Everything Else

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

By Sam Fels 1963 0

“How did it come to this?” Jon Cooper asked, as he removed his chaps and put on a robe, a little alarmed at the amount of scented massage oils on his hands and elsewhere. He looked out the window of his yacht, and no it wasn’t him wondering how he ended up with this curious yet staid housewife of Tampa, who not only wouldn’t leash him but didn’t even know what it was, but why he wasn’t working at the moment.

And that’s how most of Tampa will spend the next month or two, because God knows there’s nothing else to do there. How did the best team of the recent era go poof! before we even had time to get drunk? Move over, Leftovers, HBO is going to have a new show about a mysterious happening that no one can explain. Except the fallout will still be everyone living in Tampa or St. Pete, wondering how they got there and yet never figuring out a way to leave. Vibrant, this show will not be.

Let’s dispel the myths that will hound the Lightning through all of next year. That somehow dominating the league left them unprepared for games that meant anything. Hmmm…seems to me when you’re chasing a points and wins record, every game means something. You’re not just going through the motions. And seeing as how the last two relevant Hawks teams and the two Penguin champions basically took March off, this doesn’t hold much water (or in Cooper’s case, water-based lube). You’re professionals, almost everyone on that team was in last year’s conference final and a few before that, so to act as if they were unprepared for the playoffs is a stretch at best, an absolute falsehood at worst. It’s a foothold for the stupid.

They aren’t tough enough, that’s what every breathing-too-hard-after-three-stairs media person in Canada and in hockey will say. They lack grit. They lack heart. And Columbus doesn’t because Brandon Dubinsky yells a lot or something. Again, this is a Lightning team that’s been within no more than five wins of a Cup three times in the last five years. It must know something about advancing in the spring. Perhaps it forgot, as most residents of the area tend to with a lot of things. Or wish they could. Perhaps it’s contagious.

No, eventually, between planning his next swingers’ club outings to Tampa’s one cocktail lounge, Cooper will come to realize he just got out-coached, and his goalie barfed up a poltergeist or two. The Bolts still wanted to weave their pretty passing patterns through an amped-up and moved-up trap of Columbus. They wanted to Quenneville, when Quenneville hockey was shown to not work anymore three years ago. And it was especially silly with a battered and then absent Victor Hedman, and Mikhail Sergachev’s legs more and more covered by his own urine. Out and up was the order of the day, which is also what they tell you to be aware of when walking into Cooper’s office.

Even that doesn’t explain it all, not as much as Vasilevskiy’s .855 SV% for the series does. Whatever plan you have or the opponent has doesn’t matter much when your goalie looks like Gumby in the freezer. Pair that with Game 7 last year against the Caps, and suddenly there’s a lot of baggage in the young man’s head. Baggage he can’t do much about until next spring. Makes for a fun follow-up season, with no questions at every stop or anything.

In the end, it might be nothing more than the perfect storm of a bad week, a goalie slump, an injury or two, and every opponent getting hot. The thing with hockey is that it defies explanation a lot of the time, and trying to stab the smoke of reason it has is what lands organizations in bigger trouble than it already was.

The questions now of course will be do the Lightning panic and change things in search of the more and more nebulous “grit and heart and fire and passion and FAARRRRRTTTT?” Are players who are considered to have snuffed it on the big stage this past week all contenders to be moved along? Could there be something wrong with a group that put up the best regular season in recent memory? That’s a pretty tidy list, consisting only of Stamkos, Kucherov, Palat, Vasilevskiy, Sergachev, Point, Johnson, and Hedman. Should be easy to move all of them along, no?

Luckily the GM who was hailed a genius for trying to reconstruct the 2014 Rangers blue line isn’t around anymore, so he can’t be hurled overboard. Then again, it was his replacement who actively sought Jan Rutta, so there must be some kind of gas leak in the GM office at Amalie Arena that causes one to see a blue line as a place for surrealism. Seriously, Braydon Coburn, Rutta, and Ryan Callahan played playoff games in 2019. When you have to absolutely play at high speed, the first or second call probably shouldn’t go out to Dan Girardi or Ryan McDonagh. Maybe it’s not all that mysterious?

You know how this goes. Tampa could easily hold everything together, win next year at a canter, and then this flop will be cited as their rallying cry and inspiration among the champagne and confetti. It can be the chip on the shoulder everyone seems convinced you have to have to succeed in April and May. Hockey is nothing if not filled with people angry at figments, or their struggle to cope in the every day world.

