While this country has in no way earned the right to begin discussing the resumption of team professional sports in the way that South Korea has with baseball, or Germany has with Bundesliga soccer given the ghastly disparity in how the pandemic has been handled in the those places versus the United States, the NHL at least got out in front of any of the other team sports by formally announcing how the playoffs and draft are going to work. It’s quite dense, but it’s hockey so it can’t be THAT convoluted.
Now to the big takeaways from the announcement:
The 2019-2020 regular sseason is officially over, and as such, the top 12 teams via points percentage in each conference are now in this tournament, meaning…..your Chicago Blackhawks have once again qualified for the playoffs, if only by the hair on their ass as the 12 seed in the west.
The divisional playoff model has been abandoned, and top four seeds will play a round robin to determine their playoff seeding with regular season rules OT rules, concurrent with the remaining bottom 8 teams playing best of 5 series for the right to advance to one of the top four. Bettman notes in the announcement that it has not been determined yet if the first two rounds will re-seed or follow a static bracket, not to mention that the NHL managed to make overtime even more of a clown show by having two different flavors of it conceivably being played on the same day in the early goings. Even at its most competent, there is no circumstance under which the NHL can’t manage to look like dipshits.
That being said, the Hawks are now locked into a best of 5 series with the Edmonton Oilers when and if play takes place. So that means a matchup in a series against the league’s top two scorers in McDavid and now-Ross winner Leon The Ladies’ Man with a defense that had no structure to begin with, and in general when teams break camp raw skill tends to win against systems. But there’s always the chance that there could be revenge of known method actor Mike Smith. Stranger things have happened.
Also of local interest is that Chicago is mentioned as one of the potential hub cities, presumably for the Western conference, given the amount of hotels and rinks that are available in the area (the UC, RoseMizon, Sears). Given that there would be multiple games a day concurrently at least in the first two rounds, the time zone issue for starting games past 8:00PM locally here probably wouldn’t loom too large, but it should be considered. Of course, this is operating under the presumption that the city and suburbs have the COVID situation under control, which they absolutely do not right now. But this is the sort of thing the city and state usually trips all over their dicks to incentivize for big business at the expense of common citizens, and during the pandemic things have been no different.
Bettman made basically zero mention of the medical safety protocols that are going to be enacted during this, such as full cages/facemasks, celebrations, bench spacing, shared towels, water bottles, dressing room procedures, or any number of other things that need to be figured out and will almost certainly be disregarded by players immediately because they’re by and large minimally educated self-declared Sovereign Citizens. He did mention “extensive testing”, which seems like an absolute bare minimum, and limiting traveling parties to cities to a total of 50 people per team, so after 23 players and 3-4 coaches, teams are going to have to be judicious on their staff selections. And taxi squads (since the AHL season is DONE-done) will likely have to be kept remotely.
With regard to the draft, it’s even more convoluted. Basically, they’re going to hold an initial lottery at the end of June, and then if any team that is going to resume play jumps in order, or “wins” the first round lottery, there will be a second re-draw after the conclusion of the round-robin, best of 5 round.
It was made clear numerous times during the video that none of this is etched in stone and the situation is completely fluid from a lot of different angles. Bettman gave July 1 as the absolute earliest camps could open if everything broke right, but didn’t specify if those would be in hub cities or home cities. There’s still time for all of this to go completely balls up again as states start to re open and cases are likely to spike again after the incubation period. But it’s a start, and now the Hawks can say that Jeremy Colliton got this rag tag group into the playoffs and justify keeping him around until the NEXT pandemic.
The Rockford IceHogs last took the ice March 8, when they dropped an overtime game to the Chicago Wolves. The piglets had 13 games remaining in the 2019-20 season before the AHL suspended operations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The way things are beginning to look, the IceHogs and the AHL may be finished for the current season.
I don’t have the time to banter about the Blackhawks affiliate’s chances of returning to action in the immediate future. Maybe the season continues in some form. Maybe it doesn’t.
