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Game #14 – Hawks vs. Oilers Spotlight: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins And Recognizing And Maximizing What You Have

By Sam Fels November 1, 2018 1591 0

You’d think if a team somehow hoarded three of the top five picks of any draft year, you’d have a real peach of a team. Hell, even two should do it. That’s what the Sharks did for years with Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton who were the #1 and #2 picks in the same draft. But then again, leave it to the Oilers to collect top-five picks from a draft that pretty much sucked. So the Oilers are left with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Adam Larsson, and Ryan Strome, and that silly look on their face they’ve had for north of 20 years. Also, the latter two cost them top-10 picks from other drafts, and who were unquestionably better players.

It’s not RNH’s fault he was taken at the top of the 2011 draft. He was the best player in a weak crop. It’s not even the Oilers’ fault. They had the top pick, and they took what was best available. Looking back through it, the best player in that draft turned out to probably be Dougie Hamilton, but you couldn’t get too many sheets of paper between him and anyone else, likely Mark Scheifele. And no one was saying Scheifele or Hamilton should go #1 in that draft at the time. Does anyone trade a #1 pick anymore? Maybe there’s a lesson there.

And Nugent-Hopkins has been fine. More than fine, really. He’s put up solid #2 center numbers pretty much his entire career. Never less than 43 points, never more than 56. On a really good team, which he’s never seen, that’s probably a third center. For the Oilers, it’s been a second, which tells you a lot, and until McJesus showed up a #1 center, which tells you more.

The Oilers probably missed their window to sell high on RNH, if they ever realized he would never live up to his #1 pick billing. That window certainly closed when they handed him $6M over seven years after his entry-level deal expired. But what do you do? You’ve taken this guy #1, McDavid wasn’t anywhere near the scene yet, and you have to look like you know what you’re doing somewhat. We said, “somewhat.”

And now the Oilers are on the brink of making that $6M look very economical, despite themselves, which we have to believe means it was on accident. After handing Leon Draisaitl a huge deal last year, the Oilers knew they pretty much had two #2 centers, and one center who would be far too expensive to be anchoring a third line. Draisaitl is getting the bigger paycheck, so they’ve left him to work out the more valuable role, behind Run CMD. Which means for the first time in his NHL career, Nugent-Hopkins is on a wing. And he seems to be taking to it.

RNH has 13 points in 11 games running with McDavid, as just about anyone would (though the Oilers keep finding players who somehow can’t, a true miracle). He’s never been anything close to a point-per-game as a center, but in that range is the buy-in for a half-decent winger with the best player in the game.

This could work out well for all parties. If RNH were to put up 60 or 70 points this year, that’s well worth $6 million a year. For the two years the Oilers have left to pay him, they would think that’s a good deal. It also might look attractive to other teams, who won’t see much past the point-total and the salary and perhaps not the factors that led to it. After all, very few teams can put a winger with a center anywhere near the quality of McDavid. There’s like three others, maybe. So get ready for an RNH-Kessel trade this summer or something.

It also works out for RNH. He will hit the UFA market at the age of 28 in the summer of 2021, though under a new CBA. After a couple years with McDavid who knows what his numbers could look like, and he can advertise being able to play both wing and center. That’s assuming he doesn’t cash in with the Oilers themselves, but free agents at 28 are still something of a rarity in the NHL. A raise from his current $6M per year should be a kip.

Nugent-Hopkins never turned into the franchise-shifting center a #1 pick suggests. But he was in a year where someone had to have that label. After all this time, both he and the Oilers may finally be maximizing their value to each other.

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Game #14 – Hawks vs. Oilers Q&A: Same Thing As Sunday, Little Bit Louder And A Little Bit Worse

By Sam Fels November 1, 2018 1491 0

Obviously, nothing has changed since Sunday when these teams last met. So here’s the Q&A we ran with Scott Lewis from then (@thescottlewis).

With all the noise about the Oilers, and the constant, fair criticisms of their wingers, how does the fact they may have horribly whiffed on Jesse Puljujarvi get missed?

If we flashback to the night of the 2016 Draft, the Oilers landing Puljujarvi at No. 4 was viewed as something of a steal at the time. People were busy laughing at the Blue Jackets taking Dubois with the third pick, which has turned out to be a fine selection for them. In a perfect world for the Oilers, they would be trotting out Matthew Tkachuk or Mikhail Sergachev on a nightly basis right now… but it’s the Oilers, so here we are. I’m not ready to close the door on Puljujarvi quite yet, so I’ll chalk it up to another case of management shitting the bed on development. He might still be something. Maybe. Hopefully. Probably not!

