Faxes from Uncle Dale

Category: Hockey

  • Where Do We Go Now?

    Where Do We Go Now?

    You know we aren’t here to bullshit you, dear reader. This Hawks team is done this year. They’ve looked disjointed, uninspired, and boring when they needed to do the exact opposite most. But they aren’t as far off from being a contender as it seems. So, where do they even go from here, and what do we, as fans, look forward to with this team?

    Firing Jeremy Colliton

    The Blackhawks must fire Jeremy Colliton as soon as possible, and we should relish when it finally happens. Jeremy Colliton has no business coaching this NHL team, now or in the future. The Hawks were a top-10 team in terms of goals just last year, and this galaxy-brained wiener has devolved it into an on-ice fatberg.

    Following the Arizona game that the Hawks won in the shootout after the break, they were two points out of the last playoff spot. They had a pretty soft schedule ahead of them. If they could keep the coals hot until they hit their last big hell trip at the end of February, the ineptitude of the Western Conference might have pushed them into a playoff spot they really didn’t deserve.

    Instead, we got a slate of losses to teams like Edmonton without McDavid and the Rangers, who are in complete, unabashed rebuild mode. We got an entire power play unit filled with left-handed shots and Patrick Kane on his off side just cuz. And at the tip of it all is Carbuncle Colliton, whose only moves are to triple shift Patrick Kane and then blame the effort when his team loses important games. He’s the model coach for a front office born on third. When in doubt, blame everyone but yourself.

    The guys on the ice don’t buy his system because it blows and is a gigantic embarrassment to all within it. All of Colliton’s smarminess about how the lines don’t matter and they need more effort hasn’t and won’t change that. A coach who gets all of his players off of their games, as Colliton has clearly done, isn’t a coach at all.

    Jeremy Colliton sucks at this. Yes, thank you for scratching Brent Seabrook, but you can go now. Firing him won’t fix everything, but it’s the first and most necessary step toward making this team fun again.

    (And yes, you can lump Stan Bowman in here too. I won’t expound too much on my feelings about him here simply because it’s rare for GMs to get fired mid-season, and you can always revisit this.)

    Trading everything that isn’t tied down

    Trade Gus, like they should have last year. Trade Lehner for whatever you can get, because his diaper is full and his efforts empty. Fuck, trade Brandon Saad if you can get a Bowen Byram, as much as it would hurt the heart. As much as we want this team to win now, this is not a win-now team. If you were an overly optimistic idiot like me, you could have squinted at it right after the break and thought “well, maybe.”

    But no longer. The blue line is one of the worst in the league. Until they fix that and get that sometimes-bespectacled asshole out from behind the bench, nothing else will matter. The only way they can even start doing that is by selling whatever they can before the deadline ends.

    Because this team isn’t that far off. They need one faster, contributing forward to round out the top 9. Assuming Mitchell signs and isn’t a sewer, they need one solid defenseman to go with Murphy, Boqvist, Keith, de Haan, and Mitchell to be representative at least. It’ll take some doing, but it is doable (just maybe not with Bowman at the helm).

    Young blood

    In Adam Boqvist and Kirby Dach, the Hawks have two young, skilled players. At worst, you can see them being no less than good players. At best, they’re franchise cornerstones of the next wave of success.

    Boqvist has the kind of speed that the Hawks can use to break through the neutral zone more fluidly than the unbearably predictable drop pass. He’s got a sharp wrister and excellent passing skills that will be a cornerstone of the power play. But as we’ve seen all year since he’s come up, he’s hesitant and overly deferential. How he’s played this year is entirely at odds with what he’s done before he got here. If nothing else, you have to fire Colliton to at least give Boqvist a chance.

    Dach is a smart positional center with good on-ice vision, and not just for a 19-year-old. His passing choices and finish are only going to get better with more experience. Dach’s development should be at the top of the list for the Hawks, and as of now, it looks like even they realize that.

    And of course, there’s Dominik Kubalik, who might end up with 35 goals in his rookie year. You and I both knew he was going to be good going in. It took Coach Carbuncle way too long to get that, because he sucks at this.

