Game #31 Preview Suite
Notes: Julien has been able to change his ways and this team plays much faster than past iterations. The top-nine here is very quick, which should go well for the Hawks…Weber just returned from injury…if you think Manning is bad, at least the Hawks didn’t sign Karl Alzner…Price has been bad for two straight seasons, which is a worry at $10 million per year…Petry is having something of a renaissance…Domi has three goals in his last 11 and two of those came in the same game…
Notes: The headline is that Connor Murphy returns tonight, for now at the expense of Gustav Forsling, who was informed that he was hurt. The Hawks have been shopping Rutta and Manning to everyone to try and clear up the logjam, and those phone conversations must be comedy of the highest order…Crow was a little better against Vegas, but he gave up at least two goals he can’t and his rebound-control still remains iffy…Collition apparently is going with the “pairs” system in his lines, in that Saad-Toews, Kane-Anisimov, and Top Cat-Strome will always be together and they’ll make up the rest.
Game #31 Preview Suite
I know that’s going to make a few laugh. I won’t stop you.
Jeremey Colliton has now gotten as many games as Joel Quenneville did this season. They each were behind the bench for 15. Obviously, at the top the records are pretty clear reading. Q went 6-6-3, whereas Colliton is at 3-10-2. Q had three regulation wins, Colliton two. It doesn’t make for a pretty sight.
Before we dig deeper, it was thought before that Colliton faced the far tougher schedule. And that will be true when this month is over and the Hawks wade through the Jets twice more, the Avs twice, the Preds, the Sharks, and Stars (and you thought it couldn’t get worse!). The numbers don’t particularly bare that out.
The points-percentage of the teams the Hawks faced with Q behind the bench was .546. With Colliton it’s .561. For reference’s sake, the former mark would see a team collect 89 points over a full season, the latter 92 points. So just about equal, with a shade harder for Colliton.
But that isn’t the whole story. Q got to see the Ducks when they were awful, and Colliton when they were playing much better, but Q also got the Blues three times which would drag the points-total average down as well. Make of all of it what you will. Those marks will probably look different at the end of the season when teams like the Rangers and Coyotes settle in more where they should be. Right now, it seems like things are neutral in that sense.
Anyway, let’s go into the metrics.
The Hawks had a 51.5 CF% under Quenneville. That’s dipped to 50.0 even with Colliton. Their scoring-chance share has gone from 49.1 to start the year to 48.2 now. If you can believe it, their high-danger scoring chance percentage has actually improved, from 43.6% under Q to 46.3% now (neither being an acceptable number).
What Colliton really hasn’t gotten is a save, anywhere. The even-strength save-percentage under him is .908, where it was .914 for Quenneville. Now you may say that the save-percentage would of course go down because the Hawks are giving up so many more chances under their new, ever-so-handsome coach. Is that so?
They’re actually giving up slightly less attempts per game at evens now, 57.1 vs. 58.8 before. They’re giving up one more shot per 60 at evens, from 32.4 to 33.3 now. Surprisingly, they’re giving up noticeably less scoring chances per 60, from 31.1 to 27.4 under C. And they’re giving up less high-danger chances per 60, from 13.8 per 60 to 11.7.
Now, a drop from .914 to .908 at even-strength may not sound like much, and it isn’t really, it’s about three more goals. It’s just where those goals go. If they got the Hawks to overtime in one-goal games, Colliton’s record might read 3-7-5, or if overtimes went their way a couple times, being as random as it is, it could be something like 5-6-4. Or maybe they all come when the Hawks are getting blown out anyway and it doesn’t matter. We can say, either way, that Colliton’s ride while bumpy has been also unlucky (last night being a perfect example).
On the other end of the ice, the Hawks have seen a noticeable reduction in their attempts for per 60 and their shots for per 60, while their scoring chances for and high-danger chances for have remained about steady. So while the team’s shooting-percentage has remained around 7.5% for both coaches, there’s less shots for them under Colliton to cash in on. Again, the difference in shots means the Hawks have missed out on a goal and a touch more, but not enough to wet oneself over.
As silly as it sounds, because they are bad defensively either way, the Hawks have actually slightly improved in their own end under Colliton, but still have a long way to go. They haven’t gotten a save, and their offense is going the wrong way. That could be to the league just closing up a little as a whole. It could be DeBrincat going cold, though some of that is usage. It could be the constant line-shuffling. It could be all of it.
None of it is pretty.
Rockford IceHogs defenseman Dennis Gilbert has adding a physical element to a team that is more focused on skating than brawling. The former Notre Damer paid a price for that style of play last weekend.
