Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Carl Dahlstrom

By John Pullega 1673 0

Carl Dahlstrom is a nice #7 D-man. He’s neither so good nor so bad that you notice him. I would stop the review right there if I could, since that’s about all worth knowing about Dahlstrom, but they’re going to take my thumbs if I don’t expound. So let’s shit on Stan Bowman for a little while.

Stats

38 GP, 0 G, 6 A, 6 P

47.32 CF%, 43.72 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

The Hawks had to ask a lot of Donald Dahlstrom in what was technically his second time in the NHL. This is a thing that happens when your GM is too much of a sniveling, mealy-mouthed coward to fire the coach he so desperately wanted to fire before the season began. Never forget that Stan Bowman unironically signed Brandon Manning in a passive-aggressive salvo against Joel Quenneville, leaving Colliton frantically searching for bodies to throw on the blue line in response.

Dahlstrom happened to be one of those bodies.

Given the situations he got thrown into, Dahlstrom was fine. According to Corey Sznadjer (@ShutdownLine) and CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil), Dahlstrom was good at cutting off play at the blue line this year, but the sample sizes are small, both for this year and his career.

Playing dungeon shifts with Our Large Irish Son, his CF% at 5v5 was 47+. That’s pretty good when you consider that he started just 38+% of his time in the offensive zone.

He played on the PK and was a guy out there, on the ice for 10 PK goals allowed in about 71.5 minutes. He also had the highest PDO among all Blackhawks: 103.8 at evens.

But buddy, if we’re hanging onto an unsustainably high PDO and small-sample-size entry-defense stats as highlights, there’s not much behind the curtain.

Dahlstrom isn’t useless. He played 38 games and was OK. He’ll have a cap hit of $850,000 in each of the next two years. That’s not terrible. He’s a depth guy that should be splitting starts with Seabrook. That’s all.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

It’s important to restate that Dahlstrom got thrown into the deep end because Stan Bowman thought it was more important to give Quenneville a defensive monolith than to sign literally any other D-man than Brandon Manning. The only way it might have been worse is if he’d signed Roman Polak, and I assume the only reason he didn’t is because “Ric Flair of the Offseason” Jim Nill managed to get on the phone with him first. Because of that wretched signing and eventual trade, Dahlstrom had to pick up the pieces, and it wasn’t always pretty.

Among all Hawks D-men, Dahlstrom had the worst High-Danger Corsi For percentage at evens, with a 36.92%. That means he was giving up a shit-ton of high-danger shots while he was out there. But given the dungeon shifts he and Murphy were expected to take, typically against better competition, that number makes more sense. It’s still not good, but it’s not as awful as it seems in context.

In trying to think of other examples of any outlandishly bad play, I’ve come up short. He’s not particularly fast, which means he’s more inclined to play conservatively. His conservative play and positioning mean he’s usually not terribly out of position, but it also means he’s never going to contribute offensively. Given Colliton’s lust for run-and-gun, man-to-man defense, it’s hard to picture Dahlstrom having any sustainable success here, outside of spot starting.

Can I Go Now?

Donald Dahlstrom is here for another two years, barring a trade. You’ll hardly ever notice him, given his ghost-like features, and that’s fine.

In an ideal world, he and Seabrook would split starts right down the middle. But that would require Colliton to have the spine to scratch Seabrook, Bowman to have the mental wherewithal to trade for a true #1 D-man rather than vainly and embarrassingly comparing his team to the Islanders, and Brent Seabrook to be the leader everyone trips over themselves to say he is and swallow the scratches for the sake of the team.

I don’t like those odds, and you shouldn’t either.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Everything Else

They’ll Call Carolina A Surprise…But They’re Not

By Sam Fels 1500 0

This spring will prove to most who need it to be true that anything can happen in the NHL playoffs. All you have to do is get in. The Hawks are already pumping this narrative, preparing the ground for a less than stellar summer and the distinct possibility of a 90-95 point team next year. The Kings of ’12 are always held up as this, and unless the Sharks or Bruins carry it all the way to the end, most likely this year’s Cup winner will be touted to prove the unpredictability of the NHL’s spring ninja course.

But this isn’t really the case. If you were around in 2012, you’ll remember that the Kings were preseason favorites, and spent a good portion of that season fucking around and thumbing their own ass. They fired a coach, got their ass in gear in March or so, and romped through the playoffs, which a lot of people saw coming. Some favorable matchups didn’t hurt their cause either (hi there, St. Louis, Arizona, and New Jersey).