Is playing Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on a wing really a solution? Because it leaves them short at center. Or is this a “cover your head, your feet are cold, cover your feet your head is cold” kind of situation?

Personally, I’d love to see him back at center full-time. BUT… he’s producing and his possession totals are looking pretty good so far. It’s definitely a patch job by the coaching staff, so it would be ideal to address the personnel shortage up front sooner than later if this team is to be taken seriously. We’re taking them seriously, right?

People seem to be coming for Leon Draisaitl, because he’s not playing with McDavid anymore. Yet he had the same season last year as the one before where he exclusively played with Run CMD, and is a point per game this year. We missing something?

To me, the criticism of Draisaitl is a product of his $8.5-million cap hit. He’s proving capable of carrying his own line, even if the possession metrics are pretty ugly so far this season. Canadian blowhards get worked up very easily when a player gets paid, but it’s hard to argue with the production so far. McDavid-Draisaitl ain’t going to be Crosby-Malkin or even Tavares-Matthews, but it’s as good a 1-2 punch you need when No. 1 is Run CMD.

Was it premature to toss that kind of money at Draisaitl right away? Yes. Was it even in the top-5 of GM Peter Chiarelli’s worst decisions since taking over? Nope. Let the kids play and hope you can alleviate the coming cap crunch by sending Milan Lucic to live on a farm in rural Alberta.

Our yearly Darnell Nurse update, please.

I soured on Nurse early in his career and didn’t see a whole lot last season to convince me he was ever going to become the player that Hockey Men continued to project him to be. He’s played over 27 minutes in a couple games so far this season, and in my opinion played his best game of the season in the Oilers’ 4-1 win over the Capitals Thursday night. So there’s that.

He’ll turn 24 this season, so it’s becoming less and less likely we’re going to see a huge step forward. At $3.2 million through next season, his ability to command a big raise will be tied to the club’s success. Bottom line, the Oilers need some pieces to improve, and given the fact that a lot of GMs still evaluate players like the old scouts sitting around the table in Moneyball, Nurse might be the Oilers best trade chip.

Ryan Strome will probably never live down being traded for Jordan Eberle. But moving to a third line center role at least sees him crushing it possession-wise so far this year. Maybe this is where he belongs?

Strome deserves a break on the Eberle chat, simply because that was a Chiarelli crime. It’s doubly frustrating having listened to GMPC cry about the club’s lack of wingers last season after he traded one of the best players in the league with Taylor Hall and a good second-line guy like Eberle. That said, Strome has looked decent in a third-line role while producing absolutely nothing to this point. Some semblance of production would be nice.

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Game #14 – Hawks vs. Oilers Douchebag Du Jour: Big Kass, Who Sucks Ass

By Sam Fels November 1, 2018 1721 0

Interesting week for Zack Kassian, and certainly more interesting than a lot of barely 4th-liners in the NHL get to have. On Saturday night, Elliote Friedman, one of the best in the reporting business, broke a story on Hockey Night In Canada’s insider segment that Kassian had responded to a healthy scratch by having his agent explore a trade. Kassian immediately denied this, because no one in history has ever admitted publicly they’re ditching out on their teammates in a huff, and then of course scored against the Hawks on Sunday. You’re welcome.

This would be the fourth organization Kassian has played and/or bitched himself out of. While we can’t ignore that Kassian has had some serious off-ice issues that he is now recovered from, it’s always been his wholly disappointing play that has gotten him punted from one coast to the other and back again. And every time he starts landing in the pressbox, he starts aching for a trade instead of maybe, call us crazy, working on what makes him tumble down the lineup every fucking time.

Kassian’s size and somewhat plus mobility for that size will always seduce some team, but what does it matter when he can’t do anything with it? He’s stone-handed and dumb, and has been ever since Ray Ferraro made a spectacle of himself while slobbering all over the Canucks trade for him in 2012. He has the instincts of a boulder, and whatever “big man intimidation” he might have carried has less and less value in today’s game. Throw in that most nights he can’t even really be bothered, and you have a player everyone wants a control-Z over. He did exactly nothing in Vancouver, just as he did nothing in Buffalo, and followed that by not even making the Canadiens NHL roster before wasting the Oilers’ time. The fact that he was traded for equally useless Brandon Prust is just about the most NHL thing ever.

