawks goal was just another example of that. The Hawks are definitely coming out on top of this one.

– Let’s talk about some gaffes. Firstly, Seabrook and Forsling were out there together again tonight. Not for long, but any shifts of those two together is too many. That’s the whole gaffe. Please stop that. EDIT– Forsling didn’t play tonight, I just stink at paying attention to who’s out there. I guess I’ve just been traumatized by 7-42 so often that I just expect it even when it isn’t happening.

– Now the elephant in the room, which at this point has now sat on and destroyed your couch, coffee table, recliner, and television: Duncan Keith could not give less of a fuck about playing hockey for Jeremy Colliton. Truthfully, I wish I could show the level of contempt and disinterest in my job that this guy does and still have the level of job security he does. We know the give a shit meter was already on zero, but he just about sent it negative tonight, particularly on the Blues third goal. To have little interest in playing well at this point can be understood, given that the Hawks are fucked, but to just have no intent to even feign effort at this point is almost impressive.

– And that brings us to an important thought – the Hawks might have to pick between the wife and the dog this summer. It’s clear that the wife (Keith, because he’s made our lives better for years and we never appreciate him enough) does not want the dog (Colliton, because he’s smelly and keeps shitting himself everywhere) around any longer. But as can happen, we may see this summer that the Hawks have overcommitted themselves to the dog. Perhaps these two will come to an agreement over the summer. Maybe an addition of a real defenseman that can partner with him will turn Keith’s give-a-shit meter back up. Maybe Colliton really will get motherfucked into becoming a good coach by this blog. Maybe neither happen and we’re stuck in a bad marriage with a stupid dog (I don’t hate dogs, I love them, but this one is stupid) and we will be miserable again for another year. Who knows! Eat at Arby’s.

– We almost made it, folks. Two more.

Everything Else

When It Comes To Women’s Hockey, The NHL Need To Do Better Or Worse Than A Token

By Sam Fels 1429 0

A few days ago, a major story broke that the CWHL (Canadian Women’s Hockey League) would be folding in total. That leaves the NWHL as the only women’s professional hockey league running in North America, and leaves a lot more questions than answers.

I’ve never really known where to stand when these discussions. On one side, at the end of the day all of sports are a business, or entertainment if you prefer, and a given league or team either succeeds in the market place or it doesn’t. There’s either interest or there isn’t.

On the other, that really only works in a completely fair marketplace, or in a vacuum one. Women’s sports as a whole deal with a lot of prejudice or myopia or fallacies, and hence has more to overcome than others. Although to counter that, we just watched the AAF turn into dust nearly instantly and it’s not like this nation has a small appetite for football.

Triangulating this debate, I guess, is that while sports and leagues are not and should not be a charity, there is something beyond dollars and cents to the continued growth, promotion, and coverage of women’s sports. As we know, in every facet of society, representation matters.

On the other side, having a job or being professional in whatever your chose vocation is not a right, and you can ask thousands if not millions of bloggers about that. Just because you happen to be among the best in the world at something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to make a living at it, even if your male counterparts do. That’s a harsh reality, but it’s kind of the way things are.

I can’t seem to do anything but stand at the nexus of where all these things meet, never leaning to one side or angle of it.

Women’s hockey has greater challenges than basketball or soccer. Women’s basketball has been in the nations consciousness longer, and both of those sports have greater participation at the youth level (though hockey continues to grow). While some would point to the popularity of the US and Canadian women’s team during the Olympics, even the men’s side can’t turn viewing numbers and following during the Olympics into something tangible for the league in which these players play afterward. What chance would the women have?

Another sharp end of these kinds of debates is where the NHL fits in and how involved or not involved it should be with a women’s league. It’s easy to point to the NBA’s involvement in the WNBA, but the NBA has a lot more money to play with and again, women’s basketball has a stronger base from which to work from. Women’s hockey’s base is getting stronger, but may never approach that.

Without getting a look at their books, it’s hard to know how much money the NHL has to set aside to either help, or totally fund, a WNHL as it were. Or just to do the same with the existing NWHL. What I do know is it’s probably more than this:

That’s $100K. That’s a little over $3,000 per team. In a league that just got $650M in expansion fees from Seattle, and isn’t too far removed from just about the same from Vegas, both totals the league didn’t have to share with the players in anything other than maybe salary. Except those fees weren’t included in the league’s revenue that’s subject to players salaries. Curious, no?