Carolina looks poised to be this team. They’re a game away from the East Final, and having already kneecapped the Capitals, they won’t have much fear of either the Bruins or Jackets, especially if those two are hurling themselves at each other violently for seven games. And it’s true that the Canes don’t really have any stars. Sebastien Aho is bordering on one, our love for Teuvo will be the main reason cited when we are hauled off to somewhere inaccessible forever by top men one day, and Dougie Hamilton and Justin Faulk are really good too. But there’s not really anyone here that NBC is grabbing to do those weird promos in the lights on ice in September, basically.

But yet, if you were paying attention, it was clear that the Canes are one of the best even-strength teams around. And they have been for a few years now. Whatever category you want–attempts, shots, chances, or expected-goals–the Canes rank no lower than #3. As always, it was finishing and goaltending that kept the Canes down, as has always been the case, and when evaluating who is the best team in the league you can’t ignore those factors.

But then the Canes got goaltending, they finished a little better, and since the middle of the season they’ve collected just about as many points as anyone, including the Lightning. As someone who wants to see the best teams in the later rounds and then win it, the Canes count. If they’re talent matched their process, they’d probably have a points total in the same zip code as the Lightning did. That talent would also boost a power play that was barely meh.

While the Penguins didn’t have the energy or desire to really work through a Trotz team, the Canes are perfectly built to do it, even if they rode their luck a bit in Game 2. They have a mobile defense and pretty much every point, and can get up the ice and through the Isles’ trap. Trotz teams only work when they have an abundance of finish to not be undone by the small margins he plays on, like last year’s Caps. It’s fine if you don’t control possession or attempts and keep things tight when you have Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kuznetsov, Oshie, and others to maximize what chances you do get. When Josh Bailey is your #1 sniper, you are up against it.

Because they didn’t get Fleury ’18 goaltending, and they don’t play in Vegas where everyone wants a free trip to, the Canes don’t come with the ballyhoo of last year’s Knights. Except it’s kind of the same deal, just more sustainable. There’s no William Karlsson banking a quarter of the shots he takes or James Neal putting in one last year before dying. This is who the Canes are, and if they were to add another forward or two, or a goalie, in the summer (assuming Aho’s raise doesn’t completely wash away cap space) with the $30M in space they have or so, the Canes are going to be here for a while.

Of course, this being the NHL people will try and glean what the message is and copy. Not too many other teams are going to be able to assemble the talent on the blue line the Canes have, but an increasingly fast defensive corps would seem to be paramount in a league that keeps getting faster and faster. But the thing is, anything can work for a season. We’ll need a few years more on the Canes before we know if this is a real thing. My hunch is that it is.

 

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Erik Gustafsson

By John Pullega 1821 0

It’s not often that you see a 60-point defenseman and think, “This guy probably tops out as a third-pairing bumslayer.” But that’s what we got with Erik Gustafsson, who’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a position on the blue line. He was the ambergris of the Blackhawks: a weird combination of gross–great as exciting, frustrating, and terrifying as discovering your sexuality.

Stats

79 GP, 17 G, 43 A, 60 P

50.24 CF%, 45.5 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

We didn’t bury the lede here. Erik Gustafsson scored 60 points. That’s sixth among all NHL defensemen. You know who else did that? Brent Burns, Mark Giordano, Morgan Rielly, John Carlson, and Keith Yandle. That’s good company.

And it wasn’t all on the power play. His 13 even-strength goals tied him for third among defensemen, along with Roman Josi and Kris Letang, and just behind Morgan “Fuck spelling” Rielly and Dougie Hamilton.

From about December 18 on, he took the point on the top power play unit and brought it back from the dead. From that day on, the Hawks led the league in PP% at 27.1%.

The only guys ahead of him in scoring on the Hawks were two future Hall of Famers in Kane and Toews, and a budding star in Alex DeBrincat.

All of this came from out of nowhere, too. After being drafted by the Oilers in 2012, Gus had only played a total of 76 games before this season, racking up 14 points in 15–16 (all assists) and 16 points in 17–18 (five goals, 11 assists). There were a few flashes of brilliance from him toward the end of the year in 17–18, especially when he was out there with Kane, but nothing that could have predicted what we got from him this year.

Plus, strictly by the statistics, Gus was decent in terms of possession. His CF% was a pubic hair above even, which, relative to the Hawks, was Dirk Digglerian.

And it’s all at bargain basement prices, as Gus is signed through next year at a cool $1.2 million.

And yet . . .

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

Gus couldn’t find his own asshole in the defensive zone with both hands and a hemorrhoid donut. Watching him in his own zone was like watching a never-ending game of “HEY WILLIE! CATCH THE FOOTBALL!” He took huge risks while skating with a partner who’s only slightly less of a cowboy than he is. He hung his goalies out to dry more often than not. And it didn’t look like he was actively trying to improve that as the year went on. Scoring 60 points excuses a lot of things.

Remember that for a time, there was discussion about turning Gus into a forward because of how woeful he looked as a defenseman. And some of the numbers flesh that out. Despite starting a tad over 60% of his time in the offensive zone at evens (not just 5v5), the only defenseman to give up more high-danger chances against was his running mate, Duncan Keith (363 and 367, respectively).

It’s the same story with high-danger goals against, with the two of them present for 47 HDGA each at evens. While Gus didn’t have the worst rates in terms of high-danger chances and goals allowed (which belong to Carl Dahlstrom and Brandon Motherfucking Manning), it sure is odd for a guy who starts so much time away from his own goaltender to be on the ice for so many chances.

Unless, of course, you’re Erik Gustafsson.

Can I Go Now?

Erik Gustafsson is polarizing. It’s hard to true up the fact that he’s both a 60-point scoring D-man and a bad D-man, but here we are. He’s not quite a forward, and he’s not quite a D-man, but maaaaan.

The Hawks have shown no interest in trading Gustafsson, and it’s really as simple as pointing to those 60 points and that $1.2 million deal. But doubling your career point total from out of nowhere in your age 26 season is so far out of the realm of normal that it’s a hell of a risk to assume that he can do it again. And if he does it all over again, you can bet he’s going to be looking for some serious Fuck You Money.

Gus at $1.2 million makes sense. If he scores 60 or more again next year? That’s a hell of a decision to make with the re-sign. Are you comfortable paying $5–8 million a year for a D-man who doesn’t play defense, especially when you have four young D-men who are all offensively minded coming up in the next 3–4 years (in theory)? Especially when the only guy who’s shown he can play consistent defense is Connor Murphy?

It would hard to justify trading him (likely as a package) for anything but a proven #1 D-man. Sixty-point D-men are rare, even if they do look stupid out there sometimes. And above all, Gus is fun. If the Hawks don’t have a plan for how they’re gonna win another Cup with the Core—and to reiterate, they don’t—the least they can do is make it fun.

But if I’m Stan Bowman, I’m calling Dave Poile at whichever banner shop he’s at that makes every kind of banner except a Stanley Cup Champions banner and offering Gus, and Boqvist or the #3 for P.K. Subban, because anyone stupid enough to blame Subban for Nashville’s woes might take that offer no questions asked.

For now, all we can do is watch and wonder as Gus Diarrhea Dragon’s his way up and down the ice, bringing the backend offense we’ve so desperately wanted and the awful defense we’ve grown so accustomed to.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Everything Else

Deferring On Addison Doesn’t Keep Maddon From Talking

By Sam Fels 1372 0

The Cubs have found themselves in a situation they’ve been in no way prepared for, I think that much we can agree on. So yesterday’s decision to option Addison Russell to Iowa when his suspension is up makes sense in that it buys everyone some more time. What they’ll do with that time, I don’t have any idea and am searching for confidence.

Most of me thinks this is simply a baseball decision, and if anything is beyond that it’s merely trying to put off the unpleasantness of Russell’s return. On a strictly baseball plane, there isn’t room for Russell right now. Javier Baez has proven to be the better player on every side of the ball. And for those dinosaurs who still can’t seem to see past Russell’s projections as a prospect, it’s important to note he’s never come all that close to even putting up an average offensive season. Whereas Javy is working on his third straight of being at least that good if not way better. Yes, Russell’s defense is steadier, but Javy is well on his way this year to matching Russell’s defensive metrics of the past couple years (Baez has been worth 2.0 defensive runs in just one month according to FanGraphs, and Russell was at nine and seven the past two years).

Beyond that, David Bote–who I’m still not convinced will hit for shit when pitchers just stop throwing him fastballs–has been too good to lose the fifth infielder spot, and in fact has forced Bryant to the outfield more often than not recently. Same goes for Daniel Descalso, as much like Bote is putting up offensive numbers Russell has never approached. Who loses ABs here? Essentially, the Cubs are trying to buy time to see if anyone gets hurt.

The only baseball concern is that Javy tires out from playing short every day, though if you ask him I’m sure that’s exactly what he’d want. And Bote could probably make a fist of it once every couple weeks if you really needed him to. It wouldn’t be pretty but he’d get you out of a game.