The AHL suspended Gilbert for three games after taking a hard look at a hit he delivered in Sunday’s 3-2 win over San Antonio. Early in that game, Gilbert put a shoulder into the chest of Rampage forward Mackenzie MacEachern. The hit separated MacEachern from the puck as well as his senses.
Before MacEachern could be helped from the ice, Klim Kostin went over and quickly dropped the gloves with Gilbert. Kostin earned an instigator penalty and a ten-minute misconduct in addition to the five-minute fighting major. At the time, all Gilbert was penalized was the five-minutes for fighting. On Tuesday, the league opted for supplemental discipline.
Upon taking a long, slow look at the play, it becomes apparent that Gilbert was just a few inches high on the hit. Contact was made with MacEachern’s head, unintentional as it may have been.
This isn’t the first time that a call that was deemed legal in the course of a game drew the ire of the AHL. The on-ice officials made what they felt was the right call from the perspective of a live-action hit. A few inches lower and Gilbert delivers a legal hit.
Gilbert remained in the contest and assisted on Graham Knott’s game-tying goal in the third period. It was Gilbert’s first point since an assist in his season debut October 13. He’s been paired quite a bit with veteran Andrew Campbell recently. Of Rockford’s seven fighting majors this season, Gilbert has three of them.
Hogs coach Derek King seemed to disagree with the ruling in his weekly media availability, though he stopped short of criticizing the suspension. King said that he had advised Gilbert to continue playing in a physical manner.
In his first weeks as Rockford’s head coach, King has pushed the physical narrative decidedly harder than Jeremy Colliton. The IceHogs are far from being a punishing team in this regard, but it’s interesting to see how this plays out as the season progresses.
Roster Moves
Gilbert’s absence prompted the Hogs to recall D Josh McArdle from the Indy Fuel Tuesday. The Rockton, Illinois native was in the lineup at the BMO November 7 against Iowa, thought that was Rockford’s morning school-day game. He should get a big reception from the home fans if he gets into a game this weekend.
The next day, goalie Kevin Lankinen was assigned to the Fuel, signaling that Collin Delia was ready to return to action after missing the last three games. Lankinen played well in this most recent stint with Rockford, picking up his first win of the season Sunday afternoon.
This Weekend
Rockford is attempting to win consecutive games for the first time since November 9 and 10. To do so, they will have to shut down a streaking opponent.
Grand Rapids, the hottest team in the Western Conference, comes to Rockford Friday night. The Griffins have won seven of their last eight, with the lone loss coming in a shootout against Milwaukee back on November 23.
Veteran Chris Terry leads the Grand Rapids offense with 15 goals and nine helpers in 23 games. Matt Puempel has chipped in with ten goals. Veteran centers Turner Elson (8 G, 13 A) and Carter Camper (5 G, 15 A) have also been steady contributors.
Rockford will probably be looking at Patrik Rybar (6-2-2, 2.27, .910) in net for the Griffins. Rybar held the Hogs to a single goal November 14 in Grand Rapids, stopping 29 shots on the way to a 3-1 victory.
Saturday night is another Illinois Lottery Cup tilt with the Chicago Wolves. Chicago has struggled of late, but rallied from a three-goal deficit to beat Iowa in overtime on Wednesday night.
Former IceHogs forward Brandon Pirri has picked up his scoring pace, with six goals and eight assists in his last ten games. He currently leads the AHL in scoring with 30 points (10 G, 20 A).
Follow me @JonFromi on twitter for thoughts on Rockford happenings throughout the season.
This game was Laura Powers ripping Bart’s heart out and kicking it into the trash. After taking the lead for the first time in nine games, the Hawks gave up two goals in 12 fucking seconds. Up until that point, the Hawks were playing well! Aside from spotting the Knights their requisite two goals early, the Hawks dominated possession until the third. Whatever, let’s fucking do this already.
– Let’s just get the shit out of the way. Brent Seabrook can retire now and have a wonderful legacy. He’s done so very, very much for this team, and the greatest thing he can do now is just stop. Just hang them up, take the assistant coach position from actual goblin Barry Smith, and go down in history.
Seabrook’s turnover on the game-winning goal for Vegas was one thing. But watching Alex Tuch bowl through him and jam the dagger into everyone’s fucking skull is utterly embarrassing. We can complain that Patches interfered, and I don’t think we’d be wrong. But regardless, Tuch manhandling Seabrook was the perfect microcosm of what this team has become: bloated, behind, and thrashing in a sea of shit.