But that will be just another Cup win. What the Lighting have done here is truly unique. Never happened before, in fact. A Cup win next spring just adds you to the list. Here you stand alone. It’s all yours. Everyone will remember this one. Which is just about the only thing memorable to happen to Tampa, ever. They say the Bucs won a Super Bowl once, after they got to play a team too stupid to change its signals to avoid detection from their old coach who just happened to be on the other sideline. All that got us were Hooters ads and some of the most awkward exchanges on Sportscenter ever seen with confused and impatient college kids. And that’s saying something. Still, I don’t believe it actually happened. I know it didn’t matter if it did.

No, this should go on all the signs. Next to Magic Mike and the reasons for not going to Rays games which consist only of, “Well, it’s over there.” (which would have made Tampa the perfect landing spot for the White Sox, come to think of it)

“Welcome to Tampa, the site of the only Presidents’ Trophy Winner to belch themselves inside-out in less than a week.” Now that’s something. They’ll come from miles to see that…or to avoid whichever machete-wielding neighbor escaped his basement dungeon that day in some podunk Florida town. Either or.

Goodnight, Tampa Bay Lightning. You are history. No, literally, you are. An accomplishment, a touchstone, a benchmark. No one else can say that this spring. Just make you take extra care to knock on Cooper’s door this summer. He’s got a lot to work out.

 

 

Everything Else

Ian Mitchell Ain’t Comin’

By Sam Fels 2083 0

Well, this offseason is off to a great start.

For the link-shy, what that says there is Ian Mitchell is returning to Denver University for his junior season. That has been speculated on these pages and elsewhere, but now it’s official.

Which puts the Hawks in something of a bind. Of their magic quartet of defensive prospects, Mitchell is the closest to ready and probably could have cracked the Hawks lineup and skipped the AHL next year if he so chose. Certainly in the current configuration, and depending on how (or if) the Hawks make any changes there this summer. Adam Boqvist may have the highest upside, but Mitchell is probably the surest thing. Highest floor, let’s say.

It could be as simple as Mitchell telling the Hawks he wants to play just one more year, making up for Denver’s national semifinal loss last week, and then come over and almost assuredly walk onto the NHL roster. Except the Hawks wanted him in the system after last season, certainly after this one, so it doesn’t appear Mitchell is inclined to be all that interested in the Hawks’ interests. Which is his right, and mostly what you hear is that he wants the education, which one day will make him one of about five NHLers who can read and write above a 7th grade level. Fair enough, his life.

It does put the Hawks in something of a quandary. As we’ve said over and over, they’ll never fit all of Mitchell, Boqvist, Henri Jokiharju, and Nicholas Beaudin on the roster together, not while they still have a chance of being relevant at least. Five years from now doesn’t matter.

But Mitchell staying in college drops his trade value through the floor. After his junior season he’ll only be another year removed from being able to sign anywhere he chooses, and if he truly does like being at college and getting a degree and he’s already defied the Hawks wishes twice, there’s little reason to believe he’s not going to see it out. No one’s trading for a player they can’t sign eventually.

So he’s not helping next year, he’s 50-50 to help the year after that, and he’s not going to help via trade. That doesn’t make him a useless chip, but the only hope the Hawks have is that he still comes after three or four years in college and plays for them. That’s about it.

Which punts Boqvist and/or Jokiharju more into the trade window, if indeed the Hawks are serious about getting good next season. They’ll have the most value, they’ll have really any value (it’s just a hunch that Beaudin’s is lower). And they may be expendable depending on what the Hawks do with the third pick. Say, if they decide they’re taking the surest thing of all in Bowen Byram, as in he’d vault right to the top of their defensive prospect tree.

It also might push the Hawks even more to Byram, as he does seem a surer bet than either The HarJu or Boqvist and now Mitchell’s future is murky. Again, a lot of this depends on what the Hawks really want to do and not just what they tell you they want to do. If they’re looking at a serious turnaround next season, then one or both of the two above have to go. Or the third pick has to. If the Hawks are still embarking on a multi-year rebuild, then they don’t really have to do anything and we don’t have to pretend that next season is worth anyone’s time.

Who’s excited?

 

Everything Else

You Get What Anybody Gets – Saying Goodbye To The ’18-’19 Penguins

By Sam Fels 1659 0

And now the Penguins have their own 2017 Predators series. We’re not alone.