It’s the asking him part that I have a problem with.

I’m sure this type of thing goes on all the time in a clubhouse. And I’m sure Joe Maddon, who has quickly become the answer to a question no one asked, was just trying to be kind to Javy. But this is the problem with Maddon, is that the more he talks for the sake of hearing himself the more he ends up having to answer for.

Maddon almost assuredly never considered this, and I doubt the front office would have sanctioned it if they’d been asked, but that’s far more weight than Javy or any player should ever be asked. It’s not his job to determine where and how much Russell plays. That’s Maddon’s job. He doesn’t need to ask Javy what he thinks. Javy was given an everyday role last year essentially for the first time, certainly no more than the second, and came up with a MVP-finalist season. He’s playing just as well this year, if not better. You know Javy wants to be in the lineup every day, and he’d like to be at his natural position.

But he’s not going to say that, because no teammate ever does. He’s not going to tell Joe, even in a bunker that’s been swept for bugs and assured total secrecy, that Russell can go fuck himself and spot start at second for all he cares. It seems like Joe is just trying to cover himself and open an avenue for Russell to play short so he can then say, “Javy said this is what he wants, and he wants what’s best for the team because he’s a good teammate.” That’s the only reason you’d make this public.

Second, whether Maddon or the Cubs front office likes it or not (OR NOT), Russell just carries more with him upon promotion and insertion into the lineup. That’s what the Cubs chose to take on and carry, and we went over that yesterday. To put that on Baez is wholly unfair, because he’s not equipped to deal with that, nor is he in a position to have to do so. It would be a near travesty if Baez somehow got blamed for the presence of a player a lot of Cubs fans find detestable and don’t want around in the first place. Baez shouldn’t be sullied in such a way.

Again, the Cubs chose to take this one, and they’re going to have to show their work every step of the way. And they have a lot of the time recent. But dragging another player into it isn’t helping anyone.

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Brent Seabrook

By John Pullega 1754 0

When we divvied up who was going to write about whom a few weeks ago, we totally forgot to include Brent Seabrook in the mix. Call it wishful thinking or a Freudian slip if you must, but we can all agree that we all want to forget about the year Seabrook had. Strap in. This one’s long, and it’s gonna get weird.

Stats

78 GP, 5 G, 23 A, 28 P

46.77 CF%, 44.71 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

One good thing that happened is that Seabrook was close to his career average in points. Another thing was that as the year went on, Colliton started pulling back on the number of minutes Seabrook played. Whereas Seabrook was posting 20+ minutes with regularity in November and mid-December, once mid-December hit, the minutes started falling off.

The last time Seabrook played 20+ minutes in 2018 was on December 14. From that point on, he eclipsed 20 minutes just five times in the next 45 games he played. This has long been the argument that Hawks beat writers and talking heads have foisted upon us. If Seabrook only played less, he’d be more effective. Well . . .

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

From December 15 on, here are some of Seabrook’s stats:

  • 47.07 CF%. Only Dahlstrom was worse among D-men with at least 500 minutes (47.03%), but Dahlstrom also started in the oZ about 39% of the time, compared to Seabrook’s near 50%.
  • 40.07 HDCF%. Only Dahlstrom (37.24%) and Murphy (38.41%) were worse among D-men with at least 500 minutes. Again, the zone starts weigh heavy, with Seabrook starting in the oZ almost 50% of the time, while Dahlstrom and Murphy sat at around 39%.
  • 44.44 HDGF%. Worst among Hawks D-men with at least 500 minutes. If you include Forsling at around 465 minutes and a 37.50%, Seabrook bumps up to second worst. Joy.

Even with less time AND sheltered time, Seabrook was still getting exploited by opponents, so I’m not so sure that the “Seabrook can still be useful with less time and more sheltering” argument is a valid one.

It only gets worse when you look at the season as a whole.

Among 209 D-men who played at least 500 minutes on the year, here’s where Seabrook ranked in the following categories:

  • 170th in CF% [46.77]: Of the players who had worse CF%s, only seven spent more time in the oZ than Seabrook: Ilya Lyubushkin, Dmitry Kulikov, Jack Johnson, Jordan Oesterle, Joe Morrow, Cam Fowler, and Madison Bowey. Fucking woof.
  • 147th in GF% [46.46]
  • 189th in xGF% [44.71]: I’d like to note that this was worse than Brandon Motherfucking Manning, and better than both Gustav Forsling and Carl Dahlstrom. So anyone who says the Hawks can/should prioritize forwards over defensemen this offseason and outscore their problems can suck the shit out of a stray dog’s ass for all I care.
  • 198th in HDCF% [42.11]: Amazingly, three Blackhawks were worse than him: Murphy, Dahlstrom, and Forsling. Murphy and Dahlstrom were victims of zone starts (38% and 39% oZ starts, respectively). Forsling (52.11% oZ start) just fucking sucks.
  • 173rd in HDGF% [41.51]

And that’s just at 5v5! Seabrook also played the second-most minutes on the Hawks’s league-worst penalty killing unit, just behind Duncan Keith. In case you didn’t know, the Hawks’s PK finished with a 72.7 PK% despite being the sixth least-penalized team in the league. (Only the Leafs finished with a PK% lower than 80% among teams with fewer penalty minutes, and they finished at 79.9%. That’s fucking something.)

And the turnovers. Seabrook’s -53 giveaway/takeaway differential was worst on the Hawks and 15th-worst among all D-men. Only Alec Martinez and Scott Mayfield had worse differentials in less TOI.

Did I mention that Seabrook’s CF% Rel of -3.5 was only better than Andreas Martinsen (-6.0), Brandon Motherfucking Manning (-5.7), and Brendan Perlini (-3.8)?

I can’t go on. But the point is, there’s no metric that shows that Seabrook can play even third-pairing minutes anymore. Even if you go back to the bash-your-head-in-with-a-rock plus/minus stat, Seabrook’s -6 was tied for worst in his career. Combine all this with the eye test, and hoo boy.

All of this fucking sucks to look at. Pointing out that Brent Seabrook—who will go down as one of the most recognizable and venerated Blackhawks of both his generation and all time—sucks isn’t fun.

What’s even less fun is pointing out that he got to play minutes over Henri Jokiharju, whose performance was the polar opposite of Seabrook’s. While it’s not his fault that Colliton made that decision, it’s nonetheless frustrating. If the Hawks didn’t have anyone better to throw out there, you’d live with it a little more. But they do have at least one guy who’s better, and he got to finish in the AHL. That’s fucking stupid no matter how you slice it.

Now, let’s get weird.

Within every retrospective of Seabrook I’ve read, there’s always a paragraph or two dedicated to how much Seabrook means to the team off the ice. Everyone says he’s a great leader, the heart of the locker room, and so on. Fuck, one of the NBC talking heads quoted Patrick Kane as saying he thinks Seabrook is underpaid for what he brings in terms of heart.

I don’t think any of that narrative was of Seabrook’s own making, and thus, that narrative isn’t his fault. But a good example that he takes leadership seriously goes back to comforting Toews in the penalty box against the Wings in 2013. It goes back to Seabrook being the spokesman during the Keith–Sharp kerfuffle in 2015. And it runs through recently: When Seabrook was a healthy scratch last year, barrels of ink were spilled, including by me, about what a big deal it was.

Brent Seabrook matters, and he always will in the annals of history. But maybe his slide into badness could come with a bit more dignity if everyone would stop shoveling the LEADERSHIP narrative so hard.

I’m not in the locker room and never will be. I don’t doubt that the players see Seabrook as a strong leader. I don’t doubt that they love the guy for the things he says and does behind the scenes. I don’t doubt that he’s still important to a lot of the players, both young and old, on and off the ice. What chaps my ass is the idea that because he’s likeable and says things that pump his teammates up, he needs to be on the ice at all.

I don’t give a fuck that he’s getting paid close to $7 million a year. I’m anti-“Pay Him, Play Him” when the play isn’t worth the pay. Sunk costs blow, but the best way to handle them is to cut bait as much as possible. With all those fucking degrees from Notre Dame and whichever other institutions are at a perpetual up-their-own-asshole critical mass in the front office, you’d think they’d know how to avoid a sunk cost fallacy. But here we are.

Seabrook obviously carries a big stick, since anyone else who turned in his performance would regularly be scratched or in the AHL (the latter of which isn’t an option for Seabrook, obviously). And while I know that this goes against how hockey players (and athletes in general) only know how to compete and will never ask to be taken out, I wonder whether Seabrook, as a leader, would ever say, “Look, I’m obviously not as good as I used to be, and I’m sometimes hurting the team, but I still want to play. How can we split the difference between me playing every game and not playing at all?”

If he were to say something like that (if he hasn’t already), you have to imagine it would resonate. At that point, the entire organization can stop dancing around the fact that Seabrook isn’t good anymore and justifying playing him with this leadership narrative. They can stop filming five-minute videos about how Seabrook is in the best shape of his life in the offseason, only to retreat to his leadership when everyone mistakes him for Obese Homer trying to shoo kids away with a broom handle five games in. And we can all stop bemoaning the very public crumbling of a legitimate Blackhawks legend’s performance.

But at the end of the day, that’s on Colliton, Bowman, and McDonough, who are either too scared to tell him themselves or too arrogant to see that this isn’t the Brent Seabrook that won three Cups. That’s the real problem. Seabrook shouldn’t have to be the guy to take himself out. That’s the whole point of coaches and management. Yet another exhibit in the case that this Brain Trust was born on third and has no clue how to handle adversity.

Can I Go Now?

We have five more years on this contract, and with each year that goes by, it’ll be easier to forget what a horse Seabrook used to be. He’s not gonna be traded, so let’s snuff that out right away.

The guys over at Second City Hockey did a breakdown of what a buyout would look like. It’s not pretty, but it’s an option if his play continues to slide beyond redemption. It’s not Bobby Bonilla bad, but it’s reminiscent.

It’s extremely unlikely that Seabrook will leave close to $35 million on the table to retire and walk away from everything. It would be the easiest out, since there’s no recapture penalty attached, but Seabrook doesn’t owe anyone that.

My crazy idea would be for Seabrook to retire on the condition that the the Hawks immediately transition him into a coaching position of some kind for a salary that’s close to or equal to what he’s making now but doesn’t affect the salary cap. It would be the best of all worlds: Seabrook gets to stay around, get paid, and have an important role on the team, and his play doesn’t cost the Hawks goals or games anymore.

I’m sure what I’m proposing is impossible and stupid, mostly because Seabrook obviously still wants to play. But if the Hawks want to make one last run with this Core, it’s going to be impossible and stupid to take it seriously while this version of Brent Seabrook is still skating real, meaningful minutes. And that’s a shame.

Seabrook had a shitty year, but he will always reside in the tabernacle of our hearts. He’s a fading legend, an exploded supernova. For all the shit we toss his way, we’ll always remember and love all the good stuff he did.

I’d just rather not have to weed through half a decade of trash to remember it.

Stats from NaturalStatTrick.com, hockey-reference.com, and tsn.ca

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Gustav Forsling

By Adam Hess 1892 0

When I was a child, I had this one specific Spider-Man action figure that I loved playing with. Inside the creativity of my chilhood mind, that little Spider-Man was not just Spidey, but he was also a professional baseball/football/hockey player, soldier, what have you, depending on the day and my mood. But one day I dropped that Spider-Man action figure in a parking lot without knowing it, and he got run over by a car, and when I found him I was in tears. My mom loves to tell the story of me sobbing about Spider-Man and me declaring I had lost my “best friend,” as I put it through my tears. Now, dear reader, you are probably thinking “what the fuck is this guy is talking about this for?” Good question. My point is Gustav Forsling may need to be run over in a parking lot.

Stats

43 GP, 3 G, 4 A, 9 P

47.81 CF% – 43.73 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With A Free Frogurt!

Listen, I am not trying to take an easy way out here — I have very little good to say about Gustav Forsling based on 2018-19. It honestly just feels like trying to make anything sort of positive sweeping declaration about his season would be either stretching the truth to an almost irresponsible extent. There are not many redeeming moments I can think of or point to that would give me reason to say, “sure, but look at that!” And the thing about it is, I can’t really for the life of me figure out why.

If there was any redeeming quality about Forsling, it’s that he has the tools to at least be a not terrible player. He has the stride. He has the hands. He has the vision with the puck. He can pass, skate, shoot, whatever. In a vacuum, it all looks like it’s there. Then you take it out of the vacuum, put him on the ice of an NHL game, and he’s like a 3-year-old trying to hit a pinata – either someone is losing an apendage or there will be guts spilled all over the floor, or perhaps both. I don’t know what it is about this young man in his own defensive zone, but he seems to have no clue what to do when it comes to playing defense. And as a, uh, defenseman, that’s a bit of a problem.

But again, if he was a baseball prospect, you’d grade most his tools in the 50-55 range, meaning average or slightly above. But the thing about tools is that without a proper toolbox (player) and tradesman (coaching), they’re going to go to waste. Forsling still needs to put it all together, and he still has barely played more than 100 games at the NHL level. But the time is quickly running out, especially if the Hawks pick Bowen Byram at No. 3 this year.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

So let’s talk a bit about what actually makes him so damn bad. As referenced above, Forsling is clueless as far as what to do on the ice in an NHL game, especially in his own zone. I’m not sure if the game is just too fast for him, but it kinda looks that way. He looks like he can’t fully process everything going on around him properly in real time, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record I again note that it’s particularly noticeable when he is in the defensive zone. To take it a step further than that, it almost feels like he’s altogether lost when the other team has the puck, regardless of where it is on the ice. He doesn’t pinch well in the offensive zone, he doesn’t position himself well in the neutral zone on the way back, which leads to bad positioning in the d-zone. It’s all ugly.

