Everything Else

The Children Better Be the Future, Cuz We Ain’t Got No Present – Alex Turcotte

By Adam Hess 1866 0

Welcome to the FFUD #3 Pick Preview. Each day, we’ll look at one prospect the Hawks might have a chance at with the #3 pick and walk you through the ins and outs, the what-have-yous, the strands going through ol’ Duder’s head. We’ve narrowed it down to five guys, and much like the restaurant chain, you’ll likely walk in thinking, “This was a good idea,” and walk out grabbing or clenching some part yourself that you shouldn’t have to. Today is Alex Turcotte.

Physical Stats

Height: 5’11”; Weight: 185 lbs.; Shot: Left

On-Ice Stats (2018-19)

League: USHL/USDP; Team: USNTP Juniors/USNTP U18; Position: Center

53 GP, 39 G, 57 A, 36 PIM (Combined)

Why The Hawks Should Take Him

You rarely come across a player with the combination of offensive skill and defensive prowess at the center position that Turcotte brings. The last time the Hawks were in this position with a #3 pick, they found themselves one Jonathan Toews, and I’d venture a hot take and say that pick worked out. Turcotte has drawn comparisons to Toews, and some even have fentured to say that he may have a tad more offensive ability than Toews did at the time of his draft.

Turcotte’s ceiling is probably that of a 1C, although there are legitimate questions about A) his ability to reach that ceiling and B) how high he ranks on the list of 1C’s if/when he’s there. While the comparisons to Toews are certainly nice, I am of the belief that if NHL scouts really thought he had that kind of ceiling, he’d be the #2 pick in the draft. With all due respect to Kaapo Kakko, if it’s me I am taking the future 1C over the future top line winger.

Turcotte’s scoring ability seems to project well to the NHL, as some models (like this one) think he could be among the top producers at the NHL level among players in this draft. However those projection models are hardly 100% accurate, so of course take that with a grain of salt. That being said, at his ceiling Turcotte could be a franchise-anchoring center, and the Hawks don’t have anyone really close to that in the system right now. I love Dylan Strome and think there’s still a shot he can be a #1, but he’s more likely a long-term high-level 2C, which is perfectly fine. Turcotte’s timeline to the NHL and being that anchor of a team seems likely to align well with Toews eventual descent from greatness, but that also could be considered a negative as we will see now.

Along with it all, Turcotte is a local guy, which is certain to be a marketing home run and keep the giardiniera soaked idiots on their couches pleased.

Why The Hawks Shouldn’t Take Him

Let’s just rip off the band-aid here: the Hawks shouldn’t take him because he’s not Bowen Byram. More generally, he isn’t a defenseman, and while the 1C-ceiling type prospect is lacking in this organization, the Hawks don’t necessarily need to find one right away. Toews is coming off a strong “bounce-back” year in which the bad-luck bug finally left him alone. And while I did just say Strome is probably not a future-1C, we’re still only three years and 106 NHL games removed from NHL scouts thinking he was one, and he was nearly a point-per-game player after coming to the Hawks, and he’s still only 22, which all adds up to mean that he probably should get a bit more time to show if that ceiling is still there.

On top of that, Turcotte is not ready to play at the NHL level next year, and while that doesn’t necessarily have to be a priority with your #3 pick, it would certainly be nice to add someone who can contribute right away and has a high-level ceiling you lack in the system. You don’t get an opportunity like that in the draft if you’re not in the top-3, and the Hawks weren’t supposed to be here, so they have to maximize the return here.

On top of all of that, the Hawks picking a center when they so clearly need to address the blue line both now and in the future would signal a major lack of of what I call Knowing Just What The Fuck We Are Doing Here. We’ve talked about the embarrassment of riches the Hawks think they have on the blue line due to the NHL players (a term applied very loosely to most of the guys on the main roster) and prospects they have, but they lack major upside on anyone, unless you’re higher on Adam Boqvist than most, which I admittedly might be. But adding someone like Byram to the organization would actually put you in a position of strength, especially when you’d then have two of the better right-shooting blue line prospects in the game to potentially flip in the future for, say, a player who might have a ceiling as a 1C.

On top of that, Turcotte is a local guy, which certainly has the Hawks pitching a tent but has never proven to work out for them (Hinostroza, Hartman, Hayden, etc. WHY DID THEY ALL START WITH H?!?!). Not that being from Illinois means he is not the player people think he is, but if that ends up actually playing into his decision we have yet another red flag on this organization’s evaluative standards.

Also, you might end up handing Colorado a future pairing of Byram and Cale Makar, which would be grounds for firing on the stage immediately.

Verdict

Picking Turcotte would be fine, and I won’t necessarily be mad about it. But it has potential to be a major fuck up, would present a clear lack of understanding on the front office’s part of how to get back into contention, and I would definitely be disappointed.

Just pick Byram.

Everything Else

So Much For That Plan

By Sam Fels 1934 0

It was never likely, as the Hawks were under the impression they didn’t need him or couldn’t afford him, but it was also a good plan. Erik Karlsson has re-upped with the San Jose Sharks for $11M a year for eight years, pretty much getting the “max” deal we didn’t think his exploding red crotch dots wouldn’t allow for. Sure, it’s too many years, but this is Erik Karlsson after all. The Sharks are all about the next two years right now, you’d think, and Doug Wilson probably isn’t around anyway when Karlsson’s age becomes something of an issue. Not that Doug Wilson will age, because he can’t.