I don’t even know if this would qualify as a token gesture. This feels almost like the dude throwing a quarter out of his moving BMW at the homeless person next to the underpass off the Stevenson.

Again, I have no idea what NHL teams would have to give to a women’s league. This is a league where the Hawks still claim to lose money, but hey check out that new scoreboard next year! What I do know is that if you’re going to wade in and say you’re going to help, you have to do a lot better than this. Do or do not, there is no try.

What the NHL probably has to figure out is how much of an investment a women’s league is. Would cultivating a generation of young girls as fans help in 10-15 years? That might sound cold, but the correct things done for selfish reasons are certainly better than nothing at all. You have to believe that was the calculation, or in part was, the NBA made with the WNBA. And it’s been able to hang around long enough to be in a fairly strong position. Or much stronger than it was.

It’s hard to see where that kind of investment could hurt. Part of the NBA’s calculation wouldn’t work for the NHL, I don’t think, which is that they can run a WNBA season when the NBA isn’t playing and then maybe catch new fans in the fall and winter. Or give idling NBA fans something to do in the summer. Maybe hockey can work in the summer, but I tend to doubt it. And that’s based on nothing but feel.

Let’s just say you asked every NHL team for $500K. I’m just going to go ahead and say they have it. And I would imagine $15M for the NWHL would make a difference. Maybe not as much as I’d first guess, but a difference. Surely the publicity and the appearance is worth that to teams that are all valued at several hundred million?

Maybe that’s not enough, maybe the NHL doesn’t have that to give, maybe women’s hockey just isn’t going to work anytime soon. But I’m fairly sure we can do better than this.

Everything Else

Game #80 – Blues vs. Hawks Preview/Irish Wake: We Are Gathered Here Today…

By Sam Fels 1729 0

 vs.

RECORDS: Blues 43-28-8   Hawks 34-33-12

PUCK DROP: 7pm

TV: NBCSN

GROSS: St. Louis Gametime

It’s finally over, people. The Hawks desperate, somewhat sad though fun, and always futile lunge/leap/hail mary for the playoffs is now over. Death came a callin’ last night when the Avs won, and now it’s time for this season to journey to the other side. Peachy keen.

There will be plenty of time for the autopsy, for the criticism, for the investigation. For now, I guess we just stare and be somewhat surprised that it’s only the last three games that will be totally meaningless. Because there was a time when it sure looked like the last three months would be. Then again, that’s a criticism of just how bad the West was this year, because in a normal year the Hawks would have never sniffed a playoff spot, much less held one for about 45 minutes. For now, let’s just say that it was all in front of the Hawks, they had it in their own grasp, and they weren’t able to close their fingers around the easiest playoff spot to grab in a decade or more. Someone should pay. No one will.

Which makes for a distinct contrast to the team they face tonight. The Blues sat with the Hawks as the wooden-spooners of the entire league right after January 1st. They were last in the entire NHL. Since then they’ve ripped of a 27-9-4 to this point, which has them within one win of being tied with both the Jets and Preds. Think about that my beautiful babies. In three months, the Blues went from last in the league to being in with a shout of winning this damn division. That’s how mediocre the division has been, but that’s also how much they’ve turned things around.

A huge part of it is Jordan Binnington, whom the Blues handed the job in January in a true “what-fucking-ever” gesture after Jake Allen for the 18th straight year watched the role dribble under his arm and into the net. Binnington has gone .928 since, including a .936 in January and a .945 in February. He’s mostly responsible for this revival. Who knows if it’s real, but if Binnington doesn’t wake up anytime soon, and considering the state of the West, there’s really no telling how far this could go. There’s something to make your avocado toast come back up, huh?

But it isn’t all just Binnington. Interim coach (for now) Craig Berube has gotten the Blues back to their Hitchcock-levels of shot and chance-suppression, while not sacrificing offense totally to do so. Ryan O’Reilly, whom the Blues got for a fucking song the Hawks probably could have easily matched if they weren’t so busy thinking Anisimov and Schmaltz were fine down the middle, has freaked off for 38 points in 41 games in 2019, And he’s brought the give-a-shit of Vladimir Tarasenko from the red to the black, which is no small task as Tank seemed dead set on playing and bitching his way out of town.

Jaden Schwartz and David Perron finally finding some healthy has helped as well, and Brayden Schenn being able to move to ROR’s wing is another boost.

