Faxes from Uncle Dale

Category: Everything Else

  • Blues Spotlight: Hitch And Yeo… It’s Not Part Of The Martz Route Tree

    Blues Spotlight: Hitch And Yeo… It’s Not Part Of The Martz Route Tree

    There’s a lot of weirdness about this Hitchcock farewell tour and the planned succession to Mike Yeo. It’s all very Blues, and it’ll be even more Blues in the various ways it could go totally balls-up.

    First off, we know Hitch grudgingly lets his team get up and down the ice, and would rather be coaching the All-Blacks and play that version of hockey. But look at this roster. Where exactly is his beloved jam? Backes and Brouwer headed for the exit, and in came in only David Perron and the only grinding with him is the one that produces smoke coming out of his ears when trying to do any sort of math problem. Lehtera, Tarasenko, now Yakupov, Schwartz (for the five minutes he’s in one piece), Stastny, Jaskin, Robbi Fabbry or Robby Fabbri, this team has much, much more skill than GRITSANDPAPERHEARTFAAAAARRT. Is Hitch going to open up the throttle on this? Doesn’t he have to to maximize what he’s got?

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  • High On The Hog: The 2016-17 IceHogs

    High On The Hog: The 2016-17 IceHogs

    With the NHL starting in mere days, remember that hockey is also gearing up for the Blackhawks affiliate in the American Hockey League, the Rockford IceHogs. I’m excited to begin my third season reporting on the IceHogs for TCI. I look forward to checking in weekly to fill you in on all Rockford shenanigans.

    As would be expected, roster turnover is rampant in the Forest City. Depending on how Hawks brass decide to deal with the last few names on the depth chart, there could be more faces of both new and vintage variety skating at the BMO Harris Bank Center this season.

    Unlike the NHL, there are no roster limits in the AHL. Still, the IceHogs usually don’t carry more than 24-25 players during the season. Some of the late moves by the Hawks may alter the makeup of the Hogs roster.

    The situation at goalie and defense seem fairly stable for the time being. The most chaotic area roster wise is shaping up to be at forward, so let’s use that as our jumping off point.

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  • Tell Your Statistics To Shut Up: The Analytics Debate Now

    Tell Your Statistics To Shut Up: The Analytics Debate Now

    Wednesday will kick off our ninth season doing this, and in that time it feels like we’ve gone from one side of the statistical debate to the other. I know we were one of the first to start using Corsi and zone starts and whatever else to try and get to the truth of what we were seeing. And now it feels like we spend a lot of time trying to convince people that yes, Mark Arcobello does indeed suck and stop trying to get us to believe otherwise.

    When trying to explain this to my non-hockey inclined friends, I used to try and tell them that hockey was anywhere from five to ten years behind baseball in its statistical revolution. That seems pretty silly now, and there’s a big reason why. If only it were that close.

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  • Wheel It Out Here, Carnac: C.I.’s Season Predictions

    Usually I do this myself, but this year the whole crew is chiming in so you can hang us all out to dry in April. Let’s kick this pig…

    Hawks Point Total and finish in the division 

    Cieslak – 104 points, 2nd

    McClure – 102 points, 2nd (lose on ROW)

    Feather – 110 points, 1st

    Fearless Leader – 108 points, 1st

    Leading Scorer 

    Cieslak – Kane, 91pts

    McClure – Garbage Dick, 90 points

    Feather – Kane, EIGHTY-THREE

    Fearless Leader – Kane, 89 pts

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  • Sitting With My Broken Glass – Around The NHL – Metropolitan Division

    Sitting With My Broken Glass – Around The NHL – Metropolitan Division

    The last stop on the TCI 2016-2017 World Tour is the Metro (no, not nearly this cool). The Metropolitan Division was home to both last year’s Cup champions and President’s Trophy winners, who are always the truer champions because an 82 game sample size is so much larger than four discrete seven game series. Here is a chart with proprietary, arbitrary, and made-up stats to prove that point by your own logic.

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  • But Then The Seasons Turned And The Darkness Came – Around the NHL – Atlantic Division

    ROR Escape

    The mythical Flortheast, not quite a winged beast from Lord of the Rings, but an oddly cobbled together division that begins in the swamps of Florida and travels all the way up the ass crack of the continent to Ottawa, which I’m reliably informed is one giant IKEA that a couple hundred thousand people have never quite been able to escape from. Let’s barely learn about some hockey teams.

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  • I Hate Myself and Want to Die – Around the NHL – Pacific Division

    I Hate Myself and Want to Die – Around the NHL – Pacific Division

    And so now we move west, young men and women to the hellhole that is known as the Pacific Division. Once the place where Vancouver collected 100 points by merely having a pulse, the division has seen a bit of a makeover since realignment. The Kings, Ducks and Sharks have all taken turns setting the coast on fire while Canada weeps. Where does this year leave us? Follow the jump, suckas.

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  • From Here To Infirmary – Around The NHL – Central Division

    From Here To Infirmary – Around The NHL – Central Division

    With the Hawks’ issues and trajectory pretty clearly mapped out now that the exhibition season two-thirds over, this week the focus will turn external to see what in the hell the rest of the league is doing. And today starts with the Hawks’ most direct competition, the Central Division.

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  • Notes On The Cycle

    Notes On The Cycle

    Just a few quick notes on tonight’s what-have-ya, contested mostly by guys who will be running a rink in Medicine Hat or the like in five years.

    -I was most interested in watching Forsling and Kempny. Both showed composure on the puck, especially Kempny. It’s hard to get a read on him in particular when he’s still not facing the quality of players he’s going to in a couple weeks, but at least he showed a willingness to skate himself out of trouble and try and find a pass. Unfortunately for him, there were like two forwards on his team who could receive said pass cleanly.

    As for Forsling, same thing but man is he small. Even if he’s willing he’s going to get crushed by NHL bodies. This is probably what will send him back to Sweden this year. There are small d-men around the league. Jared Spurgeon comes to mind. Toby Enstrom is another. Spurgeon is quite sturdy though, something of a fire hydrant. Enstrom is just really smart with great hands. Forsling has maybe two or three games to show he has the latter.

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  • Maybe They’re Lookin’ For Answers – C.I.’s Season Preview: Cleaning Up The Rest

    Maybe They’re Lookin’ For Answers – C.I.’s Season Preview: Cleaning Up The Rest

    We’ve been through the biggest questions the Hawks face coming into this season. Next week we’ll spend tooling around the Central Division and Western Conference to see what the Hawks are up against. But for today, let’s try and clear up whatever we haven’t gotten to for the Hawks.

    -The working theory for most of the summer, and until they actually show up in camp we have no reason to think any different, is that Marian Hossa is going to slide down to the third line to form some kind of checking line with Marcus Kruger and GTBD (goofus-to-be-determined). Quenneville mentioned it at the convention, Hossa and Kruger have talked about it at the World Cup. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and all that.

    On the surface, this seems like a pretty good idea. Hossa is slowing down, he still has defensive instincts matched by very few, Kruger does as well, and perhaps if they really wanted it to they could free up Toews to not have to keep battling the Kopitars, Seguins, Getzlafs, and whoever else’s of the world. That might free Toews to do more scoring, even if there’s just farmland runoff on his wings.

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