Every morning, we cut right to the heart of what happened in the previous night’s playoff action.
Carolina eliminates Washington: FUCKIN’ EH, COTTON, FUCKIN’ EH!!!
Be better than the call.
It’s a hockey cliche, but unlike most of them it has real application. You’ve heard it around these parts from time to time, but it’s thrown around anywhere that has actual winning tradition and real substance. In any playoff run, something will go against you. A bad call, an injury, a post hit instead of an open net, a bouncing puck that becomes a delay-of-game penalty. These tests are all around in the spring. You have to rise above.
But people and teams that have been handed everything don’t want to be told they have to be better. Isn’t that America today in a nutshell? The Knights never had to work for anything. Due to the generosity/stupidity of the league and fellow GMs they were given this roster. Due to playing in a division with three or four of the most incomprehensibly-run organizations, they were given the division last season. Due the exhaustion of the Jets, they were given the conference. When a question was finally asked of them by Washington, they were done before you could blink while wondering when it was time to hit their catchphrase.
And those that are installed at the top of instead of climbing there will always run for the stronghold of unfair bias, or injustice, or things not working as they’ve only known them meaning the universe is out of whack.
What the Vegas Pissbabies (really not all that far from “Golden Knights” if you think about it) will come to realize is that nothing was taken from them. Nothing was stolen. They dropped it on their toes and broke four of them. They didn’t have to be there.
Let’s rewind. They led the series 3-1 against a team that was pretty much throwing a sloth who only listens to The Cure in net. They were playing a team that has only known playoff disappointment and angst. The Sharks are basically always looking for a reason to chuck it. They’re not buttressed by the memories and confidence of past glories. There aren’t any. The Knights themselves have just about the same markers of success recently.
Except that what they forgot is that Marc-Andre Fleury is always capable of becoming Martin Jones himself. Probably didn’t remember that when they handed him a new contract that starts when he’s 35. Oh well…not like they made that mistake aga….what’s that you say?
So there was Fleury treating Tomas Hertl’s shorthanded, desperation heave like a rabies shot of yore, and suddenly they’re in a Game 7.
But that’s cool. Martin Jones became Martin Jones again. They got a beneficial call when Cody Eakin, who is apparently 3′ 8″, tipped in a shot with his stick above his shoulder. Perhaps he might have realized he got away with one with his stick high and be more careful from there on out. Maybe next time, Ginger Ninja?
Martin Jones arrived again to let Max Pacioretty’s suggestion of a shot through his legs. That was it. Jones was Jones again. The Sharks were down three, staring yet another playoff loss and the ending of yet another forlorn chase for glory in the eye. Deep down, there was an assurance and comfort within them to settling into what they’ve always known. The Knights had only known success. It was all there.
Here’s a strange note I found buried within the NHL rulebook. You might not know this, but it says you don’t have to let in four goals on a major power play. I know. I really wouldn’t have thought so, but here we are. And suddenly Fleury looked across the ice and screamed, “No one out-playoff-barfs me! I was the Osiris of this shit seven years ago!”
And then he wasn’t anywhere close to any of San Jose’s offerings in the next four minutes. He was a cigar store Indian. Construction sign-men would have put up more of a fight. He came so far out on Labanc’s goal it looked like he wanted to reenact the front cover of “Wish You Were Here.” ( You can probably guess which one was on fire). Never hustle a hustler.
Enter Gerrard Gallant with an excellent Dusty Baker impression. Frozen. No timeout. No, “Let’s settle this down and figure it out.” Not even a call for a pointless review to get the heat out of a building that was starting to sound like an Anthrax concert. Just glares and bitching. This wasn’t in the script. This isn’t the plan.
And even with all that, the Sharks couldn’t escape their true nature completely. Of course they couldn’t, it’s too ingrained. So the Knights had yet another reprieve, tying the game with 47 seconds and getting an overtime against an exhausted outfit using about eight forwards and four defensemen.