With Karlsson off the market, that means there’s basically nothing on defense in free agency. We’ll go over these again I’m sure next week after the draft, but Tyler Myers sucks, Dion Phaneuf is even worse, Alex Edler is old and useless, and Jake Gardiner is like, a person who stands behind the forwards. You can probably talk yourself into Jake Gardiner, but the acquisition of Maatta makes any acquisition of Gardiner nonsensical. Which is maybe why the Hawks would do it.

So it’s either a trade or nothing, then. Though god, can’t we see the Hawks being smitten by Myers’s size? You can see it, can’t you? I’m going to see how far I can get this spoon down my throat.

Which does put a slightly different take on the draft, though doesn’t alter it that significantly. The Hawks are saying that what their pick an do next season isn’t really a factor on what their choice will be, and that’s fair. A pick this high should be around for a decade and that’s the view you take. Still, immediate improvement on the blue line, if the Hawks even conceive that they need it, basically can only come through another trade or Byram now. That shouldn’t be the only factor, but if they can’t split Byram and Turcotte, perhaps it’s a deciding factor?

As far as trades, it’s hard to believe the Hawks think they’re done. But as we’ve said all season, and last season, and will probably be saying all summer, we have no idea how they view the upcoming season. It it urgent they leap back into the playoffs? Do they see it as one more developmental season before Boqvist, Mitchell, Jokiharju, maybe Kurashev and others are ready to make a real impact in ’20-’21 and beyond? Do they know? Are Keith, Kane, and Toews willing to toss away another season in a limited amount of them left? Have they talked to them? Have the players talked to the front office? Was last season a developmental one or a massive cock-up from a team that doesn’t know how to build a defense? We’ve been asking these questions for about two years and we still don’t know.

Maatta’s arrival means making a move for Ryan Murray is a touch redundant, as they do the same thing (though the latter far better than the former, and we don’t even know if the latter is all that good either). Calvin de Haan was another name mentioned, but that’s the same again. And even if the Hawks have called the Canes about de Haan, or Faulk, or Dougie, the Hawks don’t have what the Canes need, which is frontline scoring (not wanting to use Schmaltz to get Faulk last summer is looking a real swift decision now).

So even the trade targets are limited. I would think HAMPUS! HAMPUS! is worth a phone call, but after the hiring of a new coach it’s hard to know what the Ducks think they are doing, and they may be more interested in trying to stick you with Perry or Getzlaf and that spoon is only getting deeper now.

You can’t force what’s on the market, and teams get in deep trouble making moves for the sake of making moves. It’s starting to look like the Hawks might have to readjust whatever their sights were. Then again, they just made one bad trade, so who knows anymore?

Everything Else

There’s No Plan, But There’s A Process

By Sam Fels 2107 0

Dear reader, I want you to remember those words as the Hawks go through the offseason and whatever they do. Repeat it to yourself after every move, every pick, every move that isn’t made. That’s what John McDonough told The Athletic right after the season, and I think it’s important to understand how the Hawks operate. Or don’t operate, as it were.

It’s hard to parse what the Hawks are thinking after the acquisition of Olli Maatta, itself we covered here. The fear is that the Hawks think their problem is they didn’t block enough shots. When the actual problem is preventing those shots at all, or gaining mobility or skill or…you know this could keep going and I’m going to get upset. And I don’t want to do that.

There’s also a fear that the Hawks think they’ve created this “strength” by having a logjam on the blue line. But they don’t. They have a clogged toilet. Remember, and I can’t stress this enough, Olli Maatta was nothing more than a third-pairing d-man on a team that’s been much better than the Hawks for two to three seasons now. Maybe even four. And last season ended with Maatta not even on their third-pairing. He’s not a difference maker. He’s a warm body, and that’s something he can barely claim because he’s a generally a pylon when he’s even upright.

And he’s just another third-pairing-or-below player. There are maybe two d-man amongst the NINE(!!) that are in contention for spots next year. And that’s not even counting Boqvist or Byram (a wish) pushing in training camp. Keith can still probably give you second pairing minutes and assignments with the right partner. Connor Murphy definitely can. That’s it. So seven players for what should be two spots. Good work there.

Do they think they can package some amount of this crap and get anything in return? Who thinks anything more of Slater Koekkoek than the Hawks do? The answer is no one, because if anyone did they could have gotten him from the Lightning for a song, too. They didn’t. Gustav Forsling? Everyone has seen what that is. And of course the main problem is they’re terrified of a demoted to a part time player Seabrook causing hell in the dressing room, so he’s going to be in the top six. His play has forfeited that right, but saying it out loud in the organization is somewhere around saying, “BEETLEJUICE!” three times with them.

More worryingly, although every GM says this after whatever team wins, is that Stan today was beating the, “ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS GET IN AND ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!” drum, which is horseshit. Yes, a team from nowhere does occasionally win. In fact, before the Blues won the last team to win a Cup that wasn’t consistently at the top of the standings was…hang on, I’ll get this…I’m sure it’s there…the Hurricanes? Except they had 112 points that year. Oh here we are, the Canadiens in 19 NINETY-FUCKING-THREE.

