Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The Winnipeg Jets

By Sam Fels 1915 0

The Canadian drought for a Cup goes longer. But the drought for Canadian cities with an airport had died in the first round anyway.

The Winnipeg Jets saved us from yet another flurry of stories and videos about how “NASHVILLE HAS SUCH A UNIQUE” atmosphere from Canadian writers who forgot the place existed from last spring. so we thank them for that. They also punched a variety of holes in the Pekka Rinne myth, and then watched the puck squirt through them for all the goals they would need. So we thank them for that, as well.

But in the end, they couldn’t save us from the new golden children, and we scorn them for that. And now that flurry from last spring will be replaced by a bunch of oh-so-clever headlines from pale-ass Toronto writers like, “Did You Know You Can Have Fun In Vegas?” or “Hey There’s Gambling Here!” or “Steve Simmons Gets His Ass Kicked In By Stripper.” Thank you very fucking much, Jets. We just can’t wait.

In all honesty, this has been a long time coming for the Jets, who should have been at this stage at least two years ago had they not kept trying to foist Ondrej Pavelec on the world in some elaborate prank/gaslighting to convince us all that we don’t exist. What’s that? Ondrej Pavelec? No, he’s totally real. I’m serious. He was their starter for years! Really? Yes, he probably works in a garage somewhere now smoking unfiltered cigarettes before a woman in white pants yells at him for five minutes. Oh, apparently he plays for the Rangers. Same thing.

Anyway, Pavelec or Michael “Hanging In There” Hutchinson always combined to torpedo this uber-talented Jets team year after year. They got some help from Paul Maurice of course, whose philosophy before this season was “MEAT!” The Jets routinely were the dumbest team in the league, and compounding that was they had one of the worst penalty-kills to go along with all those penalties they took as Pavelec looked like being attacked by bees in net while Dustin Byfuglien looked on with an expression on his face that said, “Can you get sick from combining Butterfingers and popcorn?”

Ah yes, Byguflien. Big Buff. DAT BIG BUCK GUY. Once again became the darling of hockey analysts everywhere because he banged in a few goals, pried multiple guys off a scrum who weren’t really doing anything anyway like he was a bouncer at a Harvard bar, and had a few guys try and check him and rebound off the creamy-nougey of his middle. You have to hand it to Buff, he’s excellent at PR because all of those things distract from the three to four times per game he would get caught ahead of the puck before it had even exited the Jets’ zone and he’d have to scramble back. Ha, Buff “scrambling.” There’s a term for you. Right up there with, “Roenick thoughts.”

Anyway, Maurice got away from that this year, as you can’t really ask any coach to take less than four fucking seasons to figure out that he has one of the most talented forward groups in recent vintage and should probably get them to play at evens and the power play as often as possible. It’s a lesson in patience, or dumb luck, as Maurice probably should have been fired two years ago but got to hang around long enough to try this experiment called, “sticking to hockey?” The pinnacle of coaching these days is basically not getting in the way when you have four lines full of skill and Jack Roslovic just waiting around.

And yet it wasn’t quite enough. Maybe it would have been if Patrik Laine’s 1000-yard stare and misplaced beard from the Amish grandmother in Kingpin had been anything more than a passenger for most of the playoffs. Hey Patrik, you’re allowed to do more than wait around for a one-timer. What is it about guys named Patrick? Laine could spend the summer under whatever bridge in Finland he lives going over film of various Knights knocking him off the puck, except there isn’t enough time before training camp.

The Jets might think they’ll be here every year, but the bills are coming due. Trouba, Connor, and Laine are all do extensions in the next year, and Trouba has already tried to escape once. And maybe Blake Wheeler wants to ply his trade somewhere that doesn’t require travel by tauntaun. Paul Stastny says he wants to say and that his family is all for it, proving that either Paul Stastny is drugging his family or literally anywhere is better than St. Louis even when you’re from there.

So this might have been the Jets chance. A first-year team in their way before a chance to play for the Cup. You can’t ask for more…and then Byfuglien skated right by it. Meanwhile, the “loudest building in the league” sounded like a Joni Mitchell soundcheck for the last 40 minutes. You guys want to chip in and maybe inspire? No? Ok cool, go whatever it is you do in Winnipeg for the summer then, which I assume is a whole lot of log-rolling and trying to hit each other with rocks. Oh, and reading Hawks fanfic about trading Toews back there, because that’s something our most unwashed dream about. And in the coming seasons we can get more video packages about the “rivalry” between the Jets and Oilers from the past, where all the old Jets talk about how much they hated the Oilers and Gretzky and Messier respond to questions about it with, “I’m sorry, who?”

It could have been more. It probably should have been. But hey, you’re Canadian. Only so much can be expected. As always, the real cities will take home the real baubles now.

Everything Else

Night Songs – You’re Only Going To Get More Caps

By Sam Fels 1715 0

It was quite the viewing to have the Capitals on one screen last night and the Cleveland Cavaliers on another last night. Both played with a unique desperation and frenzy against teams that not only didn’t match it, they didn’t seem very interested in doing so either. As Ryan Callahan said, “They played like they had to win, we played like we had another chance.” You could put that quote on any Celtic and it would work as well.

The Caps were simply everywhere last night, in the kind of effort I’m not sure you can manage for more than a game or two. But the thing is, they don’t. They have to do it for one more…and then maybe like five or six more against Vegas. But they probably won’t come up against such a sloppy opponent again.

As furied as the Caps were skating in both directions, the Lighting were simply awful. They couldn’t complete two consecutive passes. As the Caps sank deeper and deeper, the Lightning kept trying to make plays at the offensive blue line, and the three times they ran into each other there is a pretty good symbol of how all that went. Victor Hedman went back into witness protection, they didn’t score on their power plays, and that seems to be the impetus for this Lightning team.