And every time it goes south, there’s Kassian exploring a trade as if the next destination will finally recognize him for the force that he is in his own mind. You can be sure the Oilers would be happy to oblige if anyone was going to fall for this trick again. It’s always someone else’s fault for not recognizing his genius.

Maybe you just suck, dude. Maybe you’re a 4A player, who’s never going to be anything more than the fourth-line role you keep falling into after a team gives you a chance to be a power forward on a top six. And no amount of angling or demands from your agent are going to change that. Maybe just enjoy the NHL paycheck and scrap away as a 12th-13th forward. It’s what you’ve proven to be after six goddamn years.

And now he’ll score tonight.

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Game #14 – Hawks vs. Oilers: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

By Sam Fels November 1, 2018 1239 0

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Game #14 – Hawks vs. Oilers: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels November 1, 2018 1306 0

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Game #13 – Hawks 2, Canucks 4: The Jaws Of Victory Are Easy to Snatch From

By Adam Hess November 1, 2018 1801 0

Some combination of last year’s horrible season and all of the insane optimism I have about the Bears has resulted in an all-time low level of expectations about the Blackhawks this year, and with that it’s been difficult for me to get worked up about bad losses. So it should tell you something when I say that this loss was really aggravating. Let’s just get this over with:

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

– At a certain point Brandon Saad is going to have a breakthrough on offense this year. I feel this is a certainty. His performances have been too dominant in almost all other aspects besides actually finding the back of the net, and even tonight he managed to that, albeit in a really weird way. He almost had a second but he Maradonna’d it into the net with the kind of backheel touch I’d like to see in Man City’s midfield (yes I am a Citizen. No I don’t know why Sam still lets me write here). Overall he was probably the Hawks best player tonight, and his 70% shot share at 5v5 bears that out (though it was actually third on the team to Wide Dick and Kunitz, his linemates). It’s either gonna come together for him or continue to be the most frustrating season imaginable. Hopefully the former.

– I don’t know what kind of galaxy brain shit led Joel Quennville to a defensive pairing of the Brandons Davidson and Manning, but the results of that pair being on the ice is what Q and his team deserve for not just putting that pair together, but sticking with it all night. Manning continues to be unarguably the worst player on the ice, and his presence on this team is an affront to humanity and the sport of hockey. He almost murdered one of the Canucks players tonight (it’s too late for me to go back and try to figure out who it was) and in my opinion the only just result is that he gets banned from the NHL forever. It’s only right.

– Meanwhile, Manning was a land of contrasts tonight. There was a 30 second stretch before the Canucks second goal where he did an excellent job closing Elias Petterson out in the defensive zone, basically completely shutting the rookie down on the rush. Then 30 seconds later he seemed like he had no clue what to do with Jake fucking Virtanen as he rushed, and Manning ended up leaving Virtanen way too much room to shoot, and he burned Crow high. And then probably about two minutes later he boxed out Louis Eriksson extremely well to shut down a rush. So what the fuck? Pick a lane my dude.

– This was a really bad loss, mostly because the Hawks played so much better in the first two periods than the Canucks. But when you get brained so badly you only manage 28% of the shots in the third period, you deserve to lose. Let’s agree to never speak of this again.

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Game #13 – Hawks vs. Canucks Preview: Get Here And We’ll Do The Rest

By Sam Fels October 31, 2018 2557 0

vs.

RECORDS: Hawks 6-3-3 Canucks 7-6-0

PUCK DROP: 9pm

TV: WGN

THEY DON’T THROW GARBAGE ANYMORE: Nucks Misconduct

It still doesn’t feel right. This trip is supposed to take place at the end of November. That’s when the Hawks go to Western Canada. That’s how it always was. It was understood. There was a rhythm to this.

But thanks to Rocky Wirtz making the (correct) decision to do away with the circus (though maybe not for the right reasons but whatever), the “Circus Trip” is no more and the Hawks are headed to the land of darkened arenas and misplaced Olympic bids now instead of on either side of Thanksgiving. They’ll kick it off tonight in Vancouver, where the memories of past epic battles and triumphs are starting to fade and yellow. That wouldn’t be a bad way to describe the opponent, either.