The myth of any NHL team being able to win once the playoff field is set is perhaps the most annoying in the sport. That doesn’t mean you have to win the Presidents’ Trophy or even a division. The league’s gimmick-heavy standings system makes it hard to distinguish between 100-point teams, really. But you do have to be near the top. The Cup-winner generally comes from a group of five or six. The Capitals had been around the top of the league for basically a decade. Same the Penguins. The Hawks, the Kings (and don’t start with the ’12 Kings because they were a preseason favorite that played with their head up their ass most of the season, and then were consistently near the top of the standings for the next three seasons). The Bruins were kind of a surprise, but then spent the next few years at the top of the standings too.

Simply “getting in” isn’t a sustainable plan. it’s not a plan at all. It’s the absence of one. Being a consistent, 100-point team or more is, and then maybe things break your way in the playoffs. And you need less of them when you’re actually really good. Look all it took for the Blues. A team quitting on its coach, a team not trying to score and a Game 7 OT, a team where everyone was hurt, and then that again in the Final. That doesn’t happen every year.

On the other side, it’s hard to tell what you need on the blue line anymore. There are many ways to skin a cat, so it’s very possible a team with a great blue line can and will win again. The Hurricanes look poised, the Predators have been contenders. But the last four Cup-winners have had suspect or underwhelming collections of d-men. Letang was hurt for one, remember, leaving Dumoulin as the only genuine, top-pairing guy on that Penguins team. Fuck, you could argue he’s the only one of the last four, though John Carlson and Alex Pietrangelo have strong arguments. Maybe you just need a collection of guys who won’t self-immolate at the first sign of trouble.

But the Hawks don’t even have that. They’re not even close to that! And the acquisition of Maatta doesn’t convince anyone they know how to get to that. Whatever our complaints about the Blues defense, and there are tons, Dunn, OrangeJello, and Parayko aren’t concrete-shoe slow. The Hawks are. Maatta only adds to that. What are they searching for?

And the worrying thing is they might not even know.

 

Everything Else

The Children Better Be the Future, Cuz We Ain’t Got No Present – Bowen Byram

By John Pullega 2387 0

Welcome to the FFUD #3 Pick Preview. Each day, we’ll look at one prospect the Hawks might have a chance at with the #3 pick and walk you through the ins and outs, the what-have-yous, the strands going through ol’ Duder’s head. We’ve narrowed it down to five guys, and much like the restaurant chain, you’ll likely walk in thinking, “This was a good idea,” and walk out grabbing or clenching some part yourself that you shouldn’t have to. Today is Bowen Byram.

Physical Stats

Height: 6’00”; Weight: 194 lbs.; Shot: Left

On-Ice Stats (2018-19)

League: WHL; Team: Vancouver Giants; Position: Defense

26 G, 45 A, 71 P, 80 PIM

Why the Hawks Should Take Him

Bowen Byram is the best player likely to be available to the Hawks at #3. Just about every scouting outfit has him as the #3 best prospect. Though we have a tenuous-at-best relationship with scouting reports around here (“DeBrincat will top out at 20 goals,” dear reader), this is what we’re working with.

Byram is fast and an outstanding skater. The Hawks have precisely zero of those on their blue line. According to Corey Pronman, he’s one of the best skaters available, full stop. In case you weren’t watching me evacuate my bowels all over every wall that I could about it last year, the Hawks need better skaters out of the backend.

Keith isn’t it anymore, no matter how much anyone wants to wail for it to be 2013 again. Murphy’s never really been that guy. Gustafsson can be recklessly creative but he’s the kind of fast you see when the slowest horse wins because all the other ones fell down. Forsling sucks. Seabrook blows. Maatta is blue line Anisimov. The rest of the flotsam have names that sound like their skill levels. This blue line is hot garbage, and unless the Hawks find real contributors, they are going to suck out loud again.

With Byram, the Hawks can have their cake and eat it, too. They don’t need to decide between best and need, because the best player available is the one they need. Unlike the current crop of defensive prospects the Hawks have in Harju, Boqvist, Beaudin et al., Byram projects to be ready on both ends of the ice immediately.

His 71 points in the WHL were third among all WHL D-men. His 26 goals led all D-men by far. He played on the PK, and his PIM numbers show he’s no shrinking violet, so he’s got appeal to both nerds and the hardest giardiniera farters in town. And he was only seven-fucking-teen!

You probably won’t ever get anything like that from Harju. There aren’t grumblings about his defense like there are with Boqvist and Beaudin. Though you never want to pin your hopes on an 18-year-old D-man, Byram is about as ready as you can be.

The Hawks should take Byram because their defense is a shambles. Maatta is a $4 million prayer who’s had more bad seasons than good. On a team comprised of two second-pairing guys (Murphy, Keith), a ton of 6s and 7s, and a bunch of kids who might not actually know how to play defense, Byram would immediately stand out. He’d also give the Brain Trust breathing room to trade someone like Boqvist or Harju as part of a package for a real D-man.

This shouldn’t be hard. The Hawks need better, faster, NHL-ready D-men. Byram is that. Pick him.