Still, I don’t know where this leads us for a Game 7. The Lightning are still the better team, and yet they’ve infrequently been intent on proving that this series. They were clubbed in the first two games, and then “did enough” in Games 3 and 5 while having Vasilevskiy bail them out in Game 4. At some point you’d think they wouldn’t be so flummoxed by Trotz’s defensive ways, and yet here we are.

Still, this is where the Bolts have been before. They beat the Rangers in a Game 7 at this stage in ’15. They lost to the Penguins in ’16 in the same situation. As strange as it sounds, the Bolts really have been part of the league’s aristocracy for a while now. Meanwhile, it feels like the Caps just set themselves up for a greater heartbreak. Unless you really believe these Caps, THE CAPS, are going to close out three straight series on the road. Just doesn’t seem to be their way. What does is finally breaking through to get just close enough to realize they’re just not quite good enough this time around, when their past two teams most certainly were (yes, those Caps teams would have gone on to win the whole thing if it wasn’t for Pittsburgh, I’m fairly sure).

There’s another thing I wanted to get to, a bugaboo of mine for years. These were the postgame comments of Brooks Orpik. The playing surface across the league have been something we’ve been calling attention to for a while. The one here in the United Center was routinely voted among the worst in the league, which didn’t make a lot of sense for a team that was on the vanguard of playing fast and skilled.

Obviously, there are a lot of challenges, given that almost all of these buildings are holding multiple events, not just sharing with a basketball team. It’s May, and especially on the East Coast humidity is going to be a problem. All understandable.

But it affects the quality of the game. The Lightning weren’t good, but they weren’t helped by a puck bouncing all over the place. Trotz and the Caps are right to use that and sag back, because it’s near impossible to pass your way through that when the ice is descending into slurpee. For a league that should be striving to be as pleasing to the eye as possible with passing and skating everywhere instead of guys just battling in the neutral zone like it’s No Man’s Land, this should be something they talk about.

But it isn’t, because whatever fixes are needed to keep all playing surfaces as clean as possible would cost money. So I’ll just shout at the rain some more.

Everything Else

What We Talk About When We Talk About Vegas

By Sam Fels 2669 0

I know. I’m the piss on everyone’s chips. This might start out like that, but I promise not all of this article is going to be that. Swear to God. Not even sure I totally believe it, but it’s the truth. Anyway, with Vegas winning the Western Conference yesterday, all the debate and arguments over what it means about the state of the league, the state of mind of some fans, and a bunch of other stuff that happens when something this unique takes place has basically exploded. Let’s sift through it.

There certainly are a lot of annoying aspects to the Knights, and I feel like I covered most of them here. But that post probably needs updating, and it also skipped a very large, perhaps most-annoying aspect that’s come along with them. This idea that the Knights’ run has somehow “healed” Vegas after the atrocity right before the season. That’s patently ridiculous, cheap, and manipulative, and a few other adjectives as well. This is always a safe-haven  sportswriters run for in times like this, either for easy heart-string pulling or they simply don’t have the capacity to deal with real-life disasters/horror in any real way.

I certainly don’t want to discount that those connected to those killed that night might have found some distraction in the Knights. If they could provide those people with any amount of time of levity, happiness, joy, then that is indeed a wonderful thing. But it’s not “healing.” Those deaths were senseless, and merely serve as a testament to our country’s demented priorities and broken political system.

You know what might “heal?” Meaningful gun control and mental health care expansion in the name of those who passed to assure something like that never happens again. That would mean those deaths weren’t empty or meaningless. A hockey team winning a few playoff rounds do not. And yet you constantly see this listed right next to Fleury’s .947 SV% as a reason the Knights are going to the Final. That’s abhorrent and wrong. It’s also too convenient. So does that mean the Panthers are moral failures because they didn’t make the playoffs after Parkland?  Or various other teams in various other locations of our sickeningly frequent other shootings and mass murder?

It’s a story, but it’s separate to the Knights success and should be treated as such. Yes, I have frequently written about the sports mattering and the connection to those we’ve lost. I wrote a whole book about it, in fact. But after the celebrations and the memories, those people are still gone, and the grieving and processing and healing–if such a thing is even possible–takes place within and away from arenas and stadiums. Secondly, while I wrote about the Cubs World Series win and what it meant to me because of my family, the Cubs were something we actively shared together for my entire life. The Knights didn’t exist before this, so there isn’t that connection for anyone there. Again, if any of those who survived or those connected to those who didn’t could find momentary distraction from the Knights, that’s great. But it’s not the overarching cure-all that every sportswriter is desperate to be, and all those who are desperate for it to be so we won’t talk about some real changes.

That doesn’t mean sports can’t affect things in the rest of the world. Didier Drogba stopped a civil war, for christ’s sake! Colin Kaepernick was able to keep a critically important issue in the public eye without even playing, while also exposing just how deep and cancerous racism is in our country. You may say you knew all along, but I guarantee there are plenty who didn’t realize how deep the problem went and had their eyes opened. They just don’t yell as loud as though who wanted Kap to just go away. It can be done, but it’s extraordinary circumstances like that.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the hockey aspect.