It’s kind of fitting that the series came down to Pete DeBoer thinking, “Well, I should probably stop using my cemented-footed, rock-headed pylon (benching Brendon Dillon) and my only hope is that Gerard Gallant keeps using his.” And over the boards came Brayden McNabb! You can’t run from your nature forever. I mean, you can get close when you do things at the pace of McNabb, who can tell his grandkids one day that he got scorched by something called Barclay Goodrow and his grandkids can start planning just how fast they’ll change their last name and filling out grandpappy’s DNR. Maybe down the road when they pull the plug on Ol. Brayden his grandchildren will yell, “Look at me, I’m Barclay!”
That seems like an awful lot to hinge on one call, especially as a good portion comes before that call. But I know time warps in Vegas. No clocks and all.
The Knights wanted to be known as something more than an expansion team. And now they will be. So what are you so upset about anyway? Finally you’re something more than a pregame light show. Except that show is going to really suck when The Knight is just complaining to a ref for 10 minutes.
Sometimes the gods shine on you simply because they know you’ve been asked too much. Somehow, in less than two years, traveling Knights fans have become some of the more obnoxious in the league. Who knew that Vegas had so many transplants? Is that why it’s the 43rd biggest TV market? Because everyone moved away? All of them trying to cash in on their memories of watching their hockey team back home in Vegas…what a cherished time that was…
But now any utterance from a traveling Vegas fan (“traveling” in this case is probably going to have to mean the same as “bandwagon”) can be met with holding up three fingers, or merely mimicking a cross-check, or donning a Fleury jersey and standing perfectly still for five minutes. All will be an authoritative “PIPE DOWN, RUB-A-DUB!” And that will last for years.
And it will last for years because it only took George “Piston Honda” McPhee two seasons to completely bork his cap situation. Sure, perhaps McPhee will be saved by his fellow GMs going from undervaluing all the players he plucked from them to overvaluing them and sprinting to acquire them to save him some cash. They have $2 million in space for next year with William Karlsson to sign. They stepped backwards this year, and giving Mark “Ugly Patrick Sharp” Stone the 10th highest cap-hit in the league probably doesn’t arrest that on its own. Handing out three of your biggest contracts to players over 33 always works a charm as well. Hope you enjoyed Max Pacioretty’s 22 goals, because you’d probably better get used to it.
The Knights will ice a roster that won’t have a 30-goal scorer 60-plus point player at this point, aside from Stone who collected most of those elsewhere. Ask the Predators what trying to be The Borg gets you, especially when you run up against a team with genuine star power. This is Vegas, aren’t you a city built on star power? Oh right, it’s faded star power that does a residency there. Suddenly that Paul Stastny contract makes a ton of sense. He’ll be part of Britney’s or Gwen’s show very soon.
I guess we owe the Knights a thank you. They provided us with a period of hockey we’ll never forget. And they probably won’t stop complaining about it for years. Which will only be a reminder for how glorious it was. It’s a true legacy.
Been meaning to get to this for a week, so not even sure if it’s relevant now. But hey, that’s never stopped me before! Hey, here’s another Zeppelin reference!
Last week, there was a ton of debate about replay in various sports, and whether it’s already gotten out of control or become something we can do without. There was the disallowed goal in the Man City-Tottenham semifinal that swung the result from one side to the other (one which I certainly didn’t find gratifying and hilarious at all!). There have been various reviews in the NHL Playoffs that have sent fans into orbit, be it goalie interference or an offside call or high-sticks and whatever else. While hardly the same stakes, last night’s Cubs game was an excellent argument for robot umps for the strike zone. We can agree that these kinds of debates aren’t new, just how hot the discussion is that week and how many incidents are bunched together.
By now, you know the argument from the anti-replay crowd. It takes too long, interrupts the rhythm, and they prefer the “human element.” But all of these are terribly flawed arguments, and let’s start with the last one first. What you’re saying with “human element,” is that you like mistakes. That’s it. You’re probably trying to show compassion for the arbiters of the game, and fair enough, but that’s what you’re saying. No person can get every call right, so we just have to understand that the people in charge are doing the best they can.
That’s fine and dandy when there isn’t a better way. But there is. When these rules were drawn up long ago for whatever sport or game is your favorite, they weren’t written as, “as close as you can get it.” Or “this is how this rule works, at least as often as it’s called that way but hey sometimes you’re going to miss one and that’s cool.” The rules were written with hard lines (except for maybe basketball?), and the only reason humans were charged with enforcing those rules and hard lines is that there wasn’t another option in 1884 or 1921 or even 1956. This was the best we can do.