Why the Hawks Shouldn’t Pick Byram

More than anything, the Hawks shouldn’t pick Byram for Byram’s sake. As the years have gone by, it’s become clearer that good defense is born-on-third-Bowman’s clitoris: He can never find it, always looks in the wrong spot, and the things he does when he thinks he’s found it cause more agony than ecstasy. But man, oh man is he going to brag about even getting in the area code.

Re-signing Jan Rutta. Trading Rutta for Koekkoek, then re-signing Koekkoek. Not (yet) capitalizing on the Myth of Erik Gustafsson. Bragging that Brandon Motherfucking Manning was just about to enter his prime. And that was all just last year! You look at just some of these moves and wonder whether Bowman even remembers how the Hawks won all those Cups. It wasn’t with bloated and middling-at-best D-men. Yet, that’s his refuge of late.

The last successful D-man that they’ve brought up through their system was Hjalmarsson. The last successful D-man they even fostered was Nick Leddy. Is this a fate we want for a rising star like Byram?

More seriously, you can maybe make the case that the Hawks have a logjam at defense and that Byram might not have room to fit. Disabuse yourself of that notion, because it’s horseshit. The “logjam” is Seabrook; Forsling; Koekkoek; Dahlstrom; a fading Keith; and a bunch of defensive maybes in Boqvist, Beaudin, and Harju. Byram could walk into camp and break that logjam up in one or two sessions. But you watch Stan & Co. make that argument when they draft someone other than Byram and continue trotting out this Eric the Clown blue line next year.

Verdict

Unless the Hawks made the Maatta move as a table-setter for someone like Dougie, it’ll be a huge disappointment if they don’t take Byram. He’s a gifted skater with proven offensive skills who is good at worst at playing defense. This Core isn’t getting younger, and if the Hawks want to squeeze one more Cup run out of it, they need fast D-men who can push play and hold their own in their own end. Byram is that guy right now, and he’d be the only one with those credentials on the Hawks for Game #1 if they take him.

Pinning your hopes on an 18-year-old D-man. Just slap us sideways and call us the Sabres.

Everything Else

Hawks Attempt To Improve Slow, Unskilled Defense With Slow, Unskilled Defenseman

By Sam Fels 4045 0

I suppose I should rejoice that they’re doing SOMETHING. And the quickness with which it was done lets you know the Hawks know they need to make changes and are urgent to do so. I’m not sure that matters when your changes are wrong.

In case you didn’t see the news, the Hawks traded Dominik Kahun and a 5th round pick this year to Pittsburgh for Olli Maatta. I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. Olli Maatta sucks. He’s sucked for years now, and the only reason anyone would be attracted to him is a first-round draft pedigree that is now seven years old and buried under the dust of underwhelming when not straight-up bad performance. This is how Pierre McGuire would make trades.

Maatta is SUH-LOW. In a league that’s getting faster and for a team that lacks any mobility on the blue line, I guess he’ll fit right in but he doesn’t fix anything. He also can’t make up for it by making plays or the like, as the Hawks could get away with a slow d-man who can at least get the puck out and up to the forwards quickly and crisply. Maatta cannot do that, or at least hasn’t shown he can.

Maatta spent a majority of the season on the Penguins third pairing, which he was eventually punted from when Marcus Pettersson proved to be more useful and after the acquisition of Erik Goddamn Fuck You Gudbranson. That’s right, Erik “If And Italian Beef Shit Were A Hockey Player” Gudbranson was much preferred over Maatta in the playoffs. And before you say, “Well, maybe the coach is an idiot?” remember Mike Sullivan has two rings.

You can at least try and find the pinch-hold that Maatta started an overwhelming amount of his shifts in the defensive zone this year. But his zone-starts weren’t really noticeably worse than Letang’s or Dumoulin’s (the guy the Hawks probably should have been calling about) but his metrics far worse. And in the previous three seasons, Maatta’s zone starts have been more forgiving and his possession numbers are still awful.

Maatta has never managed more than 30 points in the league, so he’s not offensively gifted. He’s not like, an awful passer, but he’s far from a dynamic one.

To add to that, he’s made of duct tape and snot. He’s gone the route of 82 games just once in six seasons, and has missed more than 15 games in a year four times in his six year career.

One more thing, he’s not even that cheap! Maatta makes $4M for the next three seasons, but seems awfully expensive for a third-pairing d-man, which is all Maatta has ever proven to be. Good thing the Hawks already had like, five of those.

And this isn’t some love letter to Dominik Kahun. He’s a useful player that can help a team a lot from the bottom six, but he’s also the type of player you’re supposed to be able to find with regularity. And the Hawks might already have with Dominik Kubalik, any step forward from Dylan Sikura, and possibly a surprise from Phillip Kurashev who I’ve decided to adopt as my guy for really no other reason than my love for Xherdan Shaqiri. Kahun will do well with the Penguins, but the Hawks should be able to plug that hole. You’d hope.

Where Maatta slots is another questions. He’s left-sided, so he’d be best paired with a fast, puck-moving, right-sided d-man. Let me look over who fills out that role for the Hawks. Oh that’s right, fucking no one. Boy, guess we’d better hope Boqvist makes the team out of training camp, huh? Except that Maatta won’t be able to cover for all his booboos in the d-zone. Wonderful. I’m now going to go eat a stainless steal pan.