Admittedly, this is one of perspective. If the Hawks hadn’t won three Cups recently, I’d probably be livid right now. You get the frustration from some fanbases, but it’s misplaced. Just because your team has been moronically run for decades doesn’t mean everyone else’s has to be. Try and explain “mandatory suffering” to a Yankees fan. It doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, it seems unfair, but it’s not. Something is only “unfair” if you were promised a certain system or process. Sports is not that. You are not guaranteed a win, otherwise what would be the point? It just so happens hockey has a ton of teams that have been run by the stupid, drunk, bewildered or some combination thereof for far longer than any reasonable league should. And because of its lack of attention and/or its stone-resistance to any sort of change, it remains that way. Why are ex-players still getting GM jobs when every other sport has moved on to executive types for that job? Does anyone care Theo Epstein never played the game? The GM of the Warriors never played in the NBA, and that’s the best team of all-time (come at me).

That discussion also goes to age. A 25-year-old Patriots fan would know no suffering. A 40-year-old one would and could regale you with stories of sitting on a cold and uncomfortable bench in Foxboro watching Steve Grogan thrash about (I’ve been through this story). So that doesn’t hold up.

What I think it points at is just how stupid and backward this league is, at least to some people. And yet some of these decisions that landed players in Vegas aren’t as indefensible as it seems. Sure, Dale Tallon should be barred from ever working in the league again, and has basically proven that he got lucky with a few draft picks and was just conscious enough to not fuck up two top-three picks. We’ll circle back to this. Nate Schmidt was a third-pairing player in DC. And rightly so. William Karlsson had done nothing on two teams. The Ducks had three or four young defensemen ahead of Shea Theodore. The Penguins had a better, younger, cheaper goalie than Fleury. Alex Tuch wasn’t going to change the fortunes of the Wild anytime soon. James Neal’s departure sure didn’t hurt the Preds much.

And let’s face it, George McPhee isn’t a genius either. We know he’s not an idiot, he built that first wave of Ovie-era Caps teams. But he’s not redefining anything here. Everything just came up Milhouse.

The one thing to remember is above in this post. .947. That’s all you need to know. Without Fleury, the Jets might have swept this series. They certainly win both in Vegas. .947. He was .927 during the season. Again, that’s pretty much it, along with Karlsson’s 25% shooting-percentage. Look at the top-10 starters in SV% this year. All are on playoff teams.

What I think frustrates people is it is a testament to just how watered down the league is in terms of talent. All it takes to be a playoff team is a goalie playing well and two or three guys with a shooting spike. Which makes it seem random, which makes it seem pointless.

And yet…eight of the last nine Cups have been won by three teams. Now, of those eight Cups none of those teams that won had to play the same team twice in the Final. The Pens beat the Wings, Sharks, and Preds. The Hawks the Flyers, Bruins, and Lightning. The Kings the Devils and Rangers. So maybe it is random until it isn’t. I’m not sure what to make of it.

And yet we can’t have it both ways. The salary cap can’t handicap well-built teams while we also lament that no one knows how to build a team. Yet there doesn’t feel like any GM we can safely say knows what he’s doing completely. We’ve been over Tallon, and he constructed most of a team that won three in six. We could have the Stan Bowman argument all day. No one thinks Ken Holland is anywhere near a genius anymore when he can’t spend as much of Mr. I’s money as he wants. Jim Rutherford inherited a pretty great roster and stocked farm-system, and still gave up a 1st-round pick for Ryan Reaves. Lou Lamoriello had Roman Polak on the team. How deep do you want to go?

When it’s like this the answer is almost always in the middle. Yes, there are a lot of dumb GMs but they also have a near-impossible job thanks to the hard cap. And yet even that could be changing. There’s going to be a big bump this summer, bigger than previous seasons, and that could happen a couple more times before another lockout changes the landscape again.

What we can say is that goaltender is the definitive position in the four major sports right now, because of the flattening of talent-bases across the league. People claim quarterback, but he’s only on the field half to three-quarters of the time. Aaron Rodgers is the best I’ve ever seen (come at me), and he’s been to one Super Bowl because the Packers haven’t been able to figure out anything else around him and some bad/hilarious luck. It ain’t his fault. And goaltender will remain that until teams can amass and keep a level of talent overcome that. And even the Jets, who pretty much have, couldn’t do much with Fleury in this way. .947.

It doesn’t always work like this. Jonathan Quick dragged the Kings to a Final in ’12 but the next Kings team was really fast and really good. You can’t say a team has ridden a goalie only since until Fleury now. Murray was very good the past two years, but not other worldly. Crawford was really good in ’13 and when he straightened out in ’15, but he never carried a .940+. This happens every so often.

What we can hope for is that finally, hockey people will learn. Vegas is built on smaller, faster (and even they traded for Reaves). McPhee and Gallant saw the biggest obstacle to scoring was shot-blocking, and set their team to try and score before that could get set up. Gallant deserves praise for getting his team to skate as hard back as the do forward. But we’ve seen that before, too. Bruce Boudreau has made a career of doing that in the regular season, then acts shocked when teams match that effort in the playoffs. But Dubnyk, Andersen, or whichever goof in DC when he was there couldn’t bail him out the way Fleury has this year. This isn’t new.

Still, a league that eschews “harder to play against” for faster and better could be a better product. The Knights are fucking hard to play against and they don’t need Marchand or Wilson-esque bullshit to be so. They’re just always up your ass because they’re fast and work hard. And you can’t score on their goalie right now.

It’s an anomaly. It’s a strange one. It might never happen again. But there are lessons to be learned.

Everything Else

High On The Hog: Down A Pair

By Jon Fromi 1710 0

The Rockford IceHogs headed to Texas this weekend looking to take at least a game at the HEB Center to open the Western Conference Final with the Stars. That didn’t happen.

The first two games were rife with opportunity. However, Rockford dropped Game 1 on Friday and Game 2 Sunday. Texas leads the series 2-0 as the action now shifts to Winnebago County for the next three games.