You’ll get some who will tell you that Raheem Sterling’s chalked-off goal due to Sergio Aguero being fractionally offside isn’t “the spirit of the rule.” (They’re named Adam Hess). Or you’ll hear that in a bevy of other situations. Yeah? How do you know? How do you know the inventors of the game didn’t want everything black or white? If you could go back in time and offer them the technology that would enforce their rules pretty much perfectly, what do you think they would say? The rules are almost always cut and dried, and should be enforced as such.
It’s the last part, and the other parts of the argument against, where it gets murkier. Because at the moment, most sports are trying to blend technology and the human eye where technology can’t get to yet. But what we’re living through is the trial-and-error stage, the evolution of it. It was never going to be a turn-key, overnight success. These things have a process, and sometimes the process isn’t fun or it goes off the wrong way and we try something else.
Each sport has its own unique issues that make this harder. The main one to me is that the NFL introduced this borked challenge system, but because everyone wants to be the NFL, hockey soon followed suit and so did baseball. And that’s ridiculous. The NFL has been trying to get away from this slowly for a while, making every scoring play and turnover reviewable. Which has led to the imperfect solution of refs on the field calling pretty much everything a turnover or touchdown knowing they have the safety net of a review afterwards. You see this in hockey where I’m sure linesmen take razor thin decisions to the side of not calling it hoping a challenge will bail them out. Soccer linesmen have been instructed to do this in line with VAR.
Obviously, this leads to the problem of watching something and wondering, “Does this count?” The impulsiveness and suddenness of the emotions of sports gets clouded. And that is something to notice and be concerned about. But is it such a problem? Is this not something we could become accustomed to in time? And as the tech gets better and quicker, might this be something that’s solved at the time? Certainly offsides calls can be.
There are those who will tell you, in the case of the City-Spurs match, that we’ve lost the elation of the ball hitting the back of the net. Maybe, but try telling Spurs supporters they should go without the jubilation of having that goal against rightly chalked off. They’re not the same, but they’re not so different either.
Where technology and replay are struggling to forge acceptable levels is where the rules are not all that well defined. The NFL is going to try and it’s going to make this worse, because first it couldn’t decide what was a catch and now it’s going to try and define what’s pass interference and that’s a mess. And then maybe they’ll back off of it, and try something else that will work.
The length of time to get to these decisions is something we’ll all agree on. Until the tech is better, and we may never live to see it, no review should take more than 30 seconds. It’s either obvious or it’s not, and if it’s the latter let’s stick with the call and move on. We could speed that up by having a dedicated official in a replay booth, like soccer is doing with VAR, who simply radioes to the relevant head official on the field or ice. I don’t mind soccer having the main ref come take a look for himself, because it would dull his authority a bit if he’s getting overruled by a voice in the sky we can’t see. And for the most part, this process has been pretty quick.
There will always be calls that are just too hard to get instantly. A fumble in football. Until they define goalie interference clearly, we won’t have that either. Penalties in soccer. But we’re getting closer. It’s just unfortunate timing for us that we’re here for the kinks stage, the developmental one. In the long run though, it will almost certainly be better for everyone. As long as we accept going backwards would be worse.
“You’re not special. So who you foolin’?” – Axl Rose
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins in seven games. And really, that’s it. But for Leafs fans and media, it can’t be that simple. It has to mean something. Not just that, it has to epically mean something. Maybe even epically mean something. Because everything around the Toronto Maple Leafs has to be definitive or a referendum not just on the team, but on the entire sport and city and possibly society. Because to everyone associated with them in any way, the Leafs have to mean more. They can’t simply be just a hockey team, even though that’s what they are. They’re in Canada’s largest city, the only team there, and even though Canada is a vast nation they’ve dubbed themselves the epicenter and YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION. But it’s just not the case.