The Canucks will tell you they’re in a rebuild, and that’s partially true. The Children Of The Corn have toddled off to wherever strange twins go (Argentina, boss?), and the Canucks are moving into a new era. And they have found some young players where you can see the foundation of something at least useful could be built upon. The new toy is Elias Pettersson (WHO WANTS TO WALK WITH ELIAS?!), 2017’s first-round pick. He joins last year’s phenom Brock Boeser. So does Adam Gaudette, who made Dylan Sikura look like something we should care about last year at Northeastern. Bo Horvat continues to have an upward trajectory that no one really saw coming. Troy Stecher on defense is at least a piece if not a big one. Quinn Hughes likely is that big piece on defense when he joins next year. They’re not bereft of hope.

But those kids are surrounded by some of the dumbest-ass signings and trades which make you wonder what it is exactly they’re trying to do here. Here’s a tidy list: Loui Eriksson, Brandon Sutter, Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel, Sam Gagner, Erik Gudbranson (twice!), Michael Del Zotto. And none of these guys were just one-year signings that they hope turn into gold at the deadline. These were part of a plan, or something they thought was a plan, or maybe just part of a ton of shit being thrown at a wall (which is how Canucks fans celebrate and court the opposite sex, as we know).

Not that if the Canucks used all that money wisely they would be a contender. But they’d be better positioned when they are one, that’s for sure.

Anyway, for tonight the Canucks also come in pretty beat up. Baertschi, Beagle, and Sutter are all out, depriving them of a whole line. Christopher Tanev and Alex Edler and his amazing rising elbows are both out as well, taking their top pairing away. Which means Ben Hutton and Gudbranson have to fill in there. Might have something to do with them losing three of their last five, and one of those wins was a shootout.

For the Hawks, there don’t appear to be too many changes other than Marcus Kruger might pay the price for his penalty-happy ways lately. This seems a touch short-sighted, as Kruger is just about the only one not giving up better chances than he’s on the ice for, especially given the dungeon zone-starts he gets. But it’s one game, so we’re not going to sweat it too much. Perhaps Jan Rutta slots back in after being banished to a timeout on Sunday after his magic show for a confused cat on Saturday, replacing Brandon Davidson. EAT ARBY’S.

The Canucks only threat is Pettersson and Boeser. And they are heavily sheltered, starting 80% of their shifts in the offensive zone. Q might be loathe to do it, but it would make sense to use Toews in his own end more than most of this season to keep the two kids quiet. It’s certainly beyond SuckBag Johnson or David Kampf. If you can keep the Vancouver’s top line off the scoresheet, it’s hard to see where else they’d get it unless you really fuck up and Corey Crawford has a full-body dry heave in net.

It was a disappointing weekend for the Hawks, and they’ll need to make up for it on this trip. While we’ve been slightly encouraged by the Hawks’ start, it still leaves them behind four teams in the Central and you’d have to think this is the pace that’s going to be necessary all season to be relevant. The Oilers and Flames don’t suck out loud but can be had. The Canucks very much so. Get it while you can.

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Game #13 – Hawks vs. Canucks Spotlight: He’s A Pettersson With A Record, Dude

By Sam Fels October 31, 2018 1710 0

You get the feeling the Canucks never really planned for the post-Sedin era. Maybe Bo Horvat was envisioned as something that could, possibly, if everything went right and a few cracks in the Earth swallowed some other centers could be that guy. But that didn’t seem like much of a plan. Maybe they thought the Sedins would play forever, and given how creepy they were that wasn’t a totally ridiculous thought. What else were they going to do? They can’t play with their toy cars that much.

Good thing the Canucks got lucky and Elias Pettersson fell to them at #5 in the 2017 draft.

Not that any of the four teams ahead of the Canucks that year are complaining about Nico Hischier, Nolan Patrick, Miro Heiskanen, or Cale Makar. But Pettersson was either considered a fall or a reach by scouts, they couldn’t agree. Anyway, Pettersson looks like he might end up being the best player in that draft. Y’know, if we’re judging after seven games. Then again, in those seven games he’s already almost halfway to Patrick’s goal-total from last year.