The BMO could be the difference maker for the IceHogs, though Texas earned their advantage with some hard work around the net. Greasy goals did the trick in a 4-2 Stars win Friday night. A put back in overtime made Texas 3-2 winners Sunday.

 

Game 1

Friday, May 18-Texas 4, Rockford 2

Game 1 of the Western Conference Final did not turn out the way the Hogs wanted. Rockford was outworked in front of the net, dropping its first postseason game.

Texas was active around the net early. After Dillon Heatherington caught a post on a shot attempt, the Stars swarmed the crease of Hogs goalie Collin Delia. Curtis McKenzie knocked in a loose puck 4:22 into the contest to give the Stars a 1-0 advantage.

The Hogs responded midway through the first period on the power play. Carl Dahlstrom took a page from fellow blueliner Cody Franson’s book to tie the game. As opposed to Franson’s happy place, the left dot, Dahlstrom sent his left-handed shot from the right dot, one-timing Chris DiDomenico’s pass into the Stars cage at the 11:19 mark.

The Texas response was quick. Roope Hintz, who had gained separation from Rockford defenseman Gustav Forsling, took a stretch pass from Denis Gurianov and entered the IceHogs zone on a breakaway. Hintz was able to five-hole Delia and the Stars led 2-1 at 12:37 of the first. Texas took that lead into the locker room.

DiDomenico evened the score for Rockford early in the second stanza. Darren Raddysh fired toward the Texas net from just inside of the Stars blueline. Lance Bouma got a stick on the puck in front of the net, sending it over to DiDomenico at the bottom of the left circle. The attempt beat Texas goalie Mike McKenna and nestled into the ropes at 4:35 to make it a 2-2 game.

The Stars regained the lead at the tail end of a power play a few minutes later. Remi Elie finished off the scoring play by knocking another loose puck in behind Delia 8:47 into the second. The IceHogs kept the pressure on the Texas defense but couldn’t solve McKenna and entered the second intermission on the short end of the scoreboard for the first time this postseason.

Rockford gave up a key goal 7:18 into the final frame after a Sheldon Dries pass attempt was broken up in the slot by Viktor Svedberg. The loose puck came back out to Dries at the left dot. The rookie forward settled the puck and backhanded a shot toward goal. The attempt got the best of Delia, who appeared to have an obstructed view courtesy of Stars forward Jason Dickinson. The puck got through on the far side of Delia’s net to make the score 4-2 Stars.

That was too much for Rockford, who mustered only five shots in the final 20 minutes after sending 28 McKenna’s way in the first two periods. The Stars goalie stopped 31 of 33 shots on the night.

Lines (Starters in italics)

John Hayden-Tyler Sikura-Andreas Martinsen (A)

Chris DiDomenico-David Kampf-Lance Bouma

William Pelletier-Tanner Kero-Anthony Louis

Matthew Highmore-Victor Ejdsell-Luke Johnson

Cody Franson (A)-Viktor Svedberg (A)

Adam Clendening-Carl Dahlstrom

Gustav Frosling-Darren Raddysh

Collin Delia

Power Play (1-4)

DiDomenico-Johnson-Sikura-Franson-Clendening

Highmore-Ejdsell-Louis-Bouma-Dahlstrom (Clendening was in for Louis when Dahlstrom scored)

Penalty Kill (Stars were 1-4)

Kampf-Bouma-Franson-Svedberg

Kero-Pelletier-Raddysh-Forsling

Johnson-Martinsen-Clendening-Dahlstrom

 

Game 2

Sunday, May 20-Texas 3, Rockford 2 (OT)

Too much time in the box did in the piglets in Game 2. Collin Delia stopped 34 shots but it wasn’t enough to keep Texas from going up 2-0 in the Western Conference Final.

Rockford got on the board at 6:09 of the opening period. Andreas Martinsen got the scoring play started when he won control of the puck behind the Stars net. He sent it out to Adam Clendening at the right point, who then got it back to Martinsen at the right dot.

John Hayden was in front of the net waiting for a centering pass…and got it. Whiffing on his initial attempt, Hayden slid home the lamp-lighter under Texas goalie Mike McKenna for a 1-0 Hogs advantage.

Texas scored the next two goals in the first half of the second period. Jason Dickinson struck from the right dot after getting a cross-ice pass from Matt Mangene at the 2:45 mark. The Stars took a 2-1 lead after a shot from Brent Regner pinballed off the stick of Luke Johnson, the ice surface and the right post before settling into the net for a power play goal at 8:15.

The power play allowed Rockford to even the score less than two minutes later. After a 5-on-3 chance ended, Cody Franson threaded a circle-to-circle pass to Chris DiDomenico. Streaking to the far side of the right circle, DiDomenico sniped the equalizer past McKenna at 11:09 to make it a 2-2 game.

Despite the Stars dominating the third period, Hogs goalie Collin Delia kept his team in contention, anchoring a Rockford penalty kill unit that negated four Texas chances. The IceHogs were out shot 12-4 but took the game into overtime with a chance to steal Game 2.

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Rockford let a huge opportunity to end the game slip away when Victor Ejdsell started a 2-on-1 rush with DiDomenico five minutes into the extra session. Ejdsell tried to make a late pass which was broken up by McKenna’s stick, ending the threat.

Curtis McKenzie was tripped by Gustav Forsling 10:08 into overtime, leading to the game-winner. McKenzie did the honors on the subsequent power play, knocking in a rebound of a Brian Flynn shot to end the contest.

Lines (Starters in italics)

Matthew Highmore-Victor Ejdsell-Luke Johnson

John Hayden-Tyler Sikura-Andreas Martinsen (A)

Chris DiDomenico-David Kampf-Lance Bouma

William Pelletier-Tanner Kero-Anthony Louis

Adam Clendening-Carl Dahlstrom

Cody Franson (A)-Viktor Svedberg (A)

Gustav Frosling-Darren Raddysh

Collin Delia

Power Play (1-5)

DiDomenico-Johnson-Sikura-Franson-Clendening

Highmore-Ejdsell-Louis-Bouma-Dahlstrom

Penalty Kill (Stars were 2-7)

Kampf-Bouma-Franson-Svedberg

Kero-Pelletier-Raddysh-Forsling

Johnson-Martinsen-Clendening-Dahlstrom

 

Back To The BMO

Game 3 will be at the BMO Harris Bank Center on Tuesday night. Game 4 is set for Thursday with Game 5 the following night provided the Hogs pick up a win in this series.

Follow me on twitter @JonFromi for thoughts on Rockford’s postseason run.

Everything Else

Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…- FFUD’s Player Reviews: Anthony Duclair and Dylan Sikura or I Want You To Show Me

By Adam Hess 2002 0

Anthony Duclair’s career thus far has a slight “Over Promise, Under Deliver” to it. He was considered a pretty good prospect before got to the NHL, one with high offensive upside because of his speed and shot. And while he does still flash that speed and shot occasionally, he’s only scored 37 goals in 213 NHL games thus far, and 2o of those goals game in 2015-16. Let’s take a look at his most recent campaign.

Anthony Duclair

Total – 56 games, 11 goals, 12 assists, 23 points, -5, 16 PIM

With Hawks – 23 games, 2 goals, 6 assists, 8 points, Even, 6 PIM

50.51 CF%, 1.99 CF% rel, 45.97 xGF%, 0.42 xGF% rel, 53.12 ZSR

Duclair wasn’t exactly over-the-top impressive this season, in general nor when he came to Chicago in exchange for drunk trespasser Richard Panik, but he was certainly not bad. His speed is evident the moment you lay eyes on him on the ice, and he puts it to work well at both ends of the ice. He’s got a decent frame for being for 5’11”, 191 lbs, so he’s able to cause some issues with that speed and his body in transition offensively, as well as defensively on the forecheck and backcheck. One of the podcast guys mentioned a while back that he has some Hossa-esque qualities to his defensive style, and at times that 91 on his jersey might make you think it’s Hossa’s 81.

While Duclair hasn’t exactly lit up score sheets so far in his NHL career, it doesn’t take too much investigating to fine out why – he doesn’t shoot enough. In his 56 appearances last year, Duclair only got 97 shots on goal total. He shot 11.3% for the season, not far off his career mark of 12.5%, which is a more than acceptable conversion rate. But it still doesn’t tell the whole story, as that number is buoyed a bit by his 19% rate in 2015-16, his only full season so far and also the one in which he accounted for more than half of his career goals. He followed that up with a tough 2016-17 in which he scored just 5 goals on 6.6% shooting. And even this past year, he shot 13.2% in his 33 games in the desert and just 6.9% (nice) in his 23 games with the Hawks. All of that suggests that we still don’t know what kind of shooter Duclair is, but the only way to really figure that out is going to be him getting more pucks to the net.

Given the positive qualities he possesses, and the fact that he is still just 22 years old, I still think it’s reasonable to believe there is some high-ceiling upside left for Duclair to tap into, but with each passing day the likelihood of him reaching that ceiling shrinks. If he can somehow have a breakout year next year, you might have a 55-point player on your hands. But that’s if you wanna be really optimistic about his climbing the ladder to that ceiling. More likely, you have a 35-45 point third liner on your hands who can contribute defensively, which is perfectly fine.

Dylan Sikura

College – 35 games, 22 goals, 32 assists, 54 points, +18, 22 PIM

NHL – 5 games, 0 goals, 3 assists, 3 points, +2, 0 PIM

NHL – 42.34 CF%, -4.81 CF% rel, 49.32 xGF%, 7.07 xGF% rel, 64.29 ZSR

Just about any NHL production you get from Dylan Sikura is a net positive, because it’s extremely rare that 6th round draft picks become NHL players. Sikura developed into one of the best college hockey players over the past few years, and he certainly got the Hawks brass excited about him, enough so that they signed his brother to an NHL deal to butter him up and make sure he signed at the conclusion of his college season. We call that the reverse Hayes.

Sikura looked fine when he got to the NHL, I guess. I am not sure how much you can read into five appearances in a lost season on a team made up of a lot of patchwork. His offensive ability was evident in college, and he flashed some of hit when got to Chicago, so we know it’s there. The question is whether or not that will come to mean anything, because we have seen plenty of good college performers become nothing NHL players in the past. I think Sikura can stick, but he probably projects similarly to Duclair – if it all clicks, you maybe have a second liner who will give you 50 points or more, but more than likely you’re looking at a third liner who can create some mismatches and get you 40ish points a year. Next year will be the true barometer for him.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 3 Night 8: We’re Not Beyond This?

By Sam Fels 1654 0

You don’t have to analyze last night’s Bolts-Caps game very hard. Andrei Vasilevskiy did to the Caps what Braden Hotlby has done on a few nights this spring, and the Caps–perhaps more predictably than we guessed just four nights ago–handed back their advantage so dominantly attained in Tampa. The Capitals didn’t do anything wrong, and watch in Game 5 how every time Dan Girardi is on the ice which side the Caps choose to try and enter on or dump the puck behind. You won’t be surprised.

So let’s bitch about coverage some more, because they make it so easy. In the 2nd intermission, while they were doing the highlights from the first 40 minutes, Keith Jones and Mike Milbury wanted to highlight Alex Ovechkin. And they wanted to remark upon how locked in they thought he was. And what evidence did they use?

The look on his face in warm-ups.

Actually, that deserves a little more accent: THE LOOK ON HIS FACE IN WARM-UPS.

After learning what Ovie eats before every home game, I’m not convinced the look on his face isn’t just a reaction to his lower intestine exploding, but let’s leave that discussion for another time. Jones and Milbury basically treated Ovechkin like a horse in the fucking paddock. “Ooooh, I like his gait! I’m laying a hundo on that one!”

Perhaps it’s isn’t totally fair to single out hockey doofus Statler and Waldorf for this kind of thing. How many years did we get announcers and analysts reacting to the look on Kobe Bryant’s face? Which Kobe most certainly didn’t rehearse for hours and days leading up to the playoffs to make sure people would notice and then know HOW MUCH IT MEANT TO HIM. I’ll give Ovie credit and say he doesn’t practice his PLAYOFF WARM-UP FACE, because that would be galactically stupid and Ovie is kind of weird-looking as it is anyway.

But this has to be one of the stupidest pieces of analysis from this crew, and yes I recognize the enormity of that statement. Jones and Milbury especially are responsible for the whole “Ovie is a playoff flop narrative” because it either garners attention, they’re too stupid to see what else what wrong for the Caps, or both. Just because Ovie has gotten a few more pucks to go in this spring doesn’t mean he was a sloth in previous springs. He’s just gotten more help this time around, namely Braden Holtby’s .925 SV% and Sergei Bobrovsky’s excellent impression of the Bernie Lean in net.

What does Ovie usually do in warm-ups? Have a smoke and generally look like he’s soaked in ennui? The dude always looks like my dog when I grab the leash, such is his excitement about just about everything. Oh but this time he’s locked in because NBCSN happened to get a good angle of him?

We could use warm-ups as a case-study if Alex…oh I don’t know, actually tried to eat the plexi-glass or kept viciously head-butting the crossbar. This was just an expression, and this is the kind of thing that speaks to color commentators who don’t know anything beyond “PASSIONGRITHEARTFAARRRRRRT.” If you asked either of these dinguses, and I actually have some patience for Keith Jones at times, what Ovie might be doing to open himself up more for better and more chances than he has in the past, they couldn’t tell you. This is the same team that uses one example of Ovie backchecking to indict his entire career, of course.

I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a spring where Pierre McGuire has rushed for the chance to show you Ryan Callahan highlights while Nikita Kucherov is busy nearly tearing the ears off any goalie that happens to have the misfortune of getting in his way on the power play. The Lightning scored one of the prettier collection of goals in a game last night, but let’s get more shots of Cedric Pacquette grappling with Local Oaf, because that has a huge bearing on the game. As mentioned above, why not point out that the Caps enter the offensive zone on Girardi’s side EVERY FUCKING TIME?! Oh, because that would go agains the “warrior” narrative about Girardi that Pierre has been pushing for five years at least even though Girardi is turning odd colors in the sun at this point.

I know, shouting at the rain again. We’ll never have hockey analysis that has moved beyond phrenology. Still, this one was particularly special.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 3 Night 7: Maybe There’s Just No Fighting It

By Sam Fels 1773 0

As I sat last night trying to figure out what I’d say about Game 3 between the Jets and Knights, it dawned on me that pretty much all of it doesn’t matter. I could sit here and talk about the ridiculous pace the Knights played that thing at last night. And I would say there’s no way that can be sustainable, but that’s kind of been their thing all season. Or I could talk about how the Jets slower d-men…which is basically all of them, kept insisting on taking more time with the puck than they were ever going to get. When the Knights are the opponents, you either gotta skate like your ass hair has been lit on fire or move the puck as soon as you get to it. It feels like the best way to play the Knights when they’re in this mood is maybe to not even pass in your own zone. Just get the puck and fire it around the boards and past their forwards and basically do what they do to you. You can also try and pick your way out, which is what the Hawks did in their prime, but that takes such a level of intricacy and precision I don’t know that any team is capable of it. Especially with the not-quite-that-fast blue line of the Jets. What I do know is that the Jets didn’t have time to contemplate Proust on every retrieval like they were attempting to take last night.

Or I thought I could write about how the Jets eventually did adjust, and slowly took over the 2nd and especially the 3rd. And maybe the Knights punched themselves out in the first half of the game, and maybe that will be a problem going forward.

And then I realized that almost none of it matters.

In a normal world, in a normal playoff game, the Jets probably score three goals in the 3rd period. Maybe six. Even when adjusted for score, the Jets had 13 scoring chances in the 3rd alone last night, which is a stupid number (according to Natural Stat Trick). But there’s Marc-Andre Fleury, and it just fails to be anything. Nothing matters, because he’s playing at Tim Thomas ’11 levels. What do you do?

Look at this shit.

There’s no logic to this. Sometimes he’s not even in good position and can just fling himself everywhere like he’s John Fucking McClane and it works. On that first highlight Scheifele should have scored twice. When he didn’t they should have just canceled the rest of the game. Maybe series.

I don’t want to claim there’s a fix, because if there is it’s on a cosmic level instead of a league level. Everything goes in for the Knights on some nights (UGH), and Fleury then does that. And then we’re forced to read a bunch of “Does Pittsburgh Regret…?” articles, even though the Penguins have/had a younger, cheaper, better goalie the past two years. You now who predicted Fleury doing this? No. One. He wouldn’t have even told you he could do this. This is Arc Of The Covenant shit.

Where this series is, the Jets should still feel pretty good. They just have to get one win in Nevada, and another effort with the last half of Game 3 probably sees them get one. I mean it normally would. But this isn’t normal.

But hey, we got another highlight of Dustin Byfuglien dragging two guys off a pile, which he assuredly isn’t doing for the attention it generates or anything, and certainly doesn’t distract cretin hockey followers from the fact that every time he was on the ice last night the Knights got an odd-man rush the other way. In just the first period, McClure texted me, “I’ve counted three times he’s been forechecking below the goal line.” When and if the Knights win this series, I assure you Byfuglien will be on the ice for the killer goal.

Which is fine, because Jacob Trouba has been even worse. And that’s the real problem for the Jets, is they don’t have a d-man who can consistently stand up to this pressure. Maurice will have to figure something out.

Everything Else

Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: Patrick Kane or The Barometer?

By Sam Fels 1954 0

It was kind of a weird season for Patrick Kane. And not all of it was self-inflicted. But perhaps no player symbolizes what went wrong for the Hawks, and their reaction to it, better than him. Let’s deep dive.

Patrick Kane

27 goals, 49 assists, 76 points, -20, 32 PIM

51.6 CF%, -1.1 CF% Rel, 48.0 xGF%, -2.36 xGF% rel

There are a couple thing to know about Kane before you get into how this season fit. While his previous two MVP-level seasons are the ones that get the most attention, Kane had actually been a point-per-game player for five straight seasons before this one. One was the season-in-a-can of 2013, and the next two were ended prematurely due to injury where he only played 69 and 61 games. So he could have had eye-popping numbers in five seasons instead of the two he did simply due to different fates. So to complain he’d fallen off that a bit this seasons would seem the most petty of tactics, but it’s the standard he set.

Second, it’s important to note that Kane is one of those players that the metrics don’t mean a ton to. He’s never been a great possession player, and has always lagged behind the team rates for the past six years. In fact, his relative marks above are the best he’s had in the past four seasons. Some of that is playing with exclusively offensive players like Panarin or basically glorified obelisks like Artem Anisimov or players needed heavy sheltering like Brad Richards or Michal Handzus (the horror…the horror…) or Andrew Shaw. The roster wonkiness has always seemed to affect Kane most or thereabouts, but it doesn’t matter because he’s going to score anyway.

So why the dip in points this year? Quite simply, luck and linemates. Kane’s personal SH% dropped to 9.5% this year from 11.6% last year and 16% the year before that. Even if 16% is the outlier leading to a 46-goals season we’re probably not going to see again, 9% is low enough below his career 12% mark that you know it’s crap luck. Even that career mark would have seen him score 34 goals this year instead of 27. The team’s overall shooting-percentage when Kane was on the ice dipped from 9.5 to 7.7. That might not sound like a lot but it’s a difference of 12 goals over the season at evens just for Kane’s time on the ice.

And we can boil it down to luck, mostly, because he was getting the same chances as he had the previous seasons. Kane actually had more attempts at evens per 60 minutes this year than he had in five seasons. Some of that could be a product of playing with the pass-happy Schmaltz. Kane got more shots on net than he had in five seasons as well. His individual expected goals was higher than it was the previous two seasons, though not as high as ’15 or ’14. Again, this is where we can’t measure if he somehow lost something off his shot or accuracy, but it’s a good sign he was getting the chances we’re accustomed to seeing.

It would be easy to point to the power play as a points-dipper (phrasing?), but Kane actually only had one less point on the power play than he did last year, though obviously nowhere near the 37 power play points he piled up in his Hart year. But this is where the discussion turns. Because most will tell you the Hawks power play struggles due to it standing around and waiting for Kane to do something. Our argument this  year is Kane is just as much of a problem. The puck dies when it gets to him. It’s isolation basketball, and there’s little temptation for anyone to do anything when that consistently happens. It’s not near the full explanation for why the power play in a constant state of self-fuckery, but it’s one. Going forward, whoever is running it has to get Kane to make decisions quicker and to move around more. The stick-handling at the circle for 10-15 seconds isn’t getting anyone anywhere except closer to the embrace of the reaper.

And this is where we get beyond the stats. There wasn’t anything Kane could do to save this season. A 110-point tour-de-force still lands this team well outside the playoff spots. And there were some nights, or at least periods, where it did seem Kane was trying to salvage everything himself, and drag this team to relevance.

But there were other nights, or shifts, where it was clear Kane couldn’t locate a fuck to give. On some level, you understand. As well-informed about hockey matters as he is, Kane almost assuredly knew this season was toast in January. And in his 12th year, you could understand if a game against Minnesota in February just doesn’t have the same ring as it did when the Hawks were good. Still, that’s not what he’s asked to do. There were lazy passes or changes, a lack of desire to backcheck, or trying shit simply to entertain himself. Cynically looking for his 500th assist when the Hawks were getting clubbed in Arizona was a particular highlight.

He’s not alone. Toews had his nights. So did Keith. When you’ve spent as long at the top as these guys have, finding the same charge when at the bottom is near impossible. They shouldn’t be given a pass but they also shouldn’t just be accepted either.

If the Hawks are going to be good again, they’ll need Kane back at his PPG+ form. And he probably will be with simple luck rebounding. But it would also help if he were there every night, and that can’t be dependent on if he thinks the rest of his team is at his level. Sure, accepting the problems and putting Top Cat on his wing for the 35 goals he could assuredly score with Kane wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

But also, whatever fatigue there is with Joel Quenneville has to be cleared by the team’s veterans. Our suspicions before have been that Kane and Toews have sort of tired of the coach’s voice, but with the Hartman trade it appeared that it was the kids who weren’t really responding. And yet…and yet…

Get to the 5:07 mark of this video, and while dabbling in body language and speech analysis is probably a really dumb thing to do, does this strike you as someone believing in the direction of everything? Something tells me there are interesting times ahead, and that doesn’t necessarily mean smooth.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 3 Day 6: Cheat Code

By Sam Fels 1487 0

Lightning 4 – Capitals 2 (Caps lead 2-1)

Well, if any team could blow winning two games on the road to start a series…

In reality, I’m not sure anything fundamentally changed about this one. Victor Hedman got his head out of his ass, which helps a ton. Andrei Vasilevskiy didn’t look like all his gear was covered in ants. The Lightning scored first, which makes a huge difference in these games usually. They got a multi-goal lead, which is an even bigger one given the environment.