As much as I want to get completely red and nude about what Brent Seabrook is now, I just can’t. It’s like watching your 16-year-old dog, your lifelong companion, shit in the middle of the floor, only to hang his head in shame. He knows he shouldn’t do that, but he’s just so old. The anger melts into grief, which only makes you madder and sadder. What’s worse is you know no one else will take him in, and you just can’t bear putting him out to pasture. So you let him shit on the floor, over and over, just wishing the nightmare would end.
– Certainly not one of Crawford’s best either. It’s a given that he’s going to have to make outrageous saves every night, because this fucking team is an unwashed armpit crawling with impetigo. But the game-tying goal from Marchessault in the third is inexcusable. The dying emu off Engelland’s stick in the first was another one Crow probably should have had. Konroyd, who manages to be both an idiot and a Milhouse, kept saying it bounced off Toews, which is proof positive that it didn’t and Crow just missed it. Even the first goal he gave up was a result of poor rebound control, which gave Reilly Smith a chance to Baryshnikov his way to the game opener.
– I don’t know how many times we are going to have to say it, but Alex DeBrincat still isn’t a third liner. When you had Top Cat–Strome–Kane on the ice toward the end of the second, they were dominant. DeBrincat and Strome were toward the bottom in TOI in the first, which is inconceivable. I want to know what the grand conspiracy against DeBrincat is, because there’s no logical explanation for why Dominik Kahun or David Kampf get plush spots over him. You’d think the GREAT COMMUNICATOR would have this explanation front and center, and yet we wait and wonder.
– Brendan Perlini sucks. He’s Kris Versteeg with a pedigree.
– I tried being nice, but Brandon Manning can go right back to eating my toenails after a long, hot run. It’s one thing if, like, Erik Karlsson storms the blue line on the PK to try to force a turnover. But there was Brandon Manning, doing just that prior to Vegas’s first goal. In case anyone’s forgotten, Brandon Manning sucks so much he blows, and you could see Marchessault giggling as he shuffled a pass right past him, leaving Seabrook all alone to defend. I’d take Connor Murphy eight weeks ago over him.
– On the plus side, Jonathan Toews was a force. He scored his goal from behind the goal line. He won faceoff after faceoff late in the third in the offensive zone, giving the Hawks hope. He took everything and then some, and it still wasn’t enough.
– Dylan Strome could be something. For all the worrying we did about his supposed lack of speed, he’s almost always in the right place. You don’t expect him to pot shots like the bad angle one he did in the second with any regularity, but it’s nice to know that he’s got it in his bag of tricks. Imagine what he and DeBrincat could do with Kane on the wing.
– Patrick Kane was also dominant tonight, and he did it while playing more minutes than anyone on the Hawks. Though he spent most of his time with Kahun and Wide Dick, which is such a goddamn waste.
– Credit to Artie though. Forcing a turnover and giving the Hawks their first goddamn lead in nine motherfucking games was nice, even if it was fleeting.
– I want to know whose idea it’s been to continue doing the neutral zone/own zone drop pass, because I’m going to pull my brain out from my asshole and piss on it until it dissolves like a skidmark if it keeps happening. This skullfuck of a strategy led to sustained pressure for the Knights WHILE THE HAWKS HAD A MAN ADVANTAGE during the second PP in the second period. I know I shouldn’t yell about that, since the PP is worse than a Truth commercial, but did you ever think it could possibly get worse? Fire whoever is in charge of making that decision out of a cannon into the motherfucking sun.
It was right there for the Hawks, and they threw up in their shoes. With the insufferable game at Notre Dame against Boston coming up and the Hawks falling farther and farther down in the standings, don’t be surprised if the next few weeks are the swan song for Bowman and maybe even Colliton.
Eat Arby’s.
Booze du Jour: Four Roses straight from the bottle
Line of the Night: “Artem Anisimov puts the Hawks ahead for the first time in nine games!” – Pat Foley
First Screen Viewing
Bruins vs. Lightning – 6:30
I’m not sure how the Bruins are doing it. They are missing pretty much all of the blue line they started with, and Patrice Bergeron. And sure, they’ve lost pace with the Sabres, Leafs, and tonight’s opponent, Lightning. But they’re still comfortably in a playoff place, and you have to figure there’s a run coming when everyone is healthy. If everyone is healthy. Meanwhile, the Lightning are simply clocking people left and right, even if they haven’t separated from the Leafs yet. Though soon enough.
Second Screen Viewing
Wild vs. Flames – 7pm
Calgary is coming off putting up nine on the Blue Jackets, and beating some other slapdick team on their recent two-game road trip. The Wild won’t get the benefit of seeing Mike Smith, though both he and Big Save Dave were pilfered by the Jackets. The Wild have hit a bit of a rut and are losing pace with the Jets, Avs, and Predators, which isn’t surprising because they don’t have the weapons those teams do. And the Knights are getting awfully close in the rearview mirror for the last wild card spot.