    Crow’s last hurrah

    This might be Crawford’s last year as Blackhawk. He doesn’t deserve to go out like this. He’s still a high-quality goaltender who’s managed to keep the Hawks in games they had no business sniffing. Chronically underappreciated, Crow will go down as a top 2 goaltender for the Hawks, topped perhaps only by Glenn Hall.

    If the Hawks were smart, they’d try to bring him back for another year or two. But they aren’t. And even if they were, Crow would be completely in the right to tell them to eat shit and ply his craft elsewhere.

    Crow will always be The Goalie here. Fuck Robin Lehner, you can have him and his dumbass neck tattoos and finger pointing. No one has done it better than Crawford as quietly and efficiently despite everything he’s gone through. It’s unlikely anyone will again for a long, long time. Cherish it.

    Some of the young pieces—Boqvist, Dach, Kubalik—are in place. Alex DeBrincat is still here, even if he’s having a rough go this year. If they can get Strome for $5 million per over three years and put him back at fucking center, the Hawks’s center depth is really good. Kane is a freak who continues to deliver, though you can’t help but wonder whether he’s feeling like Mona Lisa Vito, playing for a team that’s pissing itself throughout his prime. Toews continues to prove everyone who thought his best days were behind him wrong. Murphy’s Murphy, Keith can still do it, and a healthy de Haan is a good depth D-man.

    The framework is there, but not for this year. It’s time to sell, fire Colliton, and do everything they can to make this godawful blue line at least NHL-representative. Anything else would be a dereliction of duty.

  • Game #62 – Hawks 1, Stars 2: Hold The Line

    Game #62 – Hawks 1, Stars 2: Hold The Line

    Box Score

    Natural Stat Trick

    This was always going to be a tough one for the Hawks, especially the way the Stars are playing right now. While the Hawks do struggle with teams that are open and play fast, there’s a better chance they’ll leave the spaces the Hawks need to create and score. Teams like the Stars, which basically turn the whole surface into a mudpit (and the ice didn’t help), are less likely to leave gaps. That’s what you saw today. That game could have been four hours long and the Hawks probably don’t get more than that one goal.

    Let’s to it.

    The Two Obs

    -The Hawks had one high-danger chance in the game. One. So while the shot totals might look even, the Hawks weren’t really close. And the reason for that is it’s hard to find a team that fights harder at each blue line than the Stars. They keep that third forward high and their d-men up, and they can double at the points to keep you hemmed in. When they can’t do that, they still stand up at their line with three, and they can do that because not only is their defense big, but it’s mobile. Only Oleksiak in today’s lineup would approach “plodder” status, and he’s actually mobile for his size. They don’t have to win the race to dump-ins that they force, they just have to be close enough to lean on you when you do. And that’s what they do. The Hawks don’t have a lot of puck winners, and aren’t built to grind out chances…which is how you end up with one.

    And if you get through all that, you have to weave shots, passes, and bodies through an enchanted forest in the middle of their zone. The Hawks have one d-man who can fit a shot through in Boqvist, and they’ve robbed him of any confidence. They’re not going to bull their way through much either.

    Now you may ask where the Hawks would be if they opted to collapse like that instead of whatever it is Colliton asks them to do. The Stars have two really good goalies and play to that. The Hawks have those, too. They wouldn’t be the Stars, they don’t have the mobility or size on their defense. But they would be better off than they are now.

    It’s hardly galvanizing to watch, but it’s effective and the Stars stick to the system. Compare that with the Hawks running all over like kindergartners nearing the end of the school year and you begin to understand why there’s some 15 points between them in the standings.

    -You don’t want to base much of anything on one game, but we can say we’d like to see Lucas Carlsson more on this trip. And it’s frustrating to see a team that lacks movement and skill on its blue line so badly wait this long to give someone like Carlsson a look instead of Dennis Gilbert Elmer Fudd his way around the ice. It’s unlikely Carlsson can prove that the Hawks don’t need additions beyond Ian Mitchell next season in these last 20 games (if Mitchell even signs), but he can at least take a shot at it or showcase himself. He’s got hands, he’s got feet. The Hawks sport three other d-men with both right now. One’s 36. One’s 19. Give us more and let’s see, because there’s nothing to lose.