If this is what the Hawks diagnose as their problem, they’re fucked. If they’re scouting Maatta as the mobility or assuredness they need, they’re fucked. Maatta is a bottom of the roster fix when the top is still emitting noxious fumes. You have to pray this is only the start and not the coup-de-useless.

Otherwise, great trade.

Everything Else

Friday Foofaraw: Father’s Day

By Sam Fels 1415 0

It’s become something of a tradition around here, but if any of you are new I’ll give you the short story. I am not the only writer in the Fels family, but I am certainly the worst. My father George takes the crown, and you could give me another 100 years and I’ll never get in his ballpark. Dad was the back-page columnist for Billiard’s Digest for over 30 years, and on Fathers’ Day weekend I like to share some of my favorite works of his. Today, I present “When Jack Played Mizerak,” a hilarious story of the time Dad’s best friend got to play one of the world’s best pool players at the time, Steve Mizerak. Enjoy, and Happy Fathers’ Day to all. 

And yes, that is my father as the picture. Now you know. 

When Jack Played Mizerak

By George Fels
[Reprinted from February 1994]

Hey, Jack. You wanna play Mizerak?”

As either of my late parents would shriek in bitterness if they were able, I was a speech major in school and therefore attuned to how something is said as well as to what. And there was something I heard in my best friend’s obscenely proud “Yeah!” that gave me unrest.

The setting, in the early ’70s, was innocent enough: Open a commercial billiard rooms with Brunswick tables and among the perks was an exhibition by one of their advisory staff as part of your grand opening. At the time, that staff included Steve Mizerak, and while it’s sheer conjecture as to when the great player’s game might have peaked, the rolls weren’t exactly going against him back then. Four consecutive U.S. Open straight pool crowns, two World Championships not long after that, plus newfound television advertising stardom. Big Miz had Big Mo. Jack Gunne sounded all too eager to thwart that momentum and I leaped into the breach to lend what I must have thought was assistance.

“Now I hope you understand, Jack,” I tried, “that there’s a sort of protocol to this. The challenger is expected to play wide open — no defense — so that the champion can show what he can do; and the champion is expected to give the challenger some turns at the table, so he can do some scoring too. The theory is that the challenger can’t win anyhow, so they might as well put on a good show. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”

“Bleep that,” Jack Gunne reflected thoughtfully. “I’m playin’ t’ win!” “No, ox,” I said with miraculous patience, born of utter despair. “There is no winning. It’s 150 points and he can run out. You can’t. It’s just that simple. He can take it easy on you, or he can pulverize you.” Now Jack had two favorite sextets of words. One was, “I can’t play; I’m too upset.” And the other was, “I don’t want to hear it.” On this occasion, he chose the latter. While it is well beneath me to propose such a stereotype as all Irish are stubborn, I can assert with certainty that this one was, who made up for a great many who are not.

But it would be just as easy to judge him by his competitive streak, which was at least a kissing cousin to his stubbornness. Win or lose — usually lose — Jack was still ready to play every day without fail. His theory was that pool was the only aspect of his life where bad luck evinced itself at all, so it might as well be exorcised. And his luck at pool was genuinely horrible, almost as if predestined. He was easily capable of running 30 or 40 balls, but it was much more like him to luck into a way not to run the balls and jovially broadcast his misfortune to everyone else. Opportunities got away from Jack, who played pool very much as he lived, which frequently seems to be the case.

On the night of the exhibition, however, he was the champion of uncharacteristic conservativism. And when he ducked his cue ball behind the stack after sinking the match’s first six balls, with other shots still available, I distinctly heard one of the several hundred spectators mutter, “Aw, Jesus.” Mizerak gave Jack a studied stony stare but returned the safety in silence. Jack proceeded to take all the pace out of the match. Run a few, duck; return a duck; duck again. Brought to the table all too often merely to roll out of safeties and back into them, Mizerak was showing his lower teeth within the match’s first four racks, no sanguine sign. By the eighth rack, he was talking to himself, even more ominous.

However, just as it is said that the elephant schleps through the jungle but gets where he’s going all the same, the game did make grudging progress. Down 90-60 or thereabouts, Jack was still within that attainable 30-ball run when, to add a bit of local color, he maneuvered the Mighty Miz into the game’s ultimate humiliation, three consecutive scratches. Mizerak and the 3 ball were the same shade of red. He rebroke the full rack of balls; Jack disdained safety play for once and vaingloriously slammed an object ball into the rail, breaking open many others.

Having watched his worthy adversary flush billiards exhibition decorum down the tubes long since, Mizerak was not about to restore any. Speaking directly to Jack but clearly meant to be heard by one and all, Mizerak orated grandly, “Well, you can just siddown now!”

True to character, Jack remained standing through the first 45 or so of the inevitable 75-and-out, as though he were in his regular lunch hour sessions with me; and Mizerak made it a point to make eye contact after every one of those balls. “Six!” Plop. Stare. “Thirteen!” Plop. Stare. And he began to swagger and call his next shot position while the balls were still rolling; his A-game moves. “I can’t play anyway,” Jack confided to me at one point, enlarging his customary utterance by one word. “I’m too upset.”