Other Games
Red Wings vs. Maple Leafs – 6pm
Avalanche vs. Panthers – 6pm
Blue Jackets vs. Flyers – 6pm
Islanders vs. Penguins – 6pm
Canadiens vs. Senators – 6:30
Capitals vs. Coyotes – 8pm
Predators vs. Canucks – 9pm
Devils vs. Kings – 9:30
@ 
Game Time: 9:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, SN affiliates, WGN-AM 720
Indecent Proposal: Sin Bin, Knights on Ice
Because getting territorially dominated by a Randy Carlyle coached team without two of its best ice flipping defenseman wasn’t insulting enough, the Hawks now have no time to even sit in the corner and feel shame for it with a tilt tonight in Vegas against a Knights team that completely clowned them on national TV and in their own building two weeks ago.
There’s a school of thought that hockey players, especially forwards, peak at the age 0f 27. Some punch through that, such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, perhaps Patrick Kane, Joe Pavelski, and this could go on. But for the most part, it’s true. Max Pacioretty was thought to be a player who wouldn’t fall victim to that. Maybe we all should have been paying more attention.
Since he came into the league full-time in 2011, Patches is 9th in the league in goals. He trails Ovechkin, Stamkos, Tavares, Pavelski, Seguin, Benn, Malkin, and Kane. Those are obviously some names. When one of the top-10 scorers in the league goes on the market, teams pay attention.
More impressively, Pacioretty got there playing without any prime centers in Montreal. Some names that Patches had to run with are David Desharnais, an aging Thomas Plekanec, Alex Galchenyuk, Phillip Danault, and Andrew Shaw (boy that guy really needs to write a book on how to fall upwards). And yet Pacioretty produced.
But dig a little deeper, and the warning signs are there. This is the fourth-straight season that Pacioretty’s attempts per game have dropped. Same story with his shots-on-goal per game. And it’s the same with his individual expected goals per 60 minutes of even-strength time.
Patches has been able to overcome that so far this season by rocking a much higher shooting-percentage than he has in a few years, of 11.3 at evens, which is his highest since 2013-2014, and overall 15.2% which would be a career-high. But he’s doing that with worse shots. That’s not a sustainable model. Then again, Cody Eakin isn’t exactly a huge improvement over the mishmash of whatits he had in Montreal.
Which really makes one worry about the four next years when he’ll be making $7 million. That takes him to 34 years old, or seven years past his prime. It could get icky.
As we said with the contract that Marc-Andre Fleury got when the Knights were in Chicago, just because GM George McPhee had all the cap space in the world to throw around didn’t mean he had to. Patches still qualifies as one of the best scorers in the game, but that has a shelf-life. Perhaps Tavares was never going to listen to him, though he presents the same problem as Pacioretty in that he plays a slower game. Doesn’t seem to be affecting him in Toronto, though. What about Erik Karlsson? Or waiting for Panarin?
McPhee had such a cushion that he’ll get out of it. Only the raise to William Karlsson is on the horizon, and everyone else is pretty much set. The Knights will have $11 million in space in the summer as of now, minus whatever raise Wild Bill gets. Two years from now Cody Eakin and Ryan Reaves are off the books. But there might not be too many more contracts for him to hand out before it’s trouble.
None of this means that Pacioretty is going to be a detriment. He’ll probably get a team 20-25 goals for another few years simply because he can be a bad-shot maker. Hell, get him a prime center some day and it might juice him a little. He’s just not going to be, or likely isn’t, what the Knights had hoped they had traded for.
Game #30 Preview Suite
Ken Boehlke is one-half of sinbin.vegas. This was the Q&A we did with them when the Knights were in town just a couple weeks ago. Follow them @SinBinVegas.
We know the Knights benefitted last year from insane goaltending along with their more than solid even-strength play. But having among the worst save-percentage and shooting-percentage this season seems a violent market correction. Is there something systemic here more than just rotten luck?
What it really comes down to is Grade-A scoring chances and the subsequent execution of them. Early in the season the Golden Knights were having a hard time creating anything in the dangerous areas (in the house, if you know that term) but what was worse than their inability to create the chances was a consistency in not finishing those chances when they did arise. Luckily, as tends to be the case in hockey, that has turned recently, especially since they’ve begun to play more
Pacific division teams.
How big is the injury to Paul Stastny?