Two years after their third Cup. Swept out. Looking out of ideas, out of energy, out of speed. Those who had been pillars of historic success simply nowhere to be found. A GM floundering and picking up slow, past-it d-men, holding onto methods that no longer apply. A former playoff chew-toy rising up and vanquishing those that hadn’t even considered them an adversary before. A raucous crowd behind them, swinging wildly between euphoria and disbelief that it’s finally happening (though let’s thank Isles fans for finally stealing European soccer songs instead of just college chants, a la Music City). A sense of of it truly being over.

Sound at all familiar? The difference here of course is where the Predators simply sped past the Hawks at every turn, the Islanders boa constrictor’d the Penguins from the off, and there wasn’t any air anywhere for them. You can’t really blame the Pens. After the past three years, it would take an utter miracle to find the energy to get through a Barry Trotz team. Especially when you’ve run into a Barry Trotz team the previous three seasons. At some point, everyone just says, “Fuck this, I’ve had enough.” Victory has defeated you, as they say.

It seems every defining team goes through this. The Hawks in ’17. The Kings missing the playoffs altogether after their second Cup and then being utterly destroyed by the Sharks a year later. The Wings being flattened by the same Predators in 2012. The endings are never clean or graceful. As Sick Boy put it, “At one point you’ve got it, and then you lose it and it’s gone forever.” In the NHL now, that moment where it switches doesn’t let you down gently. It goes upside your head with a mace.

Oh, I’m sure Penguins fans will scream until they wretch up an Iron City that as long as Crosby and Malkin are around they’re never out of it. We said the same thing around these parts, and look where it got us. If Sidney dyes his hair purple and tells the assembled press in September he’s really gotten into writing his own poetry, you’ll truly know where you’re headed. They’ll pout and stamp their feet about how Jim Rutherford will figure it out. The same Rutherford who signed Jack Johnson and traded for Erik Gudbranson and then wondered why they couldn’t bust a Trotz trap. And remember, that was all for a still useful Carl Hagelin, who just happens to still be playing. I’m sure Rutherford has a real master plan here. After all, he wasn’t responsible for all of the Canes playoffs-less decade. Just most of it.

Oh, they’ll tell themselves that Jared McCann and Nick Bjugstad will put it together at The Confluence. That they just need to be in a winning atmosphere and suddenly they’ll blossom. Sure thing, that’s why the Panthers are so good. Maybe they can bring back Matt Cullen again, assuming they can find enough virgin’s blood between now and training camp to keep him upright. Signing centers over 40 is always such a keen strategy.

Next year will be the 54th straight that Olli Maatta is going to have a breakthrough. Or maybe next year is finally the one Justin Schultz can make it through without catching legionnaires  or having half of a construction site fall on him. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Maybe if you try hard enough, Pens fans, you can close your eyes and focus and suddenly Marcus Pettersson will just become Elias.

Matt Murray is still young, they’ll tell themselves. Really had a surge in the second half of the year. All that’s true, except he just put up his second subpar playoff performance to go with his two good ones. Are they ready for another Marc-Andre Fleury roller coaster? They didn’t like the first one much. There are no answers here either.

No, realizations like Patric Hornqvist proving that if you’re an asshole power forward and you take the power forward away, you’re just an asshole, aren’t going to get any better and brighter when he’s 33. Come December the Pens will have their very own Milan Lucic! They must be so excited.

And there’s little salvation to be found. The only big contract coming off the books soon is Schultz’s, and that will mostly be insurance after he’s eaten by werewolves. This is entrenched. This is what you are. It was good enough not so long ago. It’s not now, and it  won’t be again. There are glories past to be celebrated, and you’ll have to hang on tight, because what comes next isn’t very fun. Ask us. We know. Keep the DVDs close.

So fare the well, Pittsburgh Penguins. Don’t worry, the NHL will keep shoving you in outdoor games and on national television. The name recognition doesn’t fade. But that only shines a brighter light on what isn’t there any longer. Believe us, we got here first. When all you want is to remain in the shadows so no one will notice you trying to white-knuckle through another Gudbranson shift, the masses will keep coming back to scoff and mock, and try to remember what it was like before, while decrying that they still have to watch and pay attention to you. And you’ll tell them you don’t want them to either, but NBC keeps bringing you back. Everyone is going to know your pain when all you want is to be left alone.

It’s a dark ride from here.