Take the opponent. Leafs Nation will have you believe that the Boston Bruins are some mythical monster conjured by some wizard twisted on quaaludes specifically to keep the Leafs down. But it’s not really the case. In truth, lots of teams lose to the same team twice in a row. Sure, Leafs fans will rush to remind everyone about 2013 (Sir, this is the DMV), but this is a completely different Leafs team. Jake Gardiner and Nazem Kadri were the only Leafs on that team and this one, as we know Kadri wasn’t even really on this one. That series doesn’t matter to this team. Fuck, the Rangers and Capitals played way more than this recently in the playoffs, and you don’t hear anyone describing it as fucking Helm’s Deep, do you? The Leafs were lucky to be in those playoffs at all, certainly never deserved to be in a Game 7 against a pretty-close-to-a-juggernaut Bruins team. It has nothing to do with this one or the last one.
But that’s not enough for THE NATION. They can’t just lose to a team. They can’t just play a pretty decent series against a pretty good team and lose a coinflip Game 7, which they all are. Because that would just make them normal. That would make them just another team. And they’re not! Don’t tell us they’re not! These are the Leafs AND THEY ARE SPECIAL WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND DON’T YOU SEE THE LATEST DIPSHIT IN SOME RIDICULOUS OUTFIT OR DOING SOME JACKASS STUNT THAT JUST GOT HIRED BY SPORTSNET?! CLEARLY WE’RE SPECIAL! PAT MY HEAD!
But they’re not.
Take a look at how they view their best players. Any player can go two or three games without scoring. No one scores a perfectly regimented one goal every two games. But Auston Matthews goes to or three without a goal and he’s not just going through the normal course, it’s a referendum on if he can handle playing at the epicenter of the universe and on his entire being and oh god maybe that contract was a terrible idea! He’s fine, it’s not, it’s just what happens. Patrice Bergeron didn’t score last night either. I guess he sucks too? But no, that can’t happen to the Leafs, because it’s no epic enough. It must be an exquisite choke-job that can only happen to players under the unique crush of being a Leaf. A crush that they themselves created.
Take the bleating about 1967. But no one really cares, because it’s not like there’s been a ton of close calls and heartbreaks. There was basically one on a missed call in 1993, and if you don’t know about it Down Goes Brown has been writing a weekly column about it for 12 years. And all that would have done is set the Leafs up to get stonewalled by the Canadiens and specifically Patrick Roy just like the Kings did, and imagine how much more unbearable both fanbases would be if that happened. All the talk of THE WALL here wouldn’t be pointed south but north and everyone would be in agreement on it construction.
The Leafs and everyone around them want to be the pre-2004 Red Sox, but also the Lakers. But there’s no Impossible Dream, there’s no Fisk Homer, there’s no Bob Stanley in 1986 (which is who Sox fans really hate, or did, instead of Buckner). There’s no story. And there’s no winning tradition. They want both, and they aren’t either. The Leafs are scenery, but scenery that wants to chew itself.
It can’t just be that Mike Babcock isn’t quite the coach they’d hoped. He arrived as a messiah, because only messiahs take the Leafs job (even if they can’t make toast). And now he’s a relic, a dunderhead past his sell-by date. Could it just be he’ll get out exactly what the roster you give him is capable of, no more no less? Give him the best roster in the competition (’08 or ’09 Wings or Team Canada) and he’ll win it or come within inches of it. Give him a mediocre team (pretty much every Wings team after those) and he’ll get you mediocre results. Give him a bad one and they’ll be bad. Give him a pretty good one and he’ll get you a loss against another pretty good team. But no, it can’t be that easy in Toronto. He must’ve lost something, or Toronto did something to him, or he’s been replaced by a collection of hyper-intelligent roaches wearing a Babcock suit a la MIB.
Kyle Dubas must be a genius…because he figured out to sign the most prized free agent in years? Keen strategy. But now if he doesn’t go out and bring PK Subban or Drew Doughty home (and I suppose there’s a symmetry to a rape-apologist acquiring a rapist) he won’t just be another GM who can’t get his team over the hump. He’ll be The Great Miss, the Great Lie Of Modernity, The One Who Let Us Down.
Even the Leafs playoff series drought isn’t that much. 15 years is a while, but it isn’t unheard of. The Panthers have a longer one, in fact. The Islanders had a longer one. Until this season the Avs were working on a 10-year drought. The Sabres haven’t won a series in 12. While it’s certainly one of the worst streaks around, it doesn’t stand on its own. Like just about anything else concerning the Leafs, if you really look beyond the noise.