    -Meanwhile, it’s quite the message I can’t decode that Slater Koekkoek can take three penalties in a game and not get demoted in the lineup, whereas Adam Boqvist was benched for the third on Friday for…well I don’t fucking know.

    Koekkoek was at fault for the first goal, as Keith stepped up to block a shot and Fetch decided the guy at the side of the net was more dangerous than Joe Pavelski loitering right in front of Crawford. That’s Joe Pavelski of the 368 career goals, 200 of which at least have come within five feet of the net.

    Koekkoek has been fine most games as a third pairing guy because the Hawks didn’t have anyone else. But he’s not an answer for any team that means to be taken seriously. He’ll get to finish the season in the lineup thanks to the Hawks trade of Gustafsson to follow and Nick Seeler being a clod, but it shouldn’t be ahead of Carlsson.

    -Putting DeBrincat in front of the net on the power play is one of the dumber ideas Colliton has had, and I realize the enormity of that statement. He’s 5-7. His main skill is as a sniper, which you can’t do with your back to the net from two feet away. And the guy in front also has to be able to get below the goal line to retrieve the puck in traffic. Again, he’s 5-7. It’s not a use of the things he does well. Just as it probably isn’t when Dach is stationed there. I’ve had quite enough of this. I’ve had quite enough of all of Colliton’s ideas.

    Ok, that’s enough of this. We’ll talk again post deadline, when the Hawks will hopefully have a direction for the first time in three years.

  • Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars Preview: Have You Ever Seen Dallas From A DC-10 Night In The Afternoon?

    Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars Preview: Have You Ever Seen Dallas From A DC-10 Night In The Afternoon?

    vs.

    RECORDS: Hawks 27-26-8   Stars 35-20-6

    PUCK DROP: 2pm

    TV: NBCSN Chicago

    LET THE CHILDREN BOOGIE: Defending Big D

    Well this is an interesting one. The Hawks will play their last game looking like this. How much they will change by the time they play again in St. Louis on Tuesday night, well that’s something of a mystery.

    We know Erik Gustafsson is a goner, as he wasn’t even brought on the trip. The Hawks will probably only get a 3rd or 4th rounder for him, making the refusal to move him at last year’s deadline when he would have been worth a first even more frustrating. Corey Crawford is starting, which makes you think that Robin Lehner could be on the move as well, if not Crawford himself. But someone has to play in goal. If the Hawks keep both, you’ll know they either have no vision or plan whatsoever or the balls to execute one.

    Is this Brandon Saad’s last game here? Dylan Strome’s? Drake Caggiula’s? There are more options beyond Gus and Lehner, but how many will the Hawks take? You’re not wrong to bet on the low end, but anything is possible.

    That’s the intrigue off the ice. On the ice the Hawks will have a new piece to look at, which is Lucas Carlsson. Carlsson has been Rockford’s best d-man, and arguably best player, for a while now, and the Hawks have no reason not to spend the rest of the season seeing what they have here. They should do that with other players as well. Carlsson is definitely the type of player the Hawks should be looking at more often, i.e. one with skill and mobility that can move the puck and himself quickly. Instead we’ve gotten the Dennis Gilberts and Matthew Highmores of the world, which is how the Hawks have ended up here. Maybe Carlsson isn’t anything, but with nothing more to play for it’s an evaluation time. In fact, this is how the Hawks ended up with Gustafsson as a regular, though they’ve clearly botched maximizing his value.

    As for the rest of it, the Hawks played a spirited game at home on Friday, which was at least entertaining. Can they keep that going on the road for four games against teams who have real stakes? Much harder to do, and while the Hawks will claim they’ve been better on the road this year, the last road trip that left their season in ashes makes its own testimony. And these games on either side of the deadline could see some killed spirits.

    To the Stars, who have won five of their last seven and are still very much in the discussion for winning the division even though they’ve had to lose a coach and surf some injury problems this year.

    How are the Stars here? THE BISHOP! and The Khudes, the lates emo band to storm Dallas. Has an emo band ever stormed Dallas? We’ll save that discussion for later. Anyway, the Stars are back to being the same boring-as-all-fuck outfit they were last year that locked up their playoff spot and saw them upset the Preds in the first round and nearly do the same to the Blues (sigh). They don’t limit attempts all that well but they collapse around their net and limