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Game Time: 3:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, NHL Network, WGN-AM 720
Harboring A Fugitive: JFTC
After getting their dicks thoroughly knocked in the dirt in the Bay Area on Thursday night, the Hawks make their way south to face the Kings on Figueroa, bringing this fetid garbage season one game closer to mercifully ending.
While a lot of people within the community known as “Hockey Twitter” last year were stumbling over themselves to point out what a bad year Jonathan Toews was having last season, which wasn’t entirely accurate but no one ever accused hockey fans of being smart, they were missing out on a truly poor production year from Anze Kopitar.
Kopitar and Toews both had historically bad years (for themselves) on the score sheets in 2016-17, but with both of them you didn’t have to look far to discover the most likely root cause – luck. Both Kopitar and Toews shot career low percentages last year, with Kopitar scoring 12 goals on 8% shooting, down from a now-career mark of 12.4, while Toews scored 21 goals on 10.6% shooting, down from a now-career mark of 14% (but we’ll touch on that in a second).
The underlying numbers for both guys were still pretty good last season, though. Kopitar accounted for 54.55% of attempts when he was on the ice, while Toews was able to control a not great but still fine 52.4% of attempts. You can see in the image below that they both were still elite in terms of possession, with the only blip for either one being Toews’ struggles with zone exits last year.
This year is a completely different story for Kopitar, who has enjoyed a nice “bounce back year” as he has 27 goals and 70 points already in just 65 games, on a pace to best his career high of 81 points. He’s already surpassed his number of assists from last year, which we know isn’t directly tied to but still correlated with his play, bit the uptick in goals comes from a predictable place – his luck got better. He’s shooting a career best 17% this season. Kopitar’s shot shares have actually been worse than he showed last year, as he currently boasts a 51.67 CF%.
On the other hand, this season has just been a double-down on last year for our own Fearless Leader. While his underlying numbers are still phenomenal – a 57.65 shot share is just about world-beating status – his production has only gotten worse, as he has just 16 goals and 40 points. And if you’re an intuitive individual who can pick a theme, you probably already know that shooting percentage is playing a part. Toews is shooting a new career low 8% this season. If he was shooting his career average of 14%, he’d have about 26 goals right now, and we’d be looking at 50 points, which would be far more encouraging.
But that 14% career shooting mark for Toews is now skewed by the two poor-shooting years he’s had this season and last. Before 2016-17, Toews was shooting 15.1% for his career – so it isn’t a huge difference, but it’s there. And if you project that shooting percentage onto Toews’ current season, he’d have 28 goals – oh hey, more than Kopitar.
And here’s another handy visual just to show you how Toews’ underlying numbers are either better than or at least right there with Kopitar’s this season.
The point of all this is to say that luck is a fickle bitch in hockey. McClure has said it a few times, but if teams like Vegas are gonna be able to skate by on 69% shooting this year, the bell has to toll for someone, and that someone has been the Hawks. But if you’re a Jonathan Toews doomsayer – and you don’t want to be – Anze Kopitar is a perfect example of how everything can still even out for the Blackhawks’ captain.
Game #65 Preview
Not much has changed and Sam’s on vacation so here’s @Atf13atf’s answers from the last time we did this.
Dion Phaneuf?
Last week’s blockbuster trade with Calgary for Dion Phaneuf boosts an already strong defense featuring Drew Doughty, Matt Greene, and Rob Scuderi. Just over a year removed from being the Norris Trophy runner-up, Phaneuf turns the Kings from a team just sneaking into the playoffs into a legitimate threat. In fact, all of the Kings’ acquisitions this year have been home runs. Coming into the Olympic break, both Mike Cammalleri and Jussi Jokinen have 26 goals in 60 games. Even Phaneuf has scored 10 himself. It seems unlikely that the Kings would pass San Jose or Phoenix, but if they come in hot as a lower seed, they could be an early roadblock to the Blackhawks’ effort to return to the Western Conference Final.
What do you mean the Kings traded Cammalleri FOR Jokinen? And then lost Jokinen on waivers? They got Phaneuf from Ottawa and he sucks now? No Olympic break this year? The Blackhawks are 11 points out and there’s a team in Vegas? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in 2010 anymore.
The Kings have gone 6-11-0 since the turn of the year. What went off the boil?
Start 9-2. Follow by going 1-7. Win six in a row, then get swept out of the New York Metropolitan Area. Lose six in a row to start the new year, bookend the All-Star Break with a pair of Jonathan Quick dodgeball tryouts. Pass Go and collect free wins against Glendale and Edmonton, lose narrowly to Stanley Cup contenders in Tampa and Pittsburgh, while giving up a touchdown to Carolina in between. Add a few wins against Atlantic Division bottom-feeders, and some losses to Pacific rivals here and there, and you have the entire Kings season. It’s been a trip.
Are the Kings in the same spot with Drew Doughty that the Senators are with Karlsson? IF he won’t sign they have to move him, right?
As of right now, the Kings seem fully ready to park the Brinks truck in Doughty’s driveway, and he seems fully ready to sign for the delivery. If he ever left Los Angeles, he would probably need to find a new lawyer or three, among other things.
Things kind of went south on Alex Iafallo, didn’t they?
He started off the year looking fast, but shooting a hair over one percent. He finally broke through for a second goal around the start of December, before racking up minuses and eventually taking a few healthy scratches around the new year. In the past month, Iafallo is back to playing 15 minutes a night and has scored four goals with three assists.
What’s been the key to Kopitar’s bounce-back season? Hawks fans would be particularly interested in the answer…
Last season, Anze Kopitar started slow coming off a busy September with an Olympic qualifier for Slovenia and playing for Team Europe in the World Cup Of Hockey. On November 11, with only eight points in 15 games, Kopitar injured his hand in a game against Ottawa and kept quiet about it. A few months ago, Kings president Luc Robitaille described the effects of the injury on Kopitar: “He couldn’t shoot for three months. That hurt his numbers. The goals weren’t there because he couldn’t shoot.” The numbers back it up: four goals from the injury through February, and six goals in 19 games to close out the year.
Blackhawks fans better hope it’s that simple.
Where do the Kings go from here? If they miss the playoffs then it’s Blowup City, right?
At the risk of hoping the team doesn’t put too much stock into a four-game sample before the deadline (at Chicago and Winnipeg, home against Dallas and Edmonton), it’s still entirely up in the air. The Kings don’t really have a great stock of pending UFAs to sell, unless someone really wants Darcy Kuemper for some reason, so it would have to be a bigger piece (Muzzin? Martinez?). Of course, their huge acquisition might cost nothing: Jeff Carter, whose last game was the night of the most recent Cubs win, is set to rejoin the team at practice this week once the road trip ends.
Game #65 Preview
In a way I feel kinda bad for Dion Phaneuf because he got out-douchebagged by Sean Avery, who, if there were a Douchebag de Jour Hall of Fame, would definitely be a first-ballot candidate. No one should have to listen to that piece of human trash insult them or their significant other. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED. Phaneuf qualifies for douchebag status simply because he’s an albatross. He’s never lived up to the hype that he generated in his first season, and while I can’t blame the guy for taking a big payday (I would do it in a nanosecond and anyone who says otherwise is a liar), I can blame him for generally sucking.
Phaneuf was hailed like he was the second coming when he broke into the league with the Flames way back when in 2005. He was a BIG BODY and fooled everyone by scoring 20 goals that year. Yes he managed to rack up impressive points for the first couple years, but by the time he hit the quarter-century mark the precipitous decline had begun.
It just proves how many morons really run teams in this league that Phaneuf could pull in a 7-year, $49 million contract from the Leafs in 2014, and that the Senators would be like, “sure, sounds like a great deal” just a couple years later. And that Rob Blake would say nearly the same damn thing this year—although at the very least he got Ottawa to eat a quarter of that salary, proving just how badly the Senators wanted to move him.
As I said, the contract isn’t Phaneuf’s fault, but for a guy who costs that much it’d be nice if at least his possession numbers would be on the positive side (they’re not), or perhaps his giveaways-to-takeaways wouldn’t scald your eyeballs (they do). I’m not even suggesting that as a defenseman he needs to keep up the scoring of his very early years, but jesus at least pull off the basic aspects of your job description. He’s been skating by on an undeserved reputation for years (SEE WHAT I DID THERE), and that’s only going to get worse as he ages.
Possibly the funniest part of all this is that other players don’t fall for any “he’s a leader” bullshit, going so far as to vote him the Most Overrated Player in 2010. Granted, that was eight years ago (good lord I’m old), but his play and the contract drama of the intervening years have done nothing to reverse that perception at least with multiple fanbases—I can’t say what the players may still think. And yes, those were apoplectic Canadian fanbases, but American ones are onto him too.
All Phaneuf has going for him on a Kings team with better defensemen than him is to remind himself that the front office hates Marion Gaborik even more than his dumbass contract. He’s a slow, oafish defenseman with an absurdly large contract and that’s what he’ll remain…we wouldn’t have any idea what that’s like, would we?
Game #65 Preview
Like a Crave Crate, the Hawks were great through the first five. The rest was a blackout of shit, snot, and puke. There’s not much to learn from a drubbing like this, but let’s see what we can find. Sometimes there’s a penny in those sliders. To the bullets.
– J-F Berube, despite giving up six goals through two periods, didn’t look terrible. The only goal that was really on him was Vlasic’s “fuck you” at the end of the second, but at that point, his confidence is shot. No use keeping him out there. He managed to look good when he wasn’t getting hung out to dry, but those moments were few and far between.
– Carl Dahlstrom looked like a guy who’s played fewer than 10 games in his career tonight. He was directly responsible for the Sharks’s first three goals. On the first, he made a questionable pinch with Schmaltz near the puck after Highmore Salvador Dali’ed a shot off the far boards, running into Schmaltz and kicking the puck straight to Pavelski, who started an unbelievably pretty passing cycle with Donskoi and Burns.
The second was a complete circus. Gustafsson passed into Vinnie’s skates, and while Gustafsson tried to recover, Dahlstrom got caught starting to leave the zone early. He then set a pick on Toews, allowing the puck to squirt past a falling Gustafsson for a 2-on-0 that Berube had no chance on. It was Dahlstrom’s bad positioning that set that goal up.
On the third, Dahlstrom took a shot from the blue line that Labanc blocked, then got out raced by Labanc. After the initial rush failed, Dahlstrom floated to his off side to cover after Gustafsson hit the ice to block Labanc’s original attempt, then seemed to fall asleep, letting Tierney behind him and Gustafsson, who slid a quick pass past a confused Gustafsson to a wide open Labanc.
I’m willing to write this off as simply a bad game from a young player, and I hope that Dahlstrom can grow into positional awareness. But tonight was not one for his reel.
– Dahlstrom was noticeably awful, but the Hawks’s D-corps looked bad as a whole. Keith took a retaliatory penalty late in the second after Sorensen overpowered him with a semi-slash. Connor Murphy fell down a few times and was embarrassed by Timo Meier’s speed in the first. Jordan Oesterle tipped a puck into his own net after a Goodrow pass attempt from behind the net. While Oesterle had some bad luck on that tip, no one on the backend stood out, and for a team that relies as heavily on plays coming from the backend as the Hawks do, this is about the result you’d expect out of the effort.
– On the plus side, Duclair looked spry, even though he couldn’t finish a 1-on-0 in the second or his penalty shot in the third. He had the worst 5v5 CF% of all Hawks though, for what that’s worth on a complete blowout.
– Alex DeBrincat continues to impress. He had a few prime opportunities that Jones stuffed him on, but it’s still a joy to watch him get to all the right spots. At some point, he’s going to play with Schmaltz and Kane regularly, which ought to start tapping into his potential more directly. You’d like to see it now, but Q’s line choices continue to be a mystery.
– Matthew Highmore debuted tonight and did about as much as you could expect. His far-too-wide shot in the first triggered the Sharks’s first goal following Dahlstrom’s misguided pinch, but he was also in decent position for a tip off a DeBrincat wrister from the high slot in the second. He didn’t make the tip, but he had the right idea. Not much to take away from him tonight, but he wasn’t a complete zoo.
Games like these make it hard to say “everything will be better next year when Crawford comes back.” While Corey definitely is the difference maker, the Hawks have some huge questions to answer on defense going forward. It’s frustrating to watch this team have no answers, but that’s the kind of year it’s been. Take it on the chin and move forward is the plan.
At this point, all you can do is look for development and improvement from the younger guys. Tonight saw DeBrincat look great, Schmaltz look good, and Duclair look outstanding at times. The rest may have been garbage, but there are positives strewn among this shit.
We’ve got 17 more games to see what we’re doing going into the off-season. Onward.
Beer du Jour: Jefferson’s Whiskey with a High Life back.
Line of the Night: “Quite a debut for Matthew Highmore. He won’t forget his first NHL game.” – Chris Cuthbert, with the Hawks down 7–1.
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Game Time: 9:00PM CST
TV/Radio: WGN Ch. 9 Local, NBCSN, WGN-AM 720
Naked In Front Of The Computer: Fear The Fin
Though only a week has passed since these two former Western Conference powers “clashed” at Club 1901, both will be looking slightly different having now gone through the trade deadline at opposite ends of the buyer/seller continuum.
When success has a name as common as Martin Jones, it’s easy to overlook. But here we are, with Jonathan Quick’s former backup giving the Sharks a tenuous grasp on the second slot in the woebegone Pacific Division.
But it hasn’t been free roses for Jones all year. You may remember that there was something of a goalie controversy for the Sharks back in December, when Jones found himself swimming around with an 88+ SV% for the month. Much like the to-do the Hawks had after the 2015 playoffs—in which people yelled themselves hoarse for Darling over Crawford in an ethereal dance that simply never, ever seemed to end—the unwashed in the Bay brayed and spat for Aaron Dell to start. And start he did, only to prove why he was an undrafted pick up in the first place. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED.
Since the December dregs—which those in the know think was a result of an undisclosed injury—Jones has gone on to post one of the better stretches of his career as a starter. After a mixed bag January that saw him post a shutout and a 43-save shootout loss among a couple of putrid attempts, including allowing three goals on six shots against the Coyotes and a five-goal shin-kicking against Colorado, Jones has caught fire in February, posting a 93.2 SV%. Over the last eight games, he’s only allowed more than two goals once, and that was in OT against the Wild. Over that stretch, he’s gone 5-2-1, and the Sharks have needed every bit of it as they try to ward off the Army of the Damned that is the Kings, Ducks, and Flames on their tails.
Yet, despite this hot February, Jones’s SV% sits at about average: He’s currently at 91.7%, whereas the league average is 91.4%. But it makes sense, given how wildly Jones’s performance has swung this year. He bookended his horrid December and below-average January with save percentages no lower than 92.5% each month.
Jones is the Hot Pocket of goaltenders: either ice cold or scathingly hot, never quite finished cooking, and only satisfying to those who consider gastrointestinal distress a virtue. Unless, of course, he’s playing the Hawks.
In eight career games against the Hawks, Jones has posted a 93.3 SV%, a 2.00 GAA, and a 3-4-1 record. All 16 goals he’s ever given up against the Hawks have been at evens, but knowing what we know about the Hawks’s constantly confounding PP, that’s hardly a surprise. As has been the word all year, the Hawks will have to look to attack him at evens if they want a shot at solving this league-average riddle of theirs.
To borrow baseball parlance, Martin Jones is about as close to a spot starter as you can get. But given the Sharks’s outstanding special teams play, that’s really all he ever has to be. At 28, he probably doesn’t project to get much better than the literal league average, which is just fine for regular season wins. But when the games really matter, average usually doesn’t cut it. And unless Jones can show some consistency in the stretch run here, which he has not been able to do on the whole this year, the average goaltender with the average name will contribute to the average finish the Sharks seem to fall into year after year, and Jumbo Joe will continue to pine after the one trophy missing from his mantle.
Game #64 Preview
It’s only been less than a week, so all of @ItWasThreeZero’s insane rantings still apply.
First look we’ve gotten at the Sharks. Somewhat comfortable in second in the Pacific, and yet we don’t know if they’re actually good? Are they good?
At this point the better question might be “is anyone in the Western Conference good?” Nashville probably is but unless William Karlsson and Erik Haula are gonna keep shooting at Mike Bossy levels for Vegas, the Predators might be the only legitimate Cup contender in the conference. The Sharks are clustered alongside eight or nine other teams with postseason aspirations and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they finished anywhere from second in the Pacific to 11th in the West and out of the playoffs.
The main issue with the Sharks is their lack of offensive firepower as most of their former high-end scoring threats are firmly in the “old as balls” and/or “signed a three-year contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs last summer” stages of their respective careers. That said this is a deep roster that can capably roll four lines even in the midst of key injuries and has eight NHL options on defense. Combine that with good goaltending and strong special teams and you have a solid if unspectacular team. That might be enough to make the playoffs and even a win a round or two in the West this year.
Kevin Labanc has 31 points this season. Is he a thing?
Labanc is the most recent late-round gem the Sharks’ scouting staff has unearthed and he fits the mold of previous finds like Joe Pavelski. He’s a smaller dude and far from an effortless skater but what he lacks in size and speed he makes up for with puckhandling ability, vision and a heavy, accurate shot. Labanc scored over 250 points in his final two OHL seasons and was a point-per-game player as a 20-year-old in the AHL last year getting his first taste of pro hockey. The kid is legit and seems to have a bright future as a middle-six scoring winger. He’s basically Kirkland Signature Alex DeBrincat.
Timo Meier is getting his first serious run in the NHL. We know there are high hopes for this kid. What have you seen?
Everyone knows the Sharks should have taken Mathew Barzal 9th overall in the 2015 draft. What this answer presupposes is…maybe they shouldn’t have? Okay they definitely should have but that doesn’t mean their actual selection, Timo Meier, hasn’t been a valuable addition to the team. He’s a big kid who always showed a preternatural ability for generating shots in junior and that’s carried over to his nascent NHL career. He currently has the 20th best 5-on-5 shot rate of anyone in the league (min. 200 minutes) and while his actual finishing ability could still use some work he should flirt with 20 goals this year, which is all you can ask for from a 21-year-old winger in his first full professional season.
Joe Pavelski only has 15 goals so far. Is this anything more than Thornton being hurt for part of the season? He is 33, is this the decline?
Pavelski has actually scored five of those 15 goals in the 14 games since Thornton went down with a knee injury so it’s not that. In fact, he’s played his best hockey of the season since being moved back to his natural position of center in Thornton’s absence. Some of his decline in production can be blamed on injuries he was playing through earlier in the year but the reality is Pavelski, like many of the Sharks’ key players, has probably aged out of his scoring prime.
He’s still a useful player but it’s likely he’ll never score 30 goals again and that’s something Doug Wilson has to plan around this summer. Pavelski is still a big name and it might be worth it to the Sharks to get some future assets for him while they still can. On that note it’s a shame the NHL didn’t send players to the Olympics this year because the whining from Toronto over Mike Sullivan or whoever giving Pavelski more minutes than Auston Matthews would have been hilarious.
The Sharks finishing second means they’ll probably see a pretty flawed team in the first round. They then could get Vegas or a wild card if the bubble bursts on the Knights. Could the Sharks simply fall upwards to a conference final?
It would be the most Patrick Marleau thing ever to play through 20 years of increasingly painful heartbreak with the Sharks only to have them turn around and fall ass backwards into a Stanley Cup the year after he leaves, thanks to a weak playoff field and Steven Stamkos’ leg falling off or something. Now I’m convinced this is going to happen.
*Bonus New Question* What does the addition of Evander Kane mean for the Sharks?
Well in the very short term it means the Blackhawks won’t be the only team taking the ice at SAP Center tonight with a winger named Kane who’s been accused of sexual assault on their roster. Kane’s off-ice history makes him a difficult player to cheer for but on the ice his addition gives the Sharks a similar player to the one they lost when Patrick Marleau signed with Toronto – he’s a big fast winger who generates shots at an elite rate. Kane should help replace some of the offense currently missing from the Sharks lineup in Joe Thornton’s absence and, when Thornton returns from his knee injury, will give San Jose as deep a complement of forwards as any team in the West.
Game #64 Preview