It can just never be simple. This loss means that there have to be massive changes and new directions and severe internal study and possibly a few defenestrations. But we didn’t learn anything new about the Leafs. We knew they didn’t have a very good defense and a shaky goalie when things really mattered. Why’d they lose? Because they couldn’t keep the Bruins best players on a leash and then their goalie spit up a bad goal or two in Game 7. Which is what teams with bad blue lines and questionable playoff goaltending do. It doesn’t need to be decoded in the stars or a team on NASA engineers. It’s an easy fix, if you can find the players. But no, that explanation won’t do for a blue-clad mob that has to be more important than everyone. Their problems are bigger, don’t you see, and you wouldn’t understand. You’re not here, you don’t know what it means, you can’t, you won’t, it’s just different here.
It’s not, though. The Leafs are just a team. A pretty good one struggling a bit to take the last step. Happens a lot. Happens to most. Maybe they’ll get there, maybe they won’t. What it won’t be is unforeseen or unheralded or unparalleled. Nothing about the Leafs is. They may scream different, but it’s the truth.
One of the few bright spots of the Blackhawks 2018-19 season was the emergence of Collin Delia as a seemingly legitimate goaltender. A relative unknown prospect who was a UDFA out of college and is literally from a town in California called Rancho Cucamonga, if you told anyone that you knew Collin Delia had a future in the NHL before this year you’d be a liar. But Delia was a pleasant surprise when Crawford went down and might’ve played himself into the future of this franchise in one way or another. Let’s do this.
16 GP – .908 SV% – 3.61 GAA
.916 SV% at Evens – .853 SV% on the PK
It Comes With a Free Frogurt
For a guy who was in college two years ago and couldn’t even crack a .900 SV% in the ECHL in 2017-18, to see Delia come to the NHL and have stop shots at what I remember as a .940 clip for a short while was extremely confusing and almost jarring. My original thought when Crawford went down and we were in the hands of Cam Ward and a guy named Collin but with two fuckin’ L’s, I thought the Hawks were gonna be leading the Jack Hughes race come the end of the season. But he proved to be nothing if not reliable, and while the astronomical save rate dropped quickly as you can see above, he was still more than acceptable and even very good at even strength.
That .916 you see at evens above is all even strength situations, and that is more than fine, but his .925 rate at 5v5 is damn near elite – it ranked 24th total in the NHL among goalies with at least 600 minutes played, tied with Carey Price and better than Braden Holtby. Being 24th doesn’t sound great, but remember this guy was in his first real NHL action and the difference between him being 24th or being in the top 10 is .005%, or half a goal every 100 shots. And that’s when the game is being played as intended.
It’s hard to say if it means anything quite yet, and I’m certainly not going to go crowning him as the future franchise goalie seeing as this was only 16 games. But the Hawks clearly saw enough in him to commit a 3-year deal to him, even if it is a relatively insignificant $1-mildo cap hit per year. That contract has potential to be really beautiful regardless of how he turns out in the future, because if you have a reliable backup on that kinda cheap deal it can be a huge win, and if he ends up as your future franchise goalie you have him locked up for two years beyond Crawford’s deal very cheap and can add elsewhere to make a run. It’s easy to bury as well, so it’s virtually no lose for the Hawks.
The Frogurt is Also Cursed
It’s hard for me to find much to say too negatively about Delia considering there were not many expectations for him and he only played 16 games, but there were certainly times that I found myself scratching my head at his play. He had the same problem I mentioned Ward having yesterday, which was the tendency to miss a save that 99% of other goalies would’ve made, but in fairness to both he and Ward, just about every goalie has a few of those a year anyway. Now, the rate at which Delia had them over just 16 games can certainly be concerning, but I want to see more before I make a call on that.
Overall I think the biggest issue with Delia in 2018-19 was just that we didn’t get to see as much of him as we should’ve. Ward being here and having an NMC made it impossible to have Delia around when Crawford was healthy, and the Hawks were never gonna sit Crawford if he was able to play. So even when it would’ve made far more sense to have Delia here rather than Ward in the backup role, we didn’t get to see that, and that left us (or at least me) wanting to see more than we were able to.