Finally, he melted back into the chair for the run’s last 30 balls, and circulation returned to the audience’s collective buns. The next day, the Chicago Tribune primly reported that “Steve Mizerak, Perth Amboy, N.J., defeated Jack Gunne of Chicago, 150-58, in a pocket billiards exhibition.” Jack had the clipping laminated and mounted in a professionally drawn caricature of himself; his “thought bubble” read, “Brutal. Just brutal.”

Jack’s gone now, dead at 46; it’s probably only Mizerak and I who remember the game, and maybe not even that many. What I remember most was thinking just how much of you ultimately shows up in your pool game, whether you plan it that way or not; and how watching Jack lose like that was probably the hardest thing our friendship would ever ask me to do. Until I lost him too. As things turned out, his luck wasn’t that terrific outside pool either.

Everything Else

Offseason Trade Target: Nazem Kadri

By Sam Fels 2395 0

Before we get started, we didn’t do one of these yesterday because talking about hockey didn’t feel right yesterday. When you’re in this morass, do you really want to even think about next season right now? But anyway, this is our charge now so let’s resume.

Ok, Nazem Kadri is a complete penis. He’s more likely to do something horribly damaging to your team when it matters most than help it. In fact, had he kept his head on straight for once the Leafs might have actually beaten the Bruins. Any future infraction from this dickhead is going to result in a long suspension, and seeing as how you can’t trust him to learn or trust your substitute teacher of a coach to straighten him out, the risks are quite clear.

But here’s the thing. When he’s not trying reenact the Battle Of Saxony by himself, Nazem Kadri is a hell of a player. He has four 50+ point seasons on his resume (one was at that pace in 2013), and he’s done that mostly taking the dungeon shifts as a checking center either as the #3 center behind Matthews and Bozak or Tavares this year. He won 55% of his draws this year, which you know will still make some people in the Hawks’ front office tumescent. He put up 44 points this year mostly playing with a corpse in Marleau and something called Connor Brown. He’ll produce with just about anyone.

And the Hawks have a need, whether they want to admit it or not. As it stands right now, you don’t really want Jonathan Toews taking a massive amount of draws and shift-starts in his own end. But the Hawks only have one other player who can do that in David Kampf. Strome needs to be completely sheltered, and really so does Anisimov until you finally get him off this roster. Swapping in Kadri and punting Arty to wherever will take him for an Edible Arrangement gives you two centers you can leash to the d-zone, allowing Toews to really focus on the offensive end. At this point in his career, it’s one or the other for the most part.

Second, Kadri is cheap. His cap-hit is essentially the same as Anisimov’s, but you get a ton more. You get more skill, more speed, and a far better defensive player. Sure, he’s signed for three more years but at 28 he’s not likely to fall off a cliff before it’s up. And even if the offense starts to dry up you still have a pretty hellacious checking center on your hands. And there’s really nothing in the system at center unless the Hawks take Turcotte (which they’re going to), but you can worry about that shuffle whenever Turcotte is ready. Or you could just not take Turcotte if you swing for Kadri here.

Where this all falls apart is that the Hawks don’t really have anything the Leafs want. The Leafs need NHL-ready d-men. If they were run by a complete jackass, as they were in the past, you could probably really sell them on the offensive production and the cheapness of Gustafsson, which would still allow them to make moves considering he makes nothing. But Kyle Dubas probably isn’t a complete moron. Prospects don’t do the Leafs a whole lot of good as they are all about NOW NOW NOW, unless you could involved a third team for them to swing those prospects to. If you were looking for an actual landing spot for Keith, you might be able to sell him on this given Babcock and their chances but I don’t know that you could sell the Leafs on it. But there’s been no whisper that Keith has asked out or that the Hawks have asked him if he wants out.

Yes, Kadri wouldn’t solve your top six winger deficiency. But if you’re going 19-17-43-64 down the middle you can probably live with some third-line winger moonlighting on the top six. No, he doesn’t help the defense but his cap number is low enough, especially with any jettisoning of Anisimov, that you would retain all the flexibility to do something about that as well.

Yes, the gray matter is a concern. The hope would be that even with an overmatched coach, a leadership stable of Toews, Keith, Seabrook would keep him in a line a ton better than whatever it was in Toronto. The Hawks have made that bet before.

It hinges on just how sick the Leafs are of his bullshit. You get the sense if you could have made this trade in April they would have given him to you for a song. But now that time has let everything cool, it’ll be harder. But it makes sense, if the Hawks want to get creative.

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets – Saying Goodbye To The ’18-19 Boston Bruins

By Sam Fels 2353 0

You fucking fuckwits.

One of the reasons that most everyone hates the Patriots is that the path always seems to make itself in front of them. Not only are they ahead of the game, but their division has had unmatched and an almost incomprehensible incompetence and asshoolery for over a decade. Which means the Pats get six wins every year automatically to start, which means they only have to find five or six out of the other 10 to play at home through the playoffs. Just their aura has turned everyone closest to them into unidentifiable goo.

That’s what befell the Bruins here. Must be a Boston thing. The juggernaut in their own division broke all their ribs trying to fellate themselves in the first round, while the Bruins drew the one team that has such a mental block about them all they have to do is stand still and watch the doofuses on the other bench speak in tongues and break their backs doing some sort of seance. From there all they had was playoff neophytes through to the Final, ones that were getting nosebleeds from the rarified air they hadn’t experienced before. All too easy.