At the back, Berube finally figured out, which Hitch and Mike Yeo couldn’t, that Colton Parayko nor Alex OrangeJello are puck-movers, and moved Vinnie Dunn Bag O’ Donuts up to the top pairing to be that guy. He responded with nine points in March alone, and keeps Colton Burpo and Jabe O’Meester away from spots where they can do harm to themselves or society. When Dunn is out there the Blues can actually get up and go, which is a real change.

It’s not totally fair to compare the Blues to the Hawks. The Blues were built to compete this year in the summer, where the Hawks were built to take up space. But the Blues did identify a weakness, center, and didn’t just half-ass in trying to patch it up. They brought in O’Reilly and Bozak, who’s been fine. They saw a coach who wasn’t working and the team wasn’t listening to and finally canned him, but the new coach actually was able to implement some changes for the better. None of that has happened here, and it truly is a cold and scornful world where it feels like the Blues have more of an idea of what they’re doing than the Hawks do. But it’s hard to see it otherwise right now.

As for the Hawks, it’s time to just see it out. Corey Crawford will get a rest tonight, and it honestly wouldn’t be a surprise to see him sit the rest of the year. There’s really nothing to be gained from him playing, and now that the Hawks have finally got him healthy and at least in the area of being Crow again, what’s the point of chancing it? Dennis Gilbert has been called up to get a look-see, mostly to reward him for a good season in Rockford. And hey, he’ll keep you from having to watch Gustav Forsling tonight.

The only things that matter now happen at the draft and July 1st. Until then, we’re just killing time.

Game #80 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #80 – Blues vs. Hawks Spotlight: Craig Berube, Jordan Binnington, When People Stop Being Polite And Start Getting Real

By Sam Fels 1683 0

It’s kind of amazing what happens when your organization shows urgency and never stops doing so. While John Cooper should win the Jack Adams Trophy for Coach Of The Year for presiding over a historically good team, Craig Berube is going to have a serious case. It was just after the new year when both the Hawks and Blues were at the bottom of the NHL. While the Blues have a better roster, one of them responded properly, One of them responded by goofing a power play for a matter of weeks. But it’s not as if the Hawks couldn’t have had Ryan O’Reilly if they so desired.

On January 5th, the Blues were 16-19-4. They’ve gone 27-9-4 since. And by every measure, they’ve greatly improved. If the argument is that it took Berube a couple months to instill his changes to Mike Yeo’s “system” (and we were never sure what it was), then this proves it. After six weeks, the Blues apparently had it down. Do the Hawks have Colliton’s? You know the answer to that one.

The Blues, before and after January 5th, are up or down as they should be in every metric category. They take more attempts, they give up less. They create more scoring chances and give up less. And perhaps most importantly, they are utterly dominant when it comes to high-danger chances, their percentage ranking best in the league and the amount they surrender ranking second. Systematically, the Blues are better across the board.

And yet…and yet…It’s hard to ignore that the Blues SV% at evens before that January 5th mark was .902, which is below league average. That’s when Jay Gallon was once again being crowbarred into the starter’s role he’s spent years trying to prove he’s not up for, like a toddler in ill-fitting clothes. Finally, they switched to Jordan Binnington, for lack of any other option. Since then, their SV% is .940. You can’t ignore that sort of thing.

And the question becomes is this just a coming-of-age from Jordan Binnington? Or a once-in-lifetime heater from a career nobody? The hunch is the latter.

Binnington had never showed anything like this at any level. He never showed much in his OHL career after being a third-round pick eight years ago. He dipped down to the ECHL for half of a season, where he put up a decent .922. But he never managed more than a .916 in the AHL until a 28-game loan to the Providence Bruins two years ago, where he put up a .926. He started the year in San Antonio just as strongly, and the Blues must have figured why not? They had nothing to lose at that point. Still, a .928 overall was just no something anyone could have seen coming.

And Binnington might already be straining a touch. After his unconscious January and February, Binnington sank down to a .912 in March. But of late he’s beaten the Lighting and Knights, so who knows what the hell is going on?

In reality, this is closer to what the Blues were supposed to be doing before the season than their bottomed-out performance for the first half of the year. This roster was engineered to make a run, and just spent the first half sputtering and wheezing. Perhaps it was just being free of Yeo and his unpredictable moods from day-to-day, or the connection he still had to Ken Hitchcock. He also allowed Vinnie Dunn to be the puck-mover the Blues simply have never had, and never even really considered having. Whatever it is, Berube has provided a structural change to the Blues, and then was in position to benefit from Binnington’s heater. Must be nice.