Again, it’s way too early to make any sweeping statements about Delia, but at the very least he should be considered a lock for the backup gig next year, and he gave us enough good to be intrigued enough to see more next year.
Every morning, we cut right to the heart of what happened in the previous night’s playoff action.
Boston eliminates Toronto: Fuckin’ predictable.
San Jose eliminates Vegas: HOLY FUCK!
So what banner are you going to raise now, assholes?
The Nashville Predators, everyone’s darling and if you don’t believe just ask them, have once again bitten the dust before doing anything anyone will remember. And this is truly their nature. Aside from that run in ’17, this is what the Predators do. They’re that veritable “dangerous team no one wants to play” until they run into a team that doesn’t seem to mind terribly in the first two rounds and off they go before any kind of silverware is in the building. And hey, maybe that’s enough for fans who maybe don’t notice while they’re telling everyone who won’t listen that they’re the wildest fans in the league. I always wonder how they cram the 11,000 back into that car they smash outside so they can go back to the shed. Must be quite the sight.
As no hockey writer wants to endanger their free moonshine and grilled pigeon, you won’t hear a bad word about another flameout far too early for a team with this cap situation. But let’s go back through entrenched throbbing brain David Poile’s moves to make this team a Cup-winner, shall we?
Kyle Turris is signed for another five years, and for their investment the Preds have gotten 20 goals and 65 points in 120 regular season games and a solitary playoff goal in two years, and a bewildered gape while he was second best to Radek Goddamn Faksa this spring. Look, when the Ottawa Senators are offering up their consistently fourth-highest scorer, you have to jump on it, ok?
Poile’s other center, Treat Boy Ryan Dough-hansen has managed 44 goals in three years and 179 points. This year, Nashville’s “first ever true #1 center” ranked 35th among centers in scoring. Hey, that averages out to mean only four teams have two better centers! Over the past three seasons, he ranks 31st among centers, behind luminaries like Ryan Getzlaf (hasn’t cared in five years), Brayden Schenn (now a wing), Sean Couturier (checking center), Jonathan Toews (was told he is ready to be a white walker), and Eric Staal (a million years old and playing in a wasteland). That David Poile sure can spot a pivot!
Oh but it doesn’t stop there. Various pundits couldn’t help but have to change their shorts when Poile added tried and tested PLAYOFF GRIT with Wayne Simmonds (never seen a conference final) and Brian Boyle (an ent with no wisdom). Simmonds was on the fourth line within five games and Boyle had a stupid look on his face when something wasn’t falling off of him. Sure can win a draw in the 2nd period, though.
That Mikael Granlund sure looked like he’d fit in. He scored one goal.
All of this would be more than enough rope to hang Poile with, and then you throw in his penchant for stocking the Preds with a true shithead or three every season and you wonder how this guy hasn’t been chucked into the river. Don’t worry, Poile will get more spins at the wheel because due to Southern hospitality/incompetence he can’t actually ever be fired. Maybe one day Preds fans will figure out they’ve only had one and a half true top line forwards for like four years. Maybe after the next standing ovation they’re told to give during a TV timeout.
It’s ok, Preds fans will tell you, Matt Duchene and his glorious record of success are already on their way to Music City in the summer. Funny how that will work when the Preds have all of eight dollars under the cap to spend. That’ll happen when you pay Ryan Ellis for looking great against bums and then are shocked when he can’t handle a top-pairing role. Whoopsie daisy!
The Preds are that team and fanbse that has carried itself with a completely unearned arrogance and are going to look awfully stupid when they continue to be first and second-round kindling. One Final appearance and suddenly these guys think they’ve redefined the sport. The Devils have the same amount of appearances. So do the Sharks. And the Hurricanes. And the Ducks, and the latter two actually bothered to win it. The Flyers have the same. The Canucks. The Rangers. And yet Nashville will have you believe they’re a traditional power. Maybe the next Cody McLeod acquisition will push them over. God knows they’ll try.
You can be sure in the next day or two there will be “whispers” that PK Subban is the problem, that his dating of Lindsey Vonn and his suits mean he’s not committed to the cause, that he’s a dressing room issue, because hockey and the South form a perfect nexus of the tried and trusted tradition of “When in doubt, blame the black guy.” It certainly couldn’t be that Subban was the only one who figured out how to bust the Dallas trap while good clean boy Roman Josi was trying to remove Jamie Benn’s skate from his colon. Perish the thought.