Everything Else

The Rebellion Against Excellence

By Sam Fels 1976 0

As the Lightning sit on the precipice tonight, I haven’t been able to shake this stat ESPN presented on Sunday night when they went down 3-0:

This would seem an excellent time for me to get on my European soccer high horse and proclaim it to be superior because it has no playoffs (at least in a league season), and thus excellence is always rewarded. But let’s save that for another time (you know I’m going to at some point though). It’s just the most curious thing.

All of those teams are considered some kind of footnote, or shrouded in what came before and after, or an outright failure. If you were asked what was the best all-time regular season record in baseball, you’d probably remember the Mariners just because of Ichiro. But it would take you a second. And if you were asked the best baseball team of all-time, you’d probably refer to an “era” of the Yankees in the late 90s, without picking one out individually. And none of them managed the 108 wins the Red Sox did last year. There isn’t one that sticks out.  You wouldn’t say the Mariners of 2001, but factually they are.

The Patriots’ “failure” gets shrouded in that they won three Super Bowls before that and then three after that. So their 16 wins just join a list of secondary yet impressive accomplishments, somewhere above their run of AFC East titles. They also did something unique, in that no team has won six Super Bowls in what you’d call one stretch. The Steelers are broken up between the 70s and then a couple more recently. And yet shouldn’t the 16-0 stand out more? We haven’t seen it since, and we might not see it again (until the Bears this year of course, my frent). But it doesn’t, because it didn’t come with the crown on top.

The Warriors are almost certainly the greatest team ever to play (sorry Jordan fans, but deep in your heart you know it’s true), and even after last night they’re going to waltz to their fourth title in five years and probably barely breathe hard to do so. Yet everyone still tries to beat them over the head with 2016, even though they did something no team has done and it took the greatest player of all-time (this time I’m not apologizing to Bulls fans) at the peak of his powers to thwart them at the absolute final hurdle. And yet for me, the 73 wins is what I’ll remember, but most don’t or even use it as a cudgel. That’s the team that wowed you on a nightly basis instead of bored you with their efficient greatness.

It’s even murkier in hockey, where the best team rarely wins. Of course, thanks to the goofy standings system, it’s hard to discern clearly who the best team is most of the time. Not this year, obviously, and look how that’s going. If you’d asked me the best team I’d seen or best team of the NHL’s history, again I’d probably wave at an era of Wings teams in the 90s or Canadiens in the 70s, without one sticking out. When the Hawks won their first Cup, they were third in the league that year standings-wise. Their third Cup saw them finish third in their own division. And yet no one points it out because of course, they won their last game. And they knew as well as anyone else that seeding didn’t really matter to them that much.

Only the ’13 team is seen as an all-conquering force that scorched the Earth behind it, and even that’s derided a bit because it was only a 48-game season. And it’s hard to think of another team that comes close to that label. The Penguins didn’t win their own division in their last two Cup runs. The Caps did, but that was mostly considered a footnote or outright fluke as no one else was any good in that division. The Kings never did either. Are we really going all the way back to ’13? ’10 before that? The ’08 Wings? And even the latter is considered something flat because they only had the one out of three or four truly great teams.

I suppose that’s the oddity of North American sports. Hell, people my age probably remember the 103-win Giants that didn’t even make the playoffs in 1993 than we do most champs (I have a certain friend who is going to murder me for mentioning that). Never mind that the ’93 Braves and their 104 wins were then stomach-punched by the drunk and hairy Phillies at the first jump. Did you immediately remember that the Jays won the Series that year?

So it’s kind of funny to me that teams like the Warriors now, one or two other NBA teams, the Hawks teams of a few years ago or Penguins now or whoever else get shit for taking some regular season games off. All of them have the scars of great teams that didn’t win, whose regular season accomplishments are labeled meaningless, and yet when they put the playoffs and titles over everything else they’re “cheating the fans.” It’s an impossible needle to thread.

I can’t help but think sports have become to binary. You either won the title or you failed, no matter if you did something literally no one else had done before. After all, the regular season is the largest sample we have of what teams are, and sometimes historic accomplishments are wiped away or dismissed because of a bad week? Seems strange.

Then again, maybe that’s what makes it special. We have this slog of a regular season in every sport, find out who the best is, and then ask them to survive this pressurized crucible right after it. It makes for a better story at times when these teams fall.

Still, it does make it feel pointless. We spent six months or more being wowed by all of these teams, having it proven they were five steps ahead of everyone else. And then it’s gone. So why did we bother? If those results don’t mean anything, why have them? On the other side, if the playoffs were just a confirmation of what we’d seen, there wouldn’t be much drama (the current complaint about recent NBA playoffs, which is easy to understand). Doesn’t seem to hurt the NBA’s popularity though.

