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Game Time: 7:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBCSN, WGN-AM 720
Made America Great Again: SLGT
Well the world didn’t end. Not yet at least. And apparently there’s hockey to play down in West East St. Louis tonight.
As it says in the title, this should have happened well before this. It’s on me that it didn’t. No one else, despite the team that makes up this blog. We are now going to be FaxesFromUncleDale.com.
We had a serious discussion about this a little less than two years ago. So many of you shared your opinions and suggestions. I thought merely changing the logo would let me get away with it. I told myself it was enough, but it was a half-step. A justification or rationalization, whatever you want to call it. I knew then but did everything I could to ignore it. I took far too much solace in those who agreed with me instead of those who were saying what I didn’t want to hear. You can’t learn anything that way. Some of the people closest to me told me better. They deserved a far better audience than I gave them. That’s not who I want to be.
You best believe I’m going to start calling Alex DeBrincat “Top Cat” when he gets here. Try and stop me. He’s got cat moves and he’s got cat style.
You’ve probably seen this already, but if you haven’t the Hawks’ second round pick from June, Alex DeBrincat, is absolutely torching the OHL so far this season. Like, it’s Mongolian hordes shit. So far in just 14 games, Top Cat has 17 goals and 18 assists for 34 points. He’s also averaging almost five shots per game at 4.8.
I was curious what became of players the past few years who have averaged two points per game in the O. It has happened, and while the OHL is pretty free-wheeling it’s not the QMJHL. There are certainly some names here.
This week will see the NHL season move into its second month. While the Hawks are one of the hotter teams in the league, that doesn’t mean we truly know what they are. Yes, they sit atop the West, but you don’t need to look any farther than who they are tied atop the conference with to know how weird the season has been. That would be the Edmonton Oilers. And no one thinks they’re really that good. So what the hell is going on here?
For matters close to town, what’s funny is that the Oilers probably deserve their spot atop the West more than the Hawks do. Edmonton is plus in Corsi and Fenwick, though just barely, where the Hawks are not. The Oilers have a plus shot-share per 60 at evens, and the Hawks are dead-ass last in that category. That isn’t good. If you go by xGF%, and whether you do or not I won’t complain, the Oilers are only slightly outplaying their even-strength performance where the Hawks are massively doing so. What a strange world indeed.
Quite simply, pretty much everything about the Hawks is something of a mirage right now. They have the league’s highest PDO by three full points over Minnesota. Their even-strength save-percentage is a full two points ahead of Montreal’s. We know this. In fact, they could be something like last year’s Canadiens, except they have way more top end talent than the Habs did last year.
And yet I can’t sit here and say it’s totally false.
The Rockford IceHogs, AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks, must have had a little extra room on the bus after departing for three road games this past week. You see, the Hogs left their offense on the curb outside the BMO Harris Bank Center.
Rockford dropped all three contests this week to push its current losing streak to five games. In doing so, the IceHogs mustered a single even-strength goal in over 180 minutes of hockey.
The Hogs have sunk to 13th place in the Western Conference following this weekend’s action. Their 4-6-1 mark has them seventh in the Central Division standings. A lack of scoring has definitely played a part in this team’s recent struggles.
The back end of the divisional home and home historically tends to be a testier, albeit sloppier and more sluggish affair than its precursor, and tonight was no different considering just how spirited last night’s tilt in Dallas was. Given the Stars’ final push in regulation last night, it looked like both teams took quite a bit to get into the swing of things this evening.
But with the Stars depleted, the Hawks had enough to outgun them finally in overtime. Hawks 4, Stars 3, now time to look at the electoral map.
Box Score
I suppose when you lose most of your ammo, as the Stars have done throughout the season and then another tonight in Spezza, you have little choice but to revert to trying to Blues the Hawks (which the Blues don’t even really do anymore). The Stars certainly tried to shrink the ice by turning into heat-seekers all night. Sometimes, this early in the season we’ve seen the Hawks decide it isn’t worth it in early November and kind of just spit it. But when they feel like it, and certainly whenever it truly matters, the Hawks beat it EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME. Learn this, NHL.
As we’ve seen for the first month, games all over the league have been sloppier than usual for whatever reason you subscribe to. When you have two teams like this that want to play at warp speed, but they don’t have the sharpness to quite pull it off, you get a mess like you had for at least the first half of this one. Throw in some shitty Dallas ice and you’ve basically got a Saturday night on payday weekend in Muskogee (glove tap, JR). But the Hawks muscled through to a 3-2 lead, and then expertly shut the Stars down in the 3rd as we’ve seen so many times. The forwards drop a little deeper in the d-zone, forcing everything to the points. The dump-ins are more carefully placed. When there’s space they’ll make a play, but don’t force anything. Oh, and the Stars had to find a third goal against Corey Crawford and that’s just not happening these days.
Let’s clean it up.