As I’ve been a hermit for the past six weeks or so, the Hogs have made some moves. Veteran forward Garrett Mitchell, who joined the team on a PTO February 6 and signed an AHL deal just before play was halted, will be back next season on a one-year deal.
The IceHogs also signed some youngsters to AHL ink, including goalie Tom Aubrun and forwards Riley McKay and D.J. Busdeker. Defenseman Jack Ramsey was re-upped by Rockford as well. There’s plenty of time to look forward. Let me take a quick look at my shoulder at the season that was…mostly was.
The IceHogs were 29-30-2-2 in 63 games. A more that solid opening two months gave way to struggles with injury and call ups. Additions like Mitchell, Gabriel Gagne and Ben Youds filled in some gaps and made for some interesting action this winter, if not entirely successful in terms of wins and losses.
Since the season has not officially been cancelled, there hasn’t been any mention by the team as to the season-ending awards typically given at the last home game of the season. Here’s how I saw those team awards as the regular season wound down.
Defensive Player Of The Year-Lucas Carlsson
Carlsson, unlike several of Rockford’s candidates in this category, was around for the bulk of the season. Philip Holm, the class of the first couple of months, asked for his release to ply his trade in Europe. Dennis Gilbert was up and down between Rockford and Chicago.
Ian McCoshen was hard-nosed and a regular face in the lineup. He took a lot of dumb penalties, though, and was a minus-13 for the Hogs in 56 games.
Carlsson, on the other hand, made some strides from a defensive standpoint and led the Rockford blueline with 26 points (5 G, 21 A) in 48 games. He has outshone more regarded Blackhawks defensive prospects at the AHL level for the past two seasons.
The organization rewarded Carlsson with a call up; he appeared in six games with Chicago before the NHL suspended play.
Most Improved Player-Alexandre Fortin
I guess you could make a case for several players. However, if your looking for an example of a guy making a bigger impact based on his play from the season before, Fortin’s your man.
I’ve called out his finishing ability for much of the last three years. This season, Fortin put up a career-high eight goals in just 44 games. Despite spending a couple of stretches on the injured list, Fortin’s game added some sort of offensive element.
In the latter stages of the 2019-20 campaign, Fortin started to become a scoring threat after his feet generated opportunities. His shooting percentage, which was a paltry 4.3 percent in his rookie season two years ago, rose to 9.1 percent this season.
Not getting to finish the regular season was unfortunate for Fortin, who likely would have topped 100 shots (he had 88 when play ended) and career-high point production. Not sure if the Blackhawks re-sign him, but Fortin showed much-needed signs of life on the offensive end.
Rookie Of The Year-Brandon Hagel
This one isn’t even close. Hagel, who earned a call-up to Chicago in March, led Rockford with 19 goals. He was second in team scoring with 31 points. His four game-winning goals also paced the IceHogs.
Hagel being a no-brainer for this award doesn’t take away from the rookie season MacKenzie Entwistle had. Entwistle led Rockford newcomers with 15 assists and was tied with Carlsson for fourth in overall scoring with 26 points. Three of his 11 goals were of the game-winning variety. Entwistle showed up at both ends of the ice, accounting well for himself in 56 games.
Phillipp Kurashev’s freshman campaign was halted for a couple of months with a concussion suffered on December 29. Up until that point, Kurashev was starting to look very comfortable in the AHL game, with 16 points (5 G, 11 A) in his first 29 games. He returned at the end of February and wound up with seven goals and 12 helpers in 36 contests.
Unsung Hero-Nick Moutrey
One of Rockford’s AHL contracts, Moutrey was a regular in coach Derek King’s bottom six. He played physical, smart hockey in an energy role. His five-goal, six assist effort in 52 games was his best point production in the AHL since the 2016-17 season.
Moutrey wasn’t anything fancy. He just came out and did his job every night.
Heavy Hitter-Joseph Cramarossa
In a less-enlightened era, Cramarossa would likely have earned a moniker reflecting his willingness to tangle with a much bigger opponent. In this day and age, we’ll go with “Moxie Joe”. As in, “Jeez, Michael McCarron’s knocking our kids around the crease, but at 6’6″, 240, who’s gonna stop…look, there goes Moxie Joe!”