To be completely honest, it hasn’t had a major impact to this point. It’s the loss of Haula that seems to be more of a detriment to the team. Stastny certainly would have been, and hopefully will eventually be, a nice center for the 2nd line, but Eakin has stepped in incredibly well and appears to be thriving with goal-scorers on his line again. The loss of Haula however has definitely taken an level of speed away from the team and at times they don’t look like the quick, ferocious, probably considered annoying team that won the Western Conference. They’ve been searching for anyone to make the 3rd line go since Haula’s gruesome injury, but it hasn’t really happened yet. Would they be better with Stastny back? Of course, but if you gave me one or the other right now, I’d rather have Haula.
And the suspension to Nate Schmidt? While he’s unquestionably a good player is he really a top pairing d-man that a team would miss so heavily?
I’ll be completely honest in saying I heavily underestimated the impact Schmidt would have in the lineup upon his return. When a guy is out for the first 20 games of the season and the last memories of him are the Cup Final when not a single defenseman was any good, there certainly has to be a level of skepticism about how good the player really is, especially a player who has only a one year track record of being a top pair defenseman. But this guy is everything and more on the ice that made the hockey world realize that he’a a top 20 defenseman in the league and maybe even better. He’s kind of been this a stabilizing force to the defense in that they aren’t allowing an odd-man rush a period anymore, but it’s added an element of transition back into Vegas’ game and most importantly, it’s meant the return of Colin Miller and Shea Theodore to more familiar, less defensively responsible, roles. All of that was a long way to say, YES, Nate Schmidt is that good.
Max Pacioretty started slow, there was concern, and now he’s bagged six goals in four games. Was this just a product of all scorers going through hot and cold streaks?
I don’t think it was simply a cold streak that a scorer tends to go through. We’ve all seen those cold streaks and they tend to mean lots of great saves against, post hits, miraculous backchecking, and the likes. That’s not what this was for Pacioretty. He was just not good. He wasn’t creating much by means of scoring chances and he was uncharacteristically a liability defensively. When I say he was bad, I mean, he was legitimately one of the worst forwards on the team. However, he’s definitely not that anymore, and it’s not because he’s scored a bunch of goals recently. It seems to have much more to do with
his linemates. Playing with Alex Tuch isn’t as simple as it would seem. He’s so much faster than he looks and he plays with a power that’s not horribly common in the NHL. Pacioretty seemed to always been a half second behind Tuch, likely because he didn’t expect Alex to be able to pull off some of the stuff that he does. Now, Pacioretty expects Tuch to win every puck, to undress guys at the blue line, and to fire passes through people every shift. Pacioretty is starting to find himself in much better positions when Tuch and Eakin create turnovers, and the three of them are starting to look dangerous every single time out as a unit rather than individually. Pacioretty told me about two weeks ago that he thought he was thinking too much and it was slowing him down. That’s a huge problem when you play with Tuch. That appears to be over
and the flood gates might just be open.
Game #30 Preview Suite
Sure, at times it can be a little bombastic. The more you see it, the sillier it can seem. Here’s the thing about all the shenanigans and pageantry of the pregame routine at T-Mobile Arena…
…it’s fucking Las Vegas!
The whole town just screams tits and money 24 hours a day. You can get a $2 buffet. They put a roller coaster in the fucking Eiffel Tower. There’s a light you can see from space on top of a goddamn pyramid made of glass. Need we go on? Caesar’s Palace is roughly the size of Utah. The whole thing is bombast.
In a day when every arena looks the same, when every pregame thing is the same montage with different colors–fuck, the UC has been playing Foo Fighters at the beginning of the 2nd period and “Ridin’ The Storm Out” before the 3rd for 10 motherfucking years–we should all rejoice that someone out there is trying to make for a unique experience. Something tailored to the city they play in. Something to make the fans feel there’s something special and different about the place they live and the team they support.
Part of being a hockey fan is hating everything. We know. We hate everything to. But hey, we miss the Hawks skating through a frozen Chicago and fending off ninja hockey players or whatever they were. Not just the same on-ice projection and lasers that everyone else has. Put like a giant Italian beef or an Old Style on there or something! Make the United Center a different experience in some small way than TD BankNorth Garden or BB&T or wherever else.
And stop bitching about Vegas. If you didn’t like ridiculousness, over-the-top theatrics, and sheer lunacy you wouldn’t go there once every couple of years to try and find your youth again. It’s supposed to be stupid. It’s a playground in the middle fo the goddamn desert for Christ’s sake. Or did you forget about the floor show in the middle of the slot machines? Or the dancers among the blackjack tables?
If anything, the T-Mobile pregame brewhaha doesn’t go far enough. Use actual showgirls or flying tigers or giant ships or whatever. We could use more of it.
Game #30 Preview Suite