While Pettersson is a center, he has a lot of Patrick Kane in his game. You won’t find a pair of better hands anywhere on the Canucks, and some of his stick-handling looks like it came from that online game of NHL ’18 you lost by six goals to some kid in Germany who doesn’t even go to school anymore. And don’t worry, thanks to E-League or whatever he’ll be making more money than you in the next few months. Life was never promised to be fair.

Like most Swedes (has anyone bothered to study how they develop players and emulate it?), Petterss0n’s game isn’t just on one side of the ice. He knows where to be and is determined on the defensive side of the puck and ice. The one problem he faces at this level is that he’s in desperate need of a sandwich. Yes, he’s 6-2 but he’s claiming 176 pounds and that’s if he’s carrying someone’s dog at the time. So while he may be willing and in the right spot, some nights he’s just going to get knocked around and over. But that’s correctable, and you can be sure the Canucks will have him one of Vanvouver’s dispensaries soon to give him a non-stop case of the munchies.

Pettersson could have gone top three in that draft if he didn’t have a weak ’17 World Juniors. The Canucks must have been beaming when he corrected that in ’18 and led Sweden to the silver medal, including PWNing the host US in the semifinals. Needless to say their fans were pretty pumped about it.

Pettersson continues a really strange record for this particular Canucks regime. They’ve drafted well, and you can see the makings of another good Vancouver team through the fog here. Quinton Hughes next year will join Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Adam Gaudette, Thatcher Demko, and Troy Stecher as a pretty good nucleus. Not great, but good. But that has been so shrouded in just god-awful contracts to free agents and bewildering trades (or not trades) that you wonder when they can extricate themselves. Antoine Roussel is around for three more seasons. Loui Eriksson for four, and no one’s coming for that. At least in the next two years they’ll clear out Erik Gudbranson and Michael Del Zotto, and Sam Gagner is in the AHL at the moment. Jay Beagle? Brandon Sutter? It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence that they can surround the young talent they have discovered with the necessary pieces.

But at least they don’t have to worry about the #1 center slot. And that can be the hardest one to fill.

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Game #13 – Hawks vs. Canucks Q&A: THE Hockey Dipshit, Not Just A Hockey Dipshit Like Usual

By Sam Fels October 31, 2018 1651 0

Stefan Heck is @HockeyDipshit. We don’t need to tell you much else.

The Canucks have Brock Boeser and Elias Pattersson and Adam Gaudette, so they do know how to find young players. And yet Antoine Roussel, Loui Eriksson, Brandon Sutter, Jay Beagle, and a host of other bewildering contracts and decisions are here as well. Do they have a direction or is this a mass shit-flinging at a wall?

I’ll admit it – this regime is much better at drafting than the Gillis regime. Unfortunately, they’re still much worse at trading, free agency, and a host of other things. I think the players Jim Benning has drafted will eventually form the core of a solid team, but I don’t think he’ll be GM whenever that eventually happens. Also, I was right about Elias Pettersson. Just wanted to mention that.

Let’s stick with Gaudette. His running buddy at Northeastern, Dylan Sikura, was sent down by the Hawks and we’ve always had a raised eyebrow when it comes to him. We chalked his production up to getting to play with Gaudette at the college level. What are the first impressions over there?

Gaudette is way faster than I imagined he’d be. He works his ass off, and if he had a bit more puck luck, he’d definitely have his first goal by now. The points will start to come in the second half of the season, I’d imagine. He’ll either stay on the team because of his play or because “Canucks” and “injuries” are like peanut butter and chocolate. Hey, I’ll give Gaudette this: he’s about six billion times more watchable than Jayson Megna.

Is this finally the Bo Horvat awakening?

Horvat continues to surprise even the most loyal of Canucks fans. I honestly thought he might peak at, like, a Daymond-Langkow-in-Calgary 77 point season, but now I don’t know. I think a large part of his goal explosion this year is that his toe-drag bull-rush to the net move seems to be working way more often. He’s definitely been a lot of fun so far, and seems to be that classic player that gets better the more you underestimate him.

Is Thatcher Demko taking over in net when he’s healthy?

Demko’s concussion issues are worrisome, and Markstrom/Nilsson have been solid so far – although given everything we know about those two, that could change in a minute. I am genuinely concerned that his concussion will keep him out for a really long time, but I’d say even when he’s 100% healthy this year, he’ll only see playing time on the Canucks if one of the two Swedes gets hurt or traded.

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