I’m on the side of always rooting for greatness, for things I haven’t seen before. The Warriors winning four of five and 73 games in the one they didn’t is the kind of thing I’ll remember forever. Hell, it was only two days ago a lot of us were willing the greatest golfer of all-time to another victory, because he does things we hadn’t seen before. At least where I’m not emotionally involved, that is (so you can fuck off with all your City remarks, Hess).

Maybe it’s just a quirk. And yet we keep racking these up.

Everything Else

These Playoffs Have A Ton Of Horses**t

By Sam Fels 1993 0

I know when the lights are brightest in the NHL that most analysts and media and players and coaches want to make it clear what makes their sport special. Or what they think makes this time of year special, even though no one has any idea. Or if they do they don’t want to tell anyone, for fear of…well, I haven’t any idea what they’re afraid of, but here we are. So the NARRATIVES flow like an open sewer downhill at this time. This spring, it seems that the amount of horseshit in every series has been especially amped up. Let’s keep it to this: the first night of the playoffs, during the first intermission of the Isles-Pens game, Liam McHugh set up professional hairpiece with a highlight of Brock Nelson’s power play goal and asked Eddie, “How did the Islanders score on the power play.” Eddie’s answer, “Confidence.” Jesus fucking christ.

So let’s start with the biggest story of the first round, the Lightning’s capitulation to Columbus. Last year, the story that everyone wanted to push was that the Caps intimidated the Lightning. That the Bolts were soft. They weren’t up for this kind of time of year, even though a great majority of this team has been to a couple conference finals and a Stanley Cup Final. Perhaps the main reason was that Braden Holtby was putting up a back-t0-back shutouts in Game 6 and 7 and John Cooper only used one puck-mover to bust through a Trotz trap. So those whispers and headlines were always bubbling underneath the surface waiting to be cracked open by anyone who didn’t want to bother to explain what was happening to Tampa should they not roll to victory.

Which apparently spread to the Lightning themselves, because there’s no logical reason that after just one loss, Nikita Kucherov and others should be running around doing a Tom Wilson impression instead of doing what they did all year, which is just score all the time. Now the Lightning are playing the wrong game.

And even then, really the only thing you need to know about this series are two numbers: .866 and .940. That’s Vasilevskiy’s and Bobrovsky’s save-percentages this series. Everything else is pretty much even, if not tilted to to the Bolts a bit. Vas is letting everything in. There you go. It doesn’t have to mean more than that. It doesn’t have to be more than that. One goalie is making stops.

Meanwhile, every series save the Flames and Avalanche and the Caps and Hurricanes has descended into a cesspool. The hockey has been pretty horrific to watch, and every goddamn whistle becomes a dick-measuring contest. We like our playoff hockey with passion and a bit of bile but this has gone beyond even a level of stupidity. Which is how you end up with Nazem Kadri, already a shithead, trying to be an axe-murderer. Or analysts trying to tell you how important Ryan Reaves is.

It’s been accented because there haven’t been that many close games. And when playoff games have obvious winners in the 3rd period, there seems to be some tenet of hockey written by someone who struggled to breathe that you have to act like a petulant child. That you have to “send a message,” which doesn’t amount more than to losing like an asshole. Every other sport, if you were to clobber guys in the lane in the NBA in the 4th quarter or start throwing at guys heads in the 8th inning of a loss, you’d be mocked endlessly and probably suspended. In hockey it’s the thing to do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as hockey is filled with a bunch of rich white kids who tend not to react well when things don’t go their way. Taking it on the chin isn’t in the vocabulary.

This kind of thing tends to dry up as we get to the business end of series and moving on or going home gets awfully clear in the viewfinder. We can only hope. I already watch Monday Night Raw for my fill of bad booking.

 

Everything Else

Series Preview – Cubs at Marlins: Where Jeter Hates Fun

By Sam Fels 1165 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 5-9   Marlins 4-12

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 6:10

TV: WGN Monday, NBCSN Tuesday and Wednesday

WELCOME TO MIAMI: Fish Stripes

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Yu Darvish vs. Trevor Richards

Jose Quintan vs. Pablo Lopez

Cole Hamels vs. Sandy Alcantara

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Ben Zobrist – RF

Kris Bryant – 3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Javier Baez – SS

Jason Heyward – CF

Willson Contreras – C

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Daniel Descalso – 2B

 

PROBABLE MARLINS LINEUP

Curtis Granderson – LF

Brian Anderson – 3B

Neil Walker – 1B

Starlin Castro – 2B

Jorge Alfaro – C

Miguel Rojas – SS

Lewis Brinson – CF

Austin Dean – RF

 

Nothing like a sojourn down to the former Orange Bowl for a team to get healthy. Or to escape the snow. Or both, and hopefully it’s both for the Cubs.