Mad respect to Cramarossa, who had no problem dropping gloves with several heavyweights for the IceHogs after coming aboard in late November. He also added a level of veteran presence following the retirement of Kris Versteeg.
Cramarossa chipped in with 12 points (5 G, 7 A) in 42 games, with a couple of shootout tallies (both of which won games against Grand Rapids). His eight fighting majors was second in the AHL; six of those came while rocking a Hogs sweater.
Man Of The Year-Collin Delia
The IceHogs announced earlier this month that Delia had been named the team’s representative for IOA/American Specialty AHL Man of the Year award. Delia was a ultra-visible presence in the Rockford community when he wasn’t anchoring the Hogs in net.
This is the second such award for Delia, who earned the award back in 2017-18.
Like that rookie season, it was an up and down affair for Delia. He struggled mightily out of the gate and was benched for the better part of three weeks. He was the Hogs main man in net for most of the last month of the season. Delia finished 2019-20 with a 2.66 goals against average and a .912 save percentage.
Team MVP-Tyler Sikura
Sikura The Elder narrowly edges out Sikura The Younger for M-V-P of R-F-D.
After an injury slowed his roll in 2018-19, Sikura led the IceHogs with 34 points (14 G, 20 A). His skater rating (plus-ten) was second to brother Dylan (plus-11) this season. He took over the captaincy after Versteeg left the team. He was Rockford’s best penalty killer and also had three power play goals.
Plus, he was instrumental in getting teammates Matthew Highmore and Dennis Gilbert to the BMO Harris Bank Center for Rockford’s Lego night. In his dreams, that is.
(FYI, all I had to do to find that video is go to YouTube and type in “Tyler Sikura’s LEGO Dream”. God bless the internet.
Dylan was one helper shy of Tyler’s point total, though he was only in Rockford for 45 games. When he wasn’t with the Blackhawks, Sikura The Younger was the offensive catalyst for a team that struggled to score at times this season.
Questions Answered?
Back in October, I posed several questions concerning the 2019-20 season. Hindsight being what it is, here are the questions I asked, plus the answers I received.
Who carries the scoring load?
What I said: “(Aleksi) Saarela, (Matthew) Highmore, Sikura the Younger, (Adam) Boqvist and (Chad) Krys.”
What actually happened: Saarela had 12 goals and 19 assists-after the Hawks traded him to Florida. Boqvist totaled six points (G, 5 A) in the 15 games he spent in Rockford. Highmore (4 G, 8 A in 21 games) spent most of the season in Chicago.
Krys never really got his offensive game on track; he didn’t put his first puck in a net until January 15. Krys finished the season with two goals and four assists in 24 games. This was a bit underwhelming, in my opinion, as I thought Krys would do a little more on the offensive side.
Carlsson was the only defender with offensive punch once Holm departed. Up front, it was Hagel, the Sikuras, John Quenneville (13 G, 9 A) and Entwistle that led the way. When all was said and done, however, Rockford lacked big-time point producers.
At 2.48 goals per game, the Hogs were the lowest scoring team in the Western Conference. Only Bridgeport (2.41) scored at a worse clip than Rockford.
Which rookies are going to impress early?
What I said: “Kurashev, Boqvist…and Hagel.”
What actually happened: Well, Boqvist impressed the Hawks enough for them to recall him after those aforementioned 15 games. Hagel started slowly in the first month, then had 11 goals and four assists in November and December.
Kurashev? Like Hagel, he was hitting his stride after getting a few games under his belt. He had five goals and nine helpers in the 21 games from November 6 until he was injured in Manitoba December 29.
Can Alexandre Fortin find an offensive game?
What I said: “I really, really hope so.”
What actually happened: I’ve documented the improvement in Fortin in terms of uniting rubber and twine earlier in this post. Whether he has enough scoring ability to make an NHL roster is still up for debate, but he certainly showed an increased offensive presence for the IceHogs.
How many games will Versteeg play?
What I said: He’ll play 60, with 16 goals and 16 assists. Anything above this is gravy. Heck, if he hits those numbers, its still gravy.