 

Game #80 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #80 – Blues vs. Hawks Q&A: A Hive Of Scum And Villainy

By Sam Fels 1488 0

We went months without have to talk to @StLouisGametime. We were happy. We were optimistic. Food tasted good. There was dancing and revelry and mirth. And now it’s all ruined. Go ahead, it’s too late, everything’s ruined…

Quite the renaissance for the Blues lately. Tell us why it’s more than just an unforeseeable heater from Jordan Binnington?
First of all, I’m writing this a few minutes after the Hawks gave the Jets breakaway practice in overtime keeping the Jets two points ahead of the Blues with three games for each left on the schedule. Why not just pull the goddamn goalie? Corey Crawford deserved better. Dicks. Wait, you want me to answer the question? Of course Binnington is on a hot streak. One that started in early February. It’s now April. Dicks. He’s beaten the Lightning twice, a team trying to break NHL records for wins and points in a season. Quite a hot streak. Look, these Blues were horrible. They were tied with the Senators for last in the league in points on Jan. 3. Their comeback to second in the division is nearly unprecedented. There are some reasons. They play better in front of Binnington and not with clenched buttholes in front of Jake Allen. The defensemen have been scoring goals and actually playing defense. The Blues are almost as good at shot suppression as when Hithcock was the head coach. Ryan O’Reilly continues to push this team every night. I’ll get to Tarasenko in a second, but they’re getting some depth scoring. Robert Thomas is going to be a pain in the ass for Hawks fans for years to come. He’s 19. The Blues have made this climb as a team and not just because of a hot goaltender.
What do we make of Tarasenko? He got his second coach fired earlier this season, is coming in for a pretty low 65 points, and there was buzz earlier in the year the Blues might check out the market for him. Yet he’s been much better under Berube. 
Oh, I guarantee they were checking the market on Tarasenko. Aggressively. The Blues sent out season ticket renewals early. Really early, in January. They moved it up before the trade deadline because they were going to move at least one fan favorite if not more. Tarasenko was on every rumor twitter account. Schenn’s name popped up. Toronto started circling Pietrangelo like hungry buzzards. Some shit was going to hit the fan because this core of players was imploding. They had the excuse that the All-Star game is coming to town next season, so there was that carrot to dangle ticket holders. But they were deathly afraid to ask for renewals after unloading some popular players. And then they started winning and crisis was averted. With Tarasenko specifically, his shoulder surgery in the offseason took more out of him than I think he ever admitted. And Tarasenko can apparently be a little mercurial. Shit, sorry for the big word, Hawks fans. He can be accused of being moody. When his game is off, he overpasses. When he should should more to break a slump, he shoots less. Combine that with a slight downturn from Schenn and Jaden Schwartz not being able to hit the broadside of Nebraska for much of the season, the offense was a mess. During the 11-game winning streak, P.K. Subban woke 91 up. There was a play on a Saturday afternoon game where Subban was trying to get physical behind the play. Tarasenko basically said fuck off and then next shift scored a goal. He got animated. He got fired up. He got tired of the bullshit. The next afternoon in Nashville, he scored a hat trick, the third being the OT game-winner. He’s been a different player since. Craig Berube didn’t have anything to do with it. I will say this about Chief, he earned a contract at the beginning of that winning streak. He got a raise making the playoffs. He could get a bigger one depending on how long the Blues’ season lasts.
Have they finally let Vinnie Dunn Bag Of Donuts off the leash?
Saturday night he was on the ice in overtime. He split two Devils players, drove hard to the net, poked it in and went flying as the goal lamp lit with three seconds to play. He was so far ahead of his teammates, he stood by himself for a couple seconds with his arms wide waiting for some guys to come hug him. But here’s the thing with Dunn. He can make electrifying plays. He can skate with the puck. He has a nice shot that could become a good shot. He’s got the vision. But goddammit, the guy still takes dumb risks. Against Toronto, again during the epic and shocking streak, the Blues had a 2-0 lead at the end of the first. As time expired, Dunn made a dumbass play with the puck that could have gone the other way for a goal as time expired. There was video of Berube waiting by the bench door for Dunn to come off the ice and he fucking unloaded on him. But to Berube’s credit, Dunn hasn’t been scratched for some time. He’s getting primo minutes. He’s got to find that knife’s edge of being daring and aggressive vs. stupid and risky. When he figures that out, look the fuck out.
Whether it’s the Preds or Jets, will the cantankerous Blues fanbase be happy with a one and done or does the second half have you lot hungry for more?
I’m fucking torn on this one. Like I said, they were tied with Ottawa in January. The Blues got booed nearly every game at home. They got blown out by the Flames. By the Canucks. By the Coyotes. It was a weird time to be alive. There’s a fake Jay Bouwmeester twitter account that in December declared if the Blues made the playoffs, he’d get Bouwmeester tattooed on his ass. The Blues actually called him out on it. What I’m trying to say is no one thought they’d be in this situation. It wasn’t realistic. It was like saying the Hawks would make the playoffs back in January and they actually did it. No fucking way, right? Same with the Blues. Same. So, it’s kind of like they’re playing with house money. Not supposed to be here, just happy to be here, won’t be here for long. On the other hand, think of it this way. If you fell into a coma right before the season started and you woke up today with the Blues battling for one of the top three spots in the division, you wouldn’t be surprised at all. You’d think it was a helluva season. Should fan expectations be based on October through much of January or what the expectations were going into the season? Maybe the team we thought they built was actually the team we thought they built. Maybe they needed some extra time playing together. Who the fuck knows. Here’s what I do know: the Blues are going to be a tough out. Colorado threw everything they had at St. Louis to stay in the playoff hunt. And the Blues responded. Sure, they gave up the game-tying goal with under a minute to play, but they were dangerous in overtime and they won the shootout. The Avs brought a high level of intensity and the Blues matched it. That’s a great sign to me. In New York last Friday, the Rangers played a boring game and the Blues played just as uninspired. They’ve answered the bell against the best teams in the league the last two months. There’s nothing to say the Blues won’t answer the bell when the playoffs start.
The last time Hawks fans saw the Blues up close and personal, they were garbage. They weren’t playing together. The goaltending was a mess. Mike Yeo was a dolt. They were bad, bad, bad. Please, Hawks fans. Make a shit ton of noise Wednesday night. Ratchet up the intensity in the building. Get the blood flowing in this rivalry and the Blues will show you the team they’ve become. Have fun golfing, and talk to you next season!