Once again, while the Preds try to claim their strength in numbers is higher than that of any star power, they’ve lost because they don’t have the star power. This year it was Seguin and Benn. Last year it was the entire Winnipeg top nine. The year before that it was Crosby and Malkin. We could keep going. Pavelski and Thornton and Couture put them to the sword in ’16. Keith and Kane the year before. Maybe you’d think they’d learn? But that would go against what they do in the Confederacy, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and the little matter of teams figuring out that once Ol’ Shit Hip has to move side-to-side, he starts to sound like a car stripped of its converter.
This is what you are, Predators. Your hockey’s Trail Blazers, a funny little quirk of the league’s geography but never meant to be around when things matter. Except you’re not nearly as cool. But look at this way, Rocco Grimaldi has even more time to figure out which Planned Parenthood he’ll spend his summer outside yelling or for Poile to find another sex criminal to sign to his second line. Some traditions never die.
The Blackhawks were badly in need of a serviceable backup goaltender for the 2018-19 season. after Anton Forsberg and Jeff Glass did their best swiss cheese impression in 2017-18. So Stan Bowman went out and signed Cam Ward. After which, the Blackhawks were still badly in need of a serviceable backup goaltender for the 2018-19 season. Let’s do this!
33 GP – .897 SV% – 3.67 GAA
.912 SV% at Evens – .793 SV% on the PK
It Comes With a Free Frogurt
If he had actually come with a free Frogurt, that would’ve been the number one most positive thing about Cam Ward’s stint with the Blackhawks in 2018-19. For someone whose now been through 14 NHL seasons and is 35 years old, expecting anything other than backup level production would’ve been foolhardy, but Ward did have his moments, I suppose. He carried a good load of the play for the Hawks when Crawford was out, although maybe he shouldn’t have. He stole a few games here and there. But really, trying to project Ward as much more than a disappointment this year would be pretty tough to do.
At the very least, Ward managed to have a .919 SV% at 5v5 play (the above Evens number is all even strength situations), which was better than even Corey Crawford‘s mark of .916. So when the game was being played as intended, he was fine, but you would still hope to see a little better for a team that had playoff hopes, or at least wanted you to think they did. And again, he kept this team in some games and even stole them a win or three, with three 40+ save efforts in wins during February. So it wasn’t all bad. But, it was more bad than good. Let’s get there already.
The Frogurt is Also Cursed
If I wasn’t following a theme, that would’ve said “Mostly Cursed,” but alas I am a team player. The first problem with Ward was not even one of his own fault or doing, and that was that he had an NMC in his deal, which meant the Hawks were stuck with him all season long regardless of how it worked out. Even if this season went to shit, which there plenty of times when it seemed like it would/could, they didn’t even have the chance to see if some contender in need of goalie help down the stretch would give up a pick for Ward. Not that mid- or late-round picks in the NHL are worth much, but certainly more than a bad goalie on your roster for no reason. Yet here we are, still having to talk about him because he was here all year for no reason.
On top of that, Ward’s play was just mostly underwhelming even knowing that expecting much more than replacement level was a fool’s errand. He couldn’t even break .900 on his total SV% on the year. That was big time tanked by his atrocious play on the penalty kill, which was certainly not helped by the Blackhawks atrocious penalty killing units, but to be below .800 there is just embarrassing as well. No one has a good save percentage on the PK, but to be that bad is inexcusable even with the bad PK.
Ward is also the king of soft goals, and I shit you not it felt like almost half of the goals I watched him give up this year were ones he should’ve had. He just didn’t play angles very well, and his movement is certainly not natural anymore given that he’s up there in age (for athletes) and has a lot of mileage on him already. But he clearly didn’t have it anymore, and it showed most of the year. Even as someone who was in favor of the Hawks finishing out of the playoffs to have a shot at the lottery (and I’ve been validated, bitches), it’s hard not to wonder if the Hawks could’ve been playing hockey these last two weeks if they’d had a better backup playing than Ward. But we will get to that tomorrow.
Alas, Cam Ward is gone. May we never deal with him again, and may we drink to forget we dealt with him at all.