What actually happened: There was no gravy. There was barely any Versteeg.
The veteran picked up an assist in four games, then missed about a month with an injured hip. Versteeg gave it one more go for a pair of games in November before citing an inability to handle the AHL banging and getting out of Dodge.
The question regarding Versteeg entering the season was whether there was anything left in the tank. The spirit was willing, at least; Versteeg looked to have a great attitude in his second stint in Rockford. Unfortunately, his body couldn’t hold up it’s end of the bargain.
Can this team make the playoffs?
What I said: Well…first, the Hogs will need to find a way to get the best of the veteran-laden teams in their division like Chicago, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids. It really depends on how quickly a team with 12 rookies can get up to speed in the AHL.
Can the piglets make the postseason? Sure. Will they? That’s for them to know and all of us to find out.
What actually happened: Well…you kind of know how this ended up.
Rockford was in fifth place in the Central Division, tied with the Wolves with 62 points. Chicago had a pair of games in hand on the Hogs, as did the bulk of the teams battling for that fourth playoff spot.
The IceHogs were 4-5-1 in their last ten games. Hagel and Carlsson were up with the Blackhawks, as were Highmore and defenseman Nicolas Beaudin. They were going to have to win nine or ten of their final 13 games to have a legit shot at a postseason spot.
Seven of those games were against Iowa and Milwaukee, who absolutely owned the Hogs this season. Rockford was 2-11 against those teams. Could the piglets have put together a run and made the Calder Cup Playoffs? Maybe, but I don’t know that they had it in them to reel off the required stretch. With the AHL season looking like it is kaput, that point is moot.
I’ll be back in a week or two to put a finer point on the IceHogs abbreviated season. Follow me @JonFromi on twitter and I’ll see if I can’t whip up some thoughts on the IceHogs while in captivity.
With John McDonough no longer with the organ-I-zation, Sam, John, and I give him a proper Irish wake, and discuss where the Hawks go from here among other things. Play the fucking song, Hugh.
Well things just got real interesting didn’t they?
With one swift move, the entire Hawks organ-I-zation is in complete flux once again, and it’s started with the firing of team president John McDonough.
Despite the silent scream of COVID-19 keeping us all locked up, pissed off, and stir crazy, Rocky Wirtz made a stunning albeit welcome-around-these-parts move in firing longtime President and professional autofellatio guru John McDonough today.
First, the good. McDonough was here for 13 years. He ushered in an era where Blackhawks fans could not only watch hockey on the goddamn television in 2007 but also enjoy it. After squeezing as much blood out of the Loveable Loser stone as he could for the North Side Nine, he oversaw a renaissance of Chicago hockey.
Nine straight playoff appearances. Five Conference Finals appearances. Three Stanley Cups. And whether you like it or not, he had a hand in making the game an experience that 20,000+ could enjoy night in and night out. But we won’t go too far into that, because we’re sure if you hold your ear close enough to the ground, you can hear McDonough himself pucker up to kiss his own ass about it.
For all the good McDonough bestowed upon this team during his tenure, it’ll always be hard, if not impossible, to forgive the 2015 Notre Dame debacle. Of all the contributions we at FFUD will remember him for the most, it’s his vile effort to turn a horrifying rape allegation against his star player into a fucking marketing push.
You might remember him calling the Hawks’s three Cups in six years a “Camelot” era for the Hawks. In the same place where he and his spineless GM tucked tail and ran when pressed on what they would do with their alleged rapist of a star. For a guy who has a gas mask connected to his asshole 24/7 when it comes to talking about what a great marketing campaign looks like, he couldn’t have dreamed of a better way to fuck the optics of that one up. Then again, perhaps in true Galaxy Brain form, he just knew that the troglodytes would bury any earnest concern in the name of winning.
But that was always McDonough’s MO when it came to doing things that didn’t involve sucking his own farts: When in doubt, run, deny, or reroute.