And then all it was in the Final was a team that didn’t belong. That didn’t know what they were doing there and kept turning around to find the relief of someone telling them to get out of there. The Bruins had 11 days off, a gift this time of year for nothing else but to stuff Patrice Bergeron’s organs back out of his legs where they seem to keep falling during any playoff run.

And yet they kept making it harder. Long stretches of trying to do the Humpty dance at the offensive blue line instead of just getting it deep and seeing if the Blues defense could get it out, which they can’t. The false impression that Zdeno Chara can do anything any more, which he can’t. Another Brad Marchand disappearance (and we’ll get back to this fraudulent shit weasel in a second). Bergeron injury. We’ve seen it all before. It’s the script.

And yet the Bruins had it in their hands. They’d engineered what should have been the Blues-iest moment in history, deflating that sweat-stained and illiterate balloon and party they were so ready to have. Game 7 at home, after pulling the pin. All they had to do was basically show up and not fuck up. All they had to do was bury the puck in a three-quarters open net instead of firing it back into the guts of a scrambling Jordan Binnington.

But that’s what the Bruins, and Marchand, did. It was easier to score, and would have changed the game and series. But this is June, which means it’s when Brad Marchand turns into a gaseous cloud.

Here’s Marchand’s record in his last two final appearances. One 5-on-3 goal, one empty net goal. That’s it. 13 games, and the supposed best left winger in the game can’t be found when it matters most with the a space telescope. Here, let’s revisit his coup-de-fuckstick:

I don’t know what’s best/worst. His Roger Dorn Ole bullshit at the blue line or his “Fuck it it’s your problem now” shuffle off to the bench with all of seven seconds left. This is Brad Marchand when it counts. Enjoy paying him until he’s David Backes II.

Here’s a list of teams to lose two Finals since the Great Lockout of ’05: Boston.

Congrats, it’s what you’ve always wanted, your own exclusive club where you can chew a truck-full of Skoal, pretend the Dropkicks are good and represent you in anyway, and talk about how Cam Neely could still score 50 in this league (that is if the league hadn’t been “pussified,” which is definitely how Bruins fans and execs described it). We know what happens here. You’ll learn all the wrong lessons because you still let Mike Milbury hang around for some godforsaken reason. Despite your success the past two years based on a quick defense and playing as fast as possible, along with Bergeron’s genius, you’ll conclude it’s because you’re not tough enough. You’ll let your BarfStool fandom bully you into thinking this. You know it to be true. Here comes Wayne Simmonds and Braydon Coburn. Fucking book it. This is the only organization that could double-down on a Backes signing, and they will.

You’ll blame Tuukka Rask, and finally break him when he gives up three goals in a period in the first week of October. If he has any sense he’ll pull a Patrick Roy right after Kevin Paul Dupont belches up his column questioning his heart, and then he’ll go on to win a Conn Smythe with the Flames. It’s what he deserves. It’s what you deserve.

It couldn’t have been any simpler, and you could have saved us from this great plague. You made every mistake possible and yet it was still there for you. The Blues kept tossing you the Cup, the one you kept chanting you wanted, and the Bruins kept receiving it like a person seeing a 16-inch softball for the first time.

I’ll tell you what happens now. You’ll lose to the Leafs next year. Everything’s broken, and you broke it. The gates are open, and everyone is coming for theirs. That’s if you don’t return to your natural state and getting fetal for the Canadiens in the first round. And then Krejci, Marchand, and Bergeron will be too old. There’s nothing behind them. This was it for you. You can’t fuck up a chance like this and think you’ll ever get another one. Hockey may be random and weird and stupid, but it doesn’t allow for that kind of compassion. It will exact its pound of flesh.

Also your biggest celebrity fans are either the leader of the most racist, misogynist sports empire in the world, a comedian who stole all of his stuff from Bill Hicks, or some dipshit actor who somehow keeps drugging Emily Blunt into believing he’s either talented or handsome. How perfect.

So in the words of Jon Hamm, perhaps the only good thing about St. Louis:

 

 

Everything Else

Stanley Cup Final Game 7 Preview – Cue The Europe

By Sam Fels 1540 0

vs.

GAMETIME: 7pm Central 

TV: NBC

PISSHEADS AND CHOWDAHEADS: St. Louis Gametime, Stanley Cup Of Chowder

If it feels like this goddamn Final has gone on for two months, you’re not alone. While the added day off for travel makes sense and should have been instituted a while ago, it does add four days to the series so you go from two weeks to two and a half, and it makes a difference. Hockey on June 12th is just dumb.

Or maybe it feels like it’s been this long because it’s two teams you’d rather not see win, and we spent all that time staring into the abyss that St. Louis could actually pull this off. Those two days felt like 70. And they still could, clearly, but a Game 7 on the road doesn’t much seem in character for them. Then again, being here at all doesn’t seem in character for them, so everything we knew and built our foundations upon is rubbish. Good way to live.

So it comes to this. Analyzing one hockey game can be futile, because anything can flip it. A bad call, a missed call, a delay of game penalty, a too many men penalty, someone falling on their ass, really anything.

Also, if Tuukka Rask plays as well as he did in Game 6, it isn’t going to matter much anyway. He is the reason the Bruins traipsed to the Final, and the layoff clearly took him down a level (down was the only way for him to go), but he may have found it again.