Every morning, we tell you everything you need to know about the previous night’s playoff action.
Canes force Game 7 against Caps: Fuckin’ right. Play the fuckin’ game you fucks.
Stars eliminate Predators: Pardon us while we shed a fucking tear for the Preds.
If hockey ever had its own version of Livia’s Soprano’s funeral, this would be it. Here was an utterly miserable team that made everyone around it utterly miserable, maybe even tried to kill a few of them, so how can anyone be upset they’re gone? It’s what they wanted, it’s what we wanted, and even if it came at the hands of the Blues, pretty much everyone is in agreement this was best for everyone involved. No one’s even pretending anymore.
It’s why the Jets were so miserable that makes for interesting debate. The easy out is to pin the blame on Paul Maurice, who seems to tout that he was the NHL’s youngest coach as Mr. Fuji’s salt to throw in the eyes of NHL GMs to blind them to the fact that he’s been an utter moron for a decade or more. Maurice got the Hurricanes to two conference final appearances and a Final appearance, and since then all he has to show for his work is Winnipeg’s two series wins last year. The Jets remain one of the dumber and more penalized teams in the league, even though their PK often looked like a set of beached sea lions near a fish trap. His only ploy when things weren’t working has been “MOAR HITZ”despite having maybe the most skilled set of forwards in the league.
Maurice also reportedly made his players hate life, though admittedly this is not a hard thing to do in Manitoba. Mark Scheifele and Blay Kweeler were allowed to do whatever they wanted, while everyone else got shifted up and down the lineup. Then again, they were the only ones to actually produce all season, so if Patrik Laine wants to bitch he could actually, oh I don’t know, MOVE.
This was a team that claimed missing Dustin Byfuglien for half the season harmed its defense irreparably, even though Buff has all the interest in playing defense of those aforementioned sea lions. And both scenes look strikingly similar. And the Jets were so convinced of this they actually made it true, such was Jacob Trouba’s determination to get out of town he’ll drive his value and salary to Trevor van Riemsdyk levels.
The Jets were actively trying to get Paul Maurice fired since November, when they stopped playing defense altogether, but their collection of talent and the inattentiveness of GM Kevin ShovelDayOff prevented them from doing so midseason. ShovelDayOff’s answer was to acquire Captain Stairwell Kevin Hayes, who was desperate to bolt New York. Did anyone think he would invest in Winnipeg after that? His five-year deal in Florida or Los Angeles, after begging unsuccessfully for the Bruins to sign him so he can go back to throwing up on BU freshmen at Fuller’s, is almost preordained at this point.
But it has to be more than the coach, right? This team that was about as electric as could be last year doesn’t just simply turn into the Wild simply because of one overbearing, overmatched coach. There has to be something else. And it’s probably living in Winnipeg. Patrik Laine might have torpedoed his own value simply because the thought of committing to a frozen bomb shelter for his 20s was so depressing he’s going to be showing up in Robert Smith eyeliner to training camp. It clearly has killed the will and zest of Nikolaj Ehlers, who was hastily trying to rearrange his nameplate to “Ennui” since Christmas.
And much like other teams that have already bitten it, this is the team they’re going to have. Laine and Connor are going to eat up most of the space they have, even if they try and commute from Duluth or anywhere that doesn’t pull their soul out through their nose. Letting Trouba and Myers walk might allow them to reconstruct a defense that’s been playing with things they found at an empty construction site all season, but ShovelDayOff is the same GM who brought in Kulkov and Myers and other fuckwits that got them here in the first place. And Byfuglien will be 35, so his lazy jaunts back into his own zone five seconds late will just become lazy jaunts back into the neutral zone that are five seconds late. But hey, we’ll always have that time he slew-footed Chris Pronger with the Hawks up four in Game 5 that gave every Grabowksi and white-hat in Chicago an erection they hadn’t seen in years.
It’s not just their season we don’t mourn the loss of. It’s their time in the spotlight. There was only ever going to be a short shelf life on Winnipeg itself not smothering the life out of a possibly-great team. You can’t drive to another town to use their airport every few days before you just can’t anymore. And so it seems to be with the Jets. Five years from now they’ll be planing their move to Portland.