 

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Game #80 – Blues vs. Hawks Douchebag Du Jour: Here Comes Another “Next One”

By Sam Fels 1556 0

You’ll read about him in the Q&A. Not that you haven’t read about him already, just with a different name. This one’s name is Robert Thomas. His name is Robert Thomas. His name is Robert Thomas.

And he’s supposedly the next Blues product that is going to drive the Hawks players and fans batty to the point where we might actually care about the Blues again. He’s going to score, he’s going to pester, he’s going to hit, and eventually we’ll feel about him the way we did about Ryan Kesler for like seven minutes there. Except he won’t, and the Blues won’t win anything, and everything will return to its natural state.

Is Thomas good? He has every chance to be. He was putting up eye-popping numbers in the OHL last year, and was a point-per-game at 17 which is generally a good sign. He’s been a pretty effective third-liner for the Blues. He might be something, The pedigree is there.

But we heard this about Tage Thompson too. Remember Ty Rattie? Before that it was the fact that T.J. Oshie scored more in college than Jonathan Toews, and that was going to be the factor that finally turned things for the Blues and would lead to dominance over the Hawks. All of Oshie’s success came elsewhere. It was David Perron before that. He’s played on 17 teams since. There was a time when it was going to be David Backes. His career highlight remains getting lit up by Seabrook in the corner and trying to pick a fight when he couldn’t remember where he was. Name anything else he’s done, we’ll wait. The names we could list here could honestly go on forever.

It doesn’t seem to matter to the Note-clad throng what a player does, as long as he “annoys” the Hawks. It’s about time they learn the only players that annoy Hawks fans now are the ones in red and black. It’s a myopic view of the world. Here the Blues sit with the Predators and Jets intent on fucking themselves with unclean and jagged utensils with a real chance to do something in the spring after a miracle run, and it’s still about how we feel.

It’s ok, Nashville is probably going to take care of this again when Jordan Binnington turns back into Jordan Binnington. But then again, will that really matter to Blues fans?

 

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