The Two Obs
-One day, part of a philosophy class somewhere should be dedicated to Pat Foley pointing out the farcical nature in which hit stats are tracked and yet championing them a few sentences later. We can’t stress this enough. They’re bullshit. They mean nothing. And they’re tabulated in the same way Lovie Smith’s Bears used to track tackles and would come out every Monday to tell us both Urlacher and Briggs had 46 tackles each the previous afternoon.
-Speaking of that, it’s not that we’re against physical play. But a hit three seconds after an opponent successfully completes a pass doesn’t do anything except prove that you were slow and/or dumb. That was most certainly not Ryan Hartman’s game, who has the feet to get there in time to force a misplaced pass or an outright turnover. This was the Hartman the Hawks envisioned when they picked him, a bowling ball with some skill. That puck was rolling that he blasted by an admittedly slow-to-get-over Niemi, but the balls to try it is enough. Like Sgt. Hartman said (Hmmm…) sometimes guts is enough.
-Yeah your goaltending is fine, Dallas. Niemi saved everything like he was trying to cough something up and there were rebounds everywhere. The first goal 11 seconds in came after a bad one. Hartman’s goal came after another one led to more chances for the Hawks. And Lehtonen is no better. He’s not helped by a decidedly light-in-the-ass defense that let the Hawks just stand in the crease for far too long, but if they hope to make anything of this season they’d better fix it.
-There was a play in the 2nd that pretty much sums up why the organization loves Forsling. It was on a power play and Campbell gave him something of a hand grenade pass right at the center of the line. It bounced off his stick and into his feet, and there are countless young d-men that would have panicked while an on-rushing Benn was certainly envisioning a breakaway. Forsling calmly sorted his feet out, and with inches of space calmly passed the puck to a teammate. Now imagine what TVR would have come up with there. They would have been scraping pieces of him out of the ice for days.
-There is one disturbing trend. This was the third game in four where Keith and Campbell got buried possession-wise. It’s a strange pairing, and I don’t think either is playing to the level they will, but there’s definitely some pains as they try and blend their very similar styles.
-That’s balanced by Hossa and his brother Russian and his other brother Russian all being over 60%.
-The Hawks also probably won’t win too many games where Toews’s line is getting thrown around by the other team’s top line as they were tonight (26%… yikes).
-I know Schmaltz has been saddled with two plugs which decidedly do not compliment what he can do well, but he should have flashed more to get better linemates and I’m going to guess he gets the seat next to Pelico tomorrow to make room for Desjardins.
Onwards…
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 7-3-1 Stars 4-4-2
PUCK DROPS: 7pm Saturday, 6pm Sunday
TV: WGN Saturday, CSN Sunday
HONKY TONK HOCKEY: Defending Big D
PROJECTED LINEUPS
SCORE-ADJUSTED TEAM CORSI: Hawks – 49.6% (16th) Stars – 49.9% (15th)
POWER PLAY: Hawks – 22.7% (11th) Stars – 14.3% (22nd)
PENALTY KILL: Hawks – Almost Respectable! Stars – 75.7% (25th)
TRENDS: Seguin had four assists against St. Louis on Thursday… Klingberg was paired with Lindell two games ago and in those two they have a 55 CF%
Another old-fashioned home-and-home with a division rival, though neither team is going to be too thrilled with having to fly from Dallas to Chicago overnight. At least no one has an advantage? Anyway, the streaking Hawks will see something of a MASH unit that’s still trying to play heavy metal hockey, and the results as you might expect have been somewhat wonky.
It really is amazing what a little time to get into the flow of things can do for a top heavy team at forward, especially when the vast majority of them played in a useless exhibition tournament right up until the start of the regular season. But since the first weekend of the season, the right names have been appearing on the score sheet for the Hawks, and as a general rule, standings points follow.
So it should be no surprise that with Toews, Hossa, Hossa again, and Panarin with the markers the Hawks walked away with a W.
vs.
RECORDS: Avs 4-4-0 Hawks 6-3-1
PUCK DROP: 7:30
TV: CSN
WHILE SIFTING THROUGH MY ASHES: Mile High Hockey
PROJECTED LINEUPS
SCORE-ADJUSTED CORSI: Avs – 48.5% (21st) Hawks – 50.3% (11th)
POWER PLAY: Avs – 21.4% (14th) Hawks – 23.8% (8th)
PENALTY KILL: Avs – 77.1% (23rd) Hawks – getting better?
TRENDS: All of Duchene’s eight points have come in the last five games… MacKinnon’s +10.9 Corsi-relative is the 7th-best mark among forwards
Oh right, there’s a hockey team in town. Did you remember that? I think I forgot somewhere along there. That’s why this preview is so delayed. Things are moving slowly in the lab today. Give us this one, won’t you? Anyway, the Hawks help us begin the transition into winter officially now, and good thing because they’re on a streak.