Still, it came down to the Lightning getting two power play goals before the Caps scratched. And it was high comedy that the first four goals of this game all came on cross-ice one-timers that you would use in NHL ’95 or ’96 that quite simply couldn’t be stopped. Before that you had to use the breakaway move where you just skated post to post and the goalie never got over. Then there was one variation where if you faked forehand and went backhand or vice versa you always scored. But that’s another discussion for another time. Still, when you have snipers like Kucherov and Stamkos on either side, I’m sort of curious why the TB power play doesn’t clock in at over 30% for a season every season. I’m gonna go with apathy.

Much like when a catcher takes a foul tip to a bad spot, when Stamkos or the like are blasting one right by a goalie’s ear, if you look at him at just the right moment you can tell he’s questioning why he ever took this job in the first place. “Here I am trying to slide over to a shot I’m never going to see and the best case scenario is it hits me square in the face. Otherwise I’m just going to glide over to the corner looking like a doofus because no one thought to cover this guy. I should have taken that left at Albuquerque.”

Still, I’m not sure Jon Cooper and his various rings are getting this right. Once again, things happened when Sergachev was on the ice. Again, he got less than eight minutes of even-strength time. Stralman and McDonagh continue to get their heads beaten in, so I don’t know exactly what they’re hanging on to here. Trotz seems to recognize this, or Ovechkin has come for vengeance for all those Capitals-Rangers series (and we all want vengeance for those ever happening and being foisted upon us like it was an actual treat. Curse your heathen gods for that), because they were the exclusive prey for the Caps top line.

Anyway, it’s better to have a series than not, although maybe Cooper thinks because they got Sergachev for Drouin he has to treat him like Drouin too. They have two d-men who can skate themselves out of trouble agains the Caps smash-and-grab forecheck. He’s simply choosing to not play one of them so we can watch life toss an anvil at a drowning Stralman. This will matter soon.

 

Everything Else

Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: David Kampf or All The Jokes We Couldn’t Make

By Sam Fels 1633 0

Ever since the Hawks pipeline started churning out actual players regularly a decade ago, call-ups have followed a pretty familiar pattern. Unless they were really touted prospects with pedigree (Saad, Teuvo, DeBrincat), for the most part they would come up, get a fair amount of games, and a lot of them would merit more affection that they should simply because we were all kinds of bored of all the guys who had been here for years. Some were actually useful like Andrew Shaw or…well, Andrew Shaw. Most fade into the background. David Kampf is one of the weird ones who kind of fits in the middle. He didn’t gain huge fanfare, and it feels like he’s in the background, but he might actually be useful.

David Kampf

46 games, 4 goals, 7 assists, 11 points, 12 PIM, -9

51.9 CF%, -0.09 CF% rel, 47.5 xGF%, -1.83 xGF% rel

There’s not too much point in getting too attached to fourth line centers. There’s only one Marcus Kruger in the world, and we saw how even that went last year. They’re middle relievers, or fourth wide receivers. If you don’t think you have one you can probably find one somewhere pretty easily.

That doesn’t mean Kampf was completely disposable. Defensively, he was actually pretty good when on the ice. He had the second-lowest corsi-against per 60 on the team among forwards (trailing only DeBrincat WHY THE FUCK WAS HE ON THE THIRD LINE MOST OF THE YE….sorry, sorry, tiger got out of the cage there). His xGA/60 only trailed Vinnie Smalls and Jurco among the forwards. And when talking about a fourth line player, the first thing you ask is that they keep it out of your net. Considering the goaltending the Hawks were getting, there wasn’t much Kampf could do about that but he did what he could.

The problem for Kampf might lie on the penalty kill. He was only one of six forwards to be used for more than 50 minutes while shorthanded, but he had the worst metrics of those in terms of attempts and chances against. We’ve never subscribed to the theory that penalty killing should only be done by third and fourth liners, but if you have ones that can’t they tend to be shuffled out for those who can. After all, you can probably find a tomato can who can give you 12 minutes at evens per night and nothing else anywhere. If Kampf is going to stick, that’s going to have to get better.

Outlook: When you look at him, you can’t help but think, “He’s fine, and if he’s the fourth line center at the start of the season I won’t die, but it’s also a spot you can probably improve upon.” If the Hawks are actually a real-ass team next year, Kampf feels like the type who would be doing the Rockford shuffle all year, getting you out of a stretch when injuries and fatigue pile up and providing a spark. It would help if he was lighting it up with the Hogs in their playoff run right now, but he doesn’t have a point in seven games. He’s young, he’s cheap, he’s fast, and those are all things not to be discounted. If Anisimov is traded he probably gets a center spot by default.

But you can’t help but think this is something the Hawks can probably do better in when the time comes. If that “better” is a step forward from Kampf himself, then that’s fine. But for an idea what good teams have at center on their bottom unit, the Jets have Lowry, the Preds have Jarnkrok (when their coach isn’t turning into Dr. Weird), at the moment even the Wild have Jordan Greenway. Do you think Kampf is in that class?