On top of all of that, the things that it appears in the vacuum he does well, like skate and pass, end up falling apart in practice. If you had an iso-cam on him, you might watch him grab a puck behind the net, skate it out and make a pass, and it would look fine. Again, the vacuum view is fine. Zoom out, though, and you’ll see the pass is across his own zone to the right wing on the far board and he’s trying to thread the needle between the two forecheckers. It’s another processing error, thinking he can do something that he cannot, that stems from not being able to keep up with the game mentally.

I had high hopes for Forsling from the moment he was traded to the Hawks because the reports seemed promising. At one point, and I am not proud of this, I said from what I had seen of him I thought he could be the next Duncan Keith. I walked that back quickly and said the next Nick Leddy. I wrote it in his 2017-18 player preview, and then in his review for the same season I remained high on him because the tools were still there. I don’t think I am wrong on that at all (save for the suggestion he play with Seabrook, because we all saw how that went). But again, Forsling is either not the proper toolbox to put those tools together, or CCYP is not the proper tradesman to put it together for him. But Quenneville wasn’t either, based on the usage. So who would be? At a certain point, the least common denominator is the player himself.

At this point, I cannot in good conscience pencil Forsling into any future plans for this team. I think his best value to the organization moving forward may be as a potential trade chip. That would require other teams to be willing to take on a bad player, but as long as Peter Chiarelli has a job you know there’s at least one team who fits the bill.

Everything Else

You Can Spew Anything When No One’s Listening

By Sam Fels 1614 0

In one sense, this is the easiest time to be Stan Bowman. Your draft position is set, the exit interviews are done, and thanks to the playoffs (both NHL and NBA) and baseball, no one’s really paying attention to you. Throw in the fatigue most Hawks fans had from watching and thinking about their team, and that’s even more indifference and apathy that keeps them in the dark. Nothing can really be done until after the Final is over. While the Hawks would prefer to win, I’m sure that if you asked them honestly they would tell you one silver lining of being bad now is the shroud of anonymity it’s provided them. These are people who would prefer to not be looked at too closely.

So it was again when Bowman granted the Sun-Times’s Jason Lieser a lengthy interview, and boy is there some Grade A horseshit in here. Even better it came out on a Saturday, to lower the odds that anyone would see it to just above nil. But it didn’t escape my eye. Nothing does. I am Sauron. Let’s dive in, shall we? And I want to start with the end of the article first.

“Having the opportunity to start the season with a training camp and to have the time to establish a standard, that allows you to be a little more direct and aggressive about enforcing how we need to play to win,” he said.”

This is a narrative I was sick of by March 1st, and it’s one that both Bowman and Jeremy Colliton are going to pedal until the next training camp to try and save their ass. Plain and simple, Jeremy Colliton was in the job for five months. He had 67 games. While he may not have been able to do everything he liked, the idea that he was trying to install Matt Nagy’s offense on the fly is just laughable. Yes there were changes made and it’s not totally simple but it does remain hockey and it’s not that hard.

If making changes is that hard midseason, why was Colliton allowed to switch the defensive system at all then? Because he did, and you saw the results. If he can perform this massive switch the moment he shows up, and provide us with Connor Murphy roaming around the blue line by design, then why couldn’t he tweak it in February and March when it was painfully obvious that the team couldn’t run what he wanted? Or if changes are so hard…why fire Quenneville at all?

You have to hope Stan knows, and this isn’t encouraging either, that he put together a blue line that was simply unacceptable and there was no saving it. But he can’t say that, otherwise he’d be signing his own pink slip if McDonough weren’t so busy either patting himself on the back or yelling at low-level employees or both. But you wonder if that’s what Stan really thinks when you get to this mess…

“That’s something people have a hard time grasping,” he said. “What was is not always a perfect indicator of what will be.”

He’s acutely aware of every team’s trajectory at all times, and just in case everybody hasn’t been studying the New York Islanders’ defense the last two years, he’s happy to offer a quick sketch: same defensemen, new goaltender, new coach — substantial improvement.