They’ve caught a break in that even the gods didn’t want to see a Tyler Chatwood so badly they provided Chicago with a blizzard in the middle of April, which is a choice. Seems a touch exuberant on their part, but you understand the emotion. Because of that, the Cubs can stick with a four-man rotation thanks to off-days for the next two weeks, not bringing Jon Lester back until the 27th or so if they so choose. Which would give him nearly a full two weeks of recovery. Although they have two off-days on either side of a trip to Seattle, so they could hold their nose, close their eyes, and plunge into a singular Chatwood start and give Lester yet another week. Questions for down the road.

The only other questions are just lineup rotation. Will Albert Almora Jr. get to show off his hitting-grounders skills in his hometown? Or is the shifting of Heyward into center just something we’re going to have to get used to? Is Kyle Schwarber’s recent slump just a bad week or his inability to recognize breaking pitches going to raise Almora back into the lineup, with Zobrist shifting over to left? Didn’t Kris Bryant used to play outfield? Why is that a thing that doesn’t happen anymore to give Bote more looks? Does Bote need more looks? I don’t even know anymore.

The other boon of playing the Marlins is that you can declare the bullpen officially a Hazmat site if they can’t get the Marlins out. There’s no one here, so if they still refuse to puncture the strike zone, you can leave the lot of them down there and return to Chicago with a fresh batch. Darvish, Quintana, and Hamels will all seek to build on good starts (to varying degrees) against a lineup that were all paid $20 on the corner to come pose as MLB players for a few days while Derek Jeter steals more stadium cash.

And that’s really the story with the Marlins, a chance for Derek Jeter to do Yankees cosplay where it’s warmer and no one cares. They’re supposedly in a rebuild, which they’ve been in for at least 15 years and started when they had the best young outfield in the game (Ozuna, Yelich, Stanton) and traded it because…they felt like it? It was never quite clear. Of those trades, only Lewis Brinson is in the every day lineup and he’s striking out a third of the time and when he’s not doing that the contact he makes is more of a timid question. The only player hitting anything you would want to hide behind several curtains is Jorge Alfaro, who was once traded for Cole Hamels and more recently was part of the J.T. Realmuto deal. Miguel Rojas is literally the only other regular hitting over .230. If Darvish gets nibbly with this lot…

The rotation shows a little more promise. Pablo Lopez has nearly a 10-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and Sandy Alcantara’s high groundball ways are paying off. Both have been let down by the Marlins tendency to play defense like it was jai alai (local joke!). Trevor Richards has a plus-change-up but that’s about it, and is currently riding an incredible save of luck by seeing a .209 BABIP against while stranding nearly 90% of the runners he lets on. The crash is going to be hard on this one. The pen has been extremely walk-heavy, and basically if Sergio Romo and his walker are in your bullpen, you know you suck. But hey, he’ll come in and frisbee up some sliders for you. You wouldn’t know these guys if they came into your house and shit on your floor, which isn’t a bad representation of what they’ll be doing out of the pen soon enough.

It’s baseball, so you can never say the Cubs should win all three games. But the Cubs should win all three games, and then get just as healthy agains the strip-mined Diamondbacks and Bob Brenly and his less and less veiled racism show up for the weekend.

 

Everything Else

Don’t Bore Us Get To The Chorus – Playoff Weekend (Nights 3-5)

By Sam Fels 1176 0

This year, we’re going to cut right to the heart of what’s going in each series instead of dressing it up. We’re on the go, you’re on the go, this just saves everyone a lot of mishegas.

Blue Jackets lead Lightning 3-0: What the fuck?

Islanders lead Penguins 3-0: Fuck me.

Maple Leafs and Bruins 1-1: Fucking stupid.

Capitals lead Canes 2-0: Fuck.

Flames and Avs 1-1: Fucking fine.

Predators and Stars 1-1: Boring as fuck.

Blues lead Jets 2-1: Two fucks, one will fuck up.

Knights lead Sharks 2-1: Fucking Jones.

Thank you for your time.

Everything Else

High On The Hog: Folding The Tent

By Jon Fromi 1610 0

The Rockford IceHogs, Chicago’s AHL affiliate, wrapped up the 2018-19 season last night against Milwaukee. The Hogs were beaten by the Admirals 3-2, concluding the IceHogs season with a 35-31-4-6 mark. The 80 points earned by Rockford placed them seventh in the Central Division, out of the playoff picture this season.

As often happens with April snowstorms, I opted for my basement over the BMO Harris Bank Center to watch the curtain fall on this year’s crop of prospects. What follows are my thoughts as the piglets finished this season Sunday evening.

 

Pregame

Looks like a less than full throttle bunch to close out the season. Hogs MIAs include Peter Holland, Matthew Highmore, Jordan Schroeder, Jacob Nilsson, Dennis Gilbert, Lucas Carlsson, Collin Delia and Anton Forsberg. Kevin Lankinen is starting in goal; Matt Tomkins is backing him up. Apparently, with no tomorrow for Rockford, the Hogs have decided to punt.

Perhaps that’s a bit harsh; obviously, the brass want to see some of the newer faces take to the ice. Milwaukee, meanwhile, is gunning for the second seed in the Central Division. Back on March 22, the Ads were five points behind Rockford for the fourth playoff spot. Milwaukee has gone 9-0-1 since.

The IceHogs went 4-6 in their past ten games. Rockford beat the Admirals in overtime Tuesday in Milwaukee. They fell 3-0 in Iowa Saturday night; it was the seventh time this season that the piglets have been shut out this season. Right to the end, goals were too scarce for this bunch.

The Lankinen-Tomkins connection could be a preview of the goalie tandem next fall, though it’s very possible a veteran will be obtained to pair up with Lankinen, who was very good in limited opportunities for the IceHogs. He definitely needs 40 starts in Rockford instead of the 18 he got this season.

Highmore, who spent most of the season recovering from shoulder surgery, left Tuesday’s game and hasn’t played since. Last year’s top goal-scorer suffered through a disappointing season. Hopefully he’s just being held out to keep him healthy and his summer can be spent getting ready for a more productive campaign.

 

Team Awards

Before the game got underway, the IceHogs handed out their team awards. I tweeted my selections (@JonFromi) earlier Sunday afternoon. Here’s how things shook out:

Defensive Player Of The Year-Lucas Carlsson, who isn’t playing tonight.

My Pick: I had Carlsson, who led Rockford defensemen with 33 points (9 G, 24 A) this season.

Most Improved Player-Dennis Gilbert, who isn’t playing tonight.

My Pick: Gilbert, who really added to his physical game throughout the season at both ends of the ice.

Rookie Of The Year-Dylan Sikura

My Pick: Jacob Nilsson, who had a promising rookie season, with 15 goals and 18 helpers in 62 games. Sikura was an outstanding rookie for the IceHogs; my selection of Nilsson was largely because he spent the bulk of the season in Rockford, as opposed to Sikura, who played 49 games.

Unsung Hero(es)-Tyler Sikura, William Pelletier

My Pick: Andrew Campbell, who anchored this young team despite not putting up the points. His three-goal, five assist season was what I expected offensively from Campbell. I also expected a strong veteran presence, which Campbell more than delivered.

Heavy Hitter-Andreas Martinsen, who isn’t playing tonight.

My Pick: Gilbert, who put a lot of butts on the ice during the season. He also dropped the gloves seven times to pace the club.

Man Of The Year-Pelletier

My Pick: The team announced this a while back, so we all knew how this would go. I really hope Pelletier, who missed the first couple of months, is back with the IceHogs for a third season. His motor is a definite asset.

Team MVP-Jacob Nilsson, who isn’t playing tonight.

My Pick: Jordan Schroeder, who also isn’t playing tonight after being injured last weekend. All Schroeder did was set a career-high in points with 45 (19 G, 26 A) and score 19 goals for Rockford. With points in 37 of his 62 games, Schroeder’s longest point drought was three games.

He had points in 23 of those games, including the Hogs only hat trick against Iowa January 6. However, Schroeder was a steadier scoring threat for the offensively-challenged Hogs.

On a team that was woefully short on veteran scoring, Schroeder stepped up his game. He was consistently Rockford’s most productive offensive player all season. In my opinion, this was the team’s biggest miss in regards to the awards.