When Andrew Shaw got caught using a homophobic slur, it was the NHL, not McDonough et al., who punished him. McDonough was nowhere to be found during the Garret Ross revenge porn disaster. When something other than the sellout streak came up—something that would have required a semblance of sac or true, honest to God leadership—you better believe McDonough had something else better to do.
And though you can’t discount how much more visible he made the team, it would have been challenging for anyone not named Bill Wirtz to not succeed in the spot McDonough fell into. Putting an up-and-coming hockey team on television and then marketing it even a little bit does not require the genius that John McDonough wants you to believe it does, unless your opening act is the Bill Wirtz and Bob Pulford “Wet bag of human shit covered in burnt hair” routine.
McDonough certainly wasn’t the worst Hockey Man, but he certainly wasn’t the best either. He came on at a time where all he had to do was ride the wave and capitalize. The foundation of hope had been laid with Toews and Kane. All he had to do was sell it, which wasn’t terribly hard after the organ-I-zation spent the better part of a decade literally hiding the team under a rock (although in the late 90s and early 00s, you sort of get it).
If you want to give him credit for building this team, you should also place blame for where it is now. A team that’s grown fat on its throne with little urgency to do anything outside of chastise a fanbase with its eyesore of a scoreboard and no effort to make this team faster and better. Recall that in the last two years, Dennis Gilbert, Brandon Manning, Nick Seeler, John Hayden, and Chris Kunitz all played meaningful minutes for a team that McDonough himself wanted you to believe was a playoff team.
He will go down in the Hawks annals as a legend, despite the fact that we still aren’t sure what he’d say he did here that was revolutionary or forward thinking. Fortunately, we no longer have to figure it out.
What this means for the future is anyone’s guess, especially since Rocky went out of his way to assure everyone that Bowman and Colliton are his guys. Then again, now that McDonough is gone, so too could those two. If we had to guess, we’d say that Stan Bowman pulls a Shel Silverstein while Rocky goes out and looks for a GM whose greatest asset isn’t his consistent ability to look like he’s holding in hard gas.
What it DOES mean is that someone up there is seeing the shit we’ve been seeing down here and finally said “enough.” You can’t imagine that Daniel Wirtz, Rocky’s little brother (or son, whichever), will be anything other than an interim President.
It took a literal act of God to get us to this point, with Rocky saying that COVID-19 gave him some time to reassess the team’s direction. But given the suddenness of the firing, you shouldn’t be surprised if something unsavory slithers out of the front office as cause for the firing.
We’re back once again in the midst of the lockdown with a very special Director’s Cut episode featuring friend Ashok Selvam (@Shokdiesel) of Eater Chicago to join us to discuss the talk of the sports universe right now in The Last Dance, as well as share his expertise in the brave new world that the restaurant industry and how best everyone can keep their favorite spots afloat. It’s a fun one, give a listen on any of the several hundred platforms we’re on. What the hell else are you doing anyway?
Since we’re going to reminiscing on HotMic later on (Promo Code CLOWNSHOES), you might as well get yourself into a bit of a lather with some pregame reading. With that, we’re proud to present to you Sam’s issue of the program from that evening.
As NBC Sports Chicago’s replay of every game from the 2010 run continues (and tonight’s will be the Duncan Keith teeth matinee against the Sharks where the Hawks clinch the West), that means that Saturday night lines up nicely for Game 1 against the Flyers. That game was also on a Saturday night, and that’s a good thing, because the nervous drinking beforehand was only exacerbated by one of the most batshit, track meet games to kick off a final ever, let alone the post-lockout era. So sit down and join John, Sam, and I to relieve and re-drink the experience on HotMic. Grab the app at HotMic.io, promo code CLOWNSHOES.
As the global situation rolls on, we’re still here discussing alternative plans for the leagues, and god knows what else. Audio after the jump. Sky point John Prine.
Since the Ghosts of Sports Past is really all anyone has these days, we figured we’d lean into a little bit here and there, and we’re proud to bring you the game day issue leading up to that evening’s game. You’ll recall this one went to overtime, and somehow every Shark on the ice lost track of a 275 lb black man in the slot to end things. The game airs at 7:00PM central on NBC Sports Chicago, enjoy in good health.