What Blues fans will be watching intently is if Jordan Binnington is going to revert to Blues traditional goaltending after letting in Brandon Carlo’s double-play ball through him and into the net. BABIP Kung Fu Treachery can come to hockey too, people. You would imagine the Blues aren’t going to get this with a middling goalie performance as the Bruins will make the Blues work at least on the power play, and Rask isn’t going to let the bottom fall out either. You know what we’re betting on.

Again, it’s a bit silly to pinpoint one player, because any fuckwit can come up with two goals and have his name live forever. Remember Max Talbot scoring twice in a Game 7? That dude was just a live action Pepe Le Peux. Still, most will focus on the Bruins top line. If they score, the Bruins tend to win. They hadn’t really until Game 6, with Marchand pulling a Jagr and only showing up when his team was on a two-man advantage and then Pastrnak got one in the third. The narrative has been that Bergeron has been getting pushed around in this series, but I don’t know that I buy it. He’s only been in the red in both attempts and expected goals in a game in Game 5 and Game 2, so he just hasn’t gotten the rub.

You would expect Bruce Cassidy to continue to keep Bergeron’s line and the Chara-McAvoy pairing separate, mostly to keep Chara away from Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko which he simply hasn’t had the mobility to deal with. That still leaves O’Reilly’s line as the assignment, and he’s obviously been going off of late. One feels if the Blues get this, it will be from that line. If anyone else dents on either side, then it’ll be their night.

It’s hard to see the Bruins losing three straight home games. The Blues have the bigger questions in goal and on special teams, which is not where you want to be in a Game 7. But again, it’s one game, where anything stupid or inexplicable is possible. But hey, at least it will be over come 11pm or 12am, right?

Everything Else

Offseason Trade Target: The Ghost Bear

By Sam Fels 2083 0

We continue our look around what the Hawks might be able to pry loose via trade this summer, and our lonely eyes turn to The Iladelph. This one isn’t as clear as some others, where the Flyers aren’t actively shopping Shayne Gostisbehere. But they’re also listening, desperate for some forward help. That’s why they’ve traded for the rights to pay Kevin Hayes, who sucks, but it would be truly Flyers to get the jump on negotiations and fuck them up anyway.

So first off, would the Flyers actually part with Ghost Bear? Possibly. He’s been passed on the depth chart by Ivan Provorov, and it might soon be that Travis Sanheim does as well. They’ve been waiting for Robert Hagg and Samuel Morin forever, and there’s a couple other kids down in the system as well. It’s something of a strength to trade from for them.

And Ghost Bear has earned himself the title of a power play specialist. Your first reaction is to say that he’s just younger, more mobile Erik Gustafsson. Except that younger and more mobile is something we’ve wanted Gus to be for his entire stay here, so I’m not sure that’s anything worth complaining about.

But yes, Gostisbehere has racked up the power play points in the past, with 33 two years ago, and 23 the year before that. That doesn’t mean he’s a total nincompoop at even-strength, with 23 points this year and 32 the year before that. Ghost Bear might always be haunted by his rookie year where he put up 17 goals in just 64 games. But he shot 11% that season, which is astronomical for a defenseman and really shouldn’t be expected again.

That said, Gostisbehere’s metrics at evens are pretty good, well above the team-rate in Corsi the past three seasons and above in expected goals the past two. The caveat here is that Ghost Bear is punted in the offensive zone to start his shifts most of the time, so he should probably carry a higher rate than the team.

The drawback to Ghost Bear is that he doesn’t help out the defensive game much. And while he’s brilliantly skilled and mobile, it’s unclear if he can consistently skate or pass his team out of trouble when in his own zone. He wasn’t asked to do it a whole lot in Philly. Again, perhaps paired with a really good defensive partner you’d have a nice dynamic, but right now the only player the Hawks have that qualifies as that is Connor Murphy. It’s a nice thought, but a Ghost Bear-Murphy pairing sounds like a really nice second pairing and doesn’t solve your top of the rotation problem.

Is he gettable? Probably. Rumors have the Canadiens hot on his ass and dangling Andrew Shaw and/or Paul Byron to get him. Certainly Brandon Saad would be more than that, though if that deal straight up makes you queasy I get it. The Flyers are desperate for any kind of second line help, and Saad would definitely qualify as that. Fuck, maybe you catch the Flyers being the Flyers and convince them that Anisimov is that, especially if they can’t sign Hayes. It’s a longshot, but dumber things have happened.

Does he help? That’s a harder case to make. Again, the Hawks are fiending for mobility on the back end like no one else. This would make Renton’s withdrawal look like a cold. But Ghost Bear might be more of what they have, somewhat wayward in his own zone. If he had proved to be a carry-the-mail type, you’d be in on this 100%. But he might just be like Gustafsson, where you’ve got to get him to the offensive zone another way before his real effectiveness is apparent.

Like we’ve said about just about everyone we’ve previewed, he’s better than almost everything else the Hawks have on the roster now. But is he such an improvement? He would make Gustafsson expendable and you probably can fetch more for Gus than you give up for Ghost Bear simply due to the contract. Ghost Bear is also 26, so he may have some improving to do but he’s also not so far away from his peak that you can picture him being significantly more than he is. Again, this feels like another half-measure.