 

First Period

Tanner Jeanneau puts Milwaukee up 1-0 with a tip-in at 6:29. A couple minutes later, Milwaukee scores again on a power play goal by Cole Schneider. Just over eight minutes in and Rockford trails by a pair.

The Hogs get a goal back when Alexandre Fortin knocks in a centering pass by Dylan McLaughlin midway through the frame. Fortin has had difficulty converting on scoring opportunities this season (this was his sixth goal of 2018-19). The speed is there, but the kid needs to learn how to finish plays.

Pelletier gets hooked a moment later and Rockford’s 29th-ranked power play hits the ice. As happens more often than not, the IceHogs come up short. Could a more effective man advantage have helped Rockford this season? Definitely.

The IceHogs are out-shot 12-3 in the first 20 minutes and head to the intermission down a goal.

We already know that Rockford will not be participating in the postseason. That’s because (sorry) the Hogs were not a playoff-level team.

Rockford, as you would expect from a prospect-laden squad, ran very hot and cold this season. The Hogs lost six straight games on two occasions and had several three and four-game skids.

Rockford did put together a six-game winning streak in late January and early February and had the goal-tending to put together a solid campaign. However, there was never enough offense to capitalize on the great play between the pipes.

 

Second Period

Hogs broadcaster Joey Zakrzewski mentions that there are 19 skaters for Rockford who will be free agents this summer. I will forecast which of those we can expect to return to the organization in the next few weeks.

Tyler Sikura is one of those skaters who I would like to see back. He may not be quite the prospect that Sikura the Younger is, but Sikura the Elder can still make a difference for the Hogs next fall. His season wasn’t as productive and he lost a lot of time to injury. However, Sikura still had seven goals and a dozen assists in 50 games.

The Ads go up 3-1 during some four-on-four time on a goal at 6:33 by Adam Halewka, his 21st of the season. Rockford, like last season, hasn’t let a two-goal lead get them down. This team has battled hard under interim coach Derek King. What does that mean to King’s chances of getting the gig moving forward?

I don’t know.

Rockford is on its way to a seventh-place finish. This is about how last year’s team would have fared without the slew of veterans who took over in the spring. Management is going to have to believe that King can get some of these prospects ready for action at the next level. I would think that that decision will come in the next couple of days.

Fortin has a clear path to the net midway through the period; he loses the handle and another scoring chances fritters away. The shots are now 25-9 in favor of Milwaukee, who take the 3-1 lead into the second intermission.

 

Third Period

Rockford has a couple of big rallies this season, including a four-goal third period against San Antonio last week that pulled out a crucial victory at the BMO. They came back from 3-1 in Milwaukee Tuesday, so I am not counting the piglets out of this game yet.

As if on cue, Luke Johnson gets a rebound of a Nick Moutrey shot into the cage at 8:57 of the third. It’s Johnson’s 18th of the season (career high) as well as his 31st point (also a career high), despite only 53 games played for the IceHogs in 2018-19. Johnson is an RFA this summer that has shown steady progress in Rockford.

The Hogs refusal to capitulate has been a big selling point these last two seasons. There is a nice crowd at the BMO tonight. Not sure it’s going to be enough to prevent another drop in the yearly attendance, though.

Right now, Rockford’s average is 3828, down just a tad from 3915 last season. The hockey wave may have crested, but it’s too bad more people aren’t taking an interest in a young team that plays hard and gets up and down the ice with urgency.

Rockford is pressuring the Admirals as the sands begin to run out in the final stanza; they’ve out shot Milwaukee 7-2 in the first 15 minutes of the period. Johnson and Dylan Sikura each have six game-winners this season and have a lot of other clutch goals. Maybe they sneak one past Tom McCullom to knot this game.

Lankinen heads to the bench and the Hogs take their last hacks. Phillipp Kurashev, who I imagine will be in Rockford full-time this fall, has a good look from the bottom of the right circle that is snatched out of the air by the Ads goalie. Time out called by King.

The IceHogs win the faceoff but just can’t put that key third goal in the back of the Milwaukee net. The Admirals vault Iowa and Grand Rapids for the second seed. They’ll start with the Wild in the first round of the Calder Cup Playoffs; Chicago gets the slumping Griffins. The Hogs skate off the ice to clear out their lockers.

So ends the twentieth season of pro hockey in the Forest City and the twelfth as the Blackhawks AHL affiliate. Was this season a success?

My thoughts on that question (and probably many others) will come in future posts. Stay tuned.