The Islanders were way out of the playoffs a year ago, but leapt to 48-27-7 and swept the Penguins in the first round last week. They went from dead last in goals allowed, shots against, penalty kill and five-on-five high-danger chances against to average or better in every category. They allowed the fewest goals in the NHL this season.

Their situation wasn’t that different than the Hawks’ other than they were slightly younger.

Their top seven defensemen this season were already in the organization, and the only newcomer was a rookie. The Hawks have Adam Boqvist, the No. 8 overall pick last year, in the pipeline.

Robin Lehner was second in the NHL in save percentage this season and was a major upgrade at goalie, but the improvement in shots against and high-danger chances didn’t have anything to do with him. The Hawks might get a similar boost if Corey Crawford stays healthy next season.

Bowman believes coach Barry Trotz was instrumental after taking over for Doug Weight, and the Hawks are heading into Colliton’s first full season running the team.

It’s not a step-by-step guide for the Hawks, but it’s plausible to Bowman that his team could pull off that type of transformation.

“People would say that sounds good but that doesn’t ever happen,” he said. “And my point would be that it can happen — it just did happen.”

I nearly passed out when I read this. Let’s see if we go through it together if we can survive or this becomes digital Jamestown.

To compare the Hawks to the Islanders is so incomprehensible I have to put my head through the drywall just to feel anything again. One, while the Islanders might not have any stars, Adam Pelech, Ryan Pulock, Scott Mayfield, now Devon Toews were all highly regarded prospects and already in the NHL or right on the doorstep (Toews). Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuck have been plus-NHL d-men for years. Thomas Hickey has at least been serviceable most of his career.

Who on the Hawks fits any of these categories that’s going to be on the roster next year for sure? Connor Murphy and Erik Gustafsson are solid NHL-ers, and maybe nothing more. Henri Jokiharju might be the prized prospect, except really all he did was look better than the trash heap Bowman foisted upon the world in some Joker-esque prank. Forsling and Koekkoek are simply not NHL players. Dahlstrom can maybe has a crimp-hold on being a #6-7. Brent Seabrook may not be an NHL player either. Duncan Keith gave up. What’s left?

Second, Barry Trotz has been coaching in the NHL for two decades and has made three different teams into solid defensive outfits. Jeremy Colliton has one season at the AHL-level and four-fifths of one at the NHL-level. You really want to bet your future on his transformational abilities?

Third, Trotz teams get their defensive prowess from basically stripping any offensive impulse and creativity from their system. You’re not going to do that here with the forwards you have. Remember, the Islanders had one player over 60 points. The Hawks had four and another in Strome who was just off a point-per-game pace since arriving. Those two simply don’t line up.

At the season wrap-up, Bowman swerved from a question on Seabrook’s play by pointing to Toews’ resurgence. The message between the lines was that the Hawks need Seabrook to have that type of offseason and come back somewhere near peak form.”

This is rich, considering the Hawks were pushing the “best shape of his life” stories on Seabrook last training camp and he still looked beached orca-like during the season.

I don’t want to rule out Seabrook changing his body and game for next season. Maybe professional pride kicks in, though it hasn’t in about four years. And Toews wasn’t out of shape, he was in the wrong shape. Toews kept bulking up for a game that was getting faster. The change he had to make wasn’t working harder or finding motivation. He just had to change how he went about it.

I have no idea what Seabrook’s offsesaon regimen looks like, if it even exists. But we’ve been talking about his sluggishness since 2013 and it’s been consistent since 2015-2016. I understand he can’t really go anywhere, at least in an organization that doesn’t seem to have any balls, but this is truly the most wishful of thinking.

This is from earlier in the article:

Playing the results, the Hawks could’ve used Panarin and Teravainen this season. But based on the circumstances at the time, Bowman doesn’t second-guess himself.

“The makeup of our team and the makeup of our competitors — you wouldn’t redo those deals,” he said. “I think we were one of the first teams — I guess you could say Los Angeles as well — where this became a big issue for managing your assets. There are some other teams that are bumping right up against it now.

“It’s hard to navigate that without something giving. The whole hope is that you can manage it well enough that you don’t flounder for a long time.”

I understand no GM is going to admit a mistake on a player currently on the roster, and I say this as Brandon Saad’s last remaining fan, but if you wouldn’t redo that Panarin deal then you’ve got the wrong combo of medication. And the Hawks can’t squawk about how much cap space they have now and then turn around and claim they never would be able to re-sign Panarin, combined with the half-hearted noise they’ve made about trying to do it this summer anyway. Same goes for Teuvo, though not wanting to badmouth Bryan Bickell is understandable.

Isn’t it fun to work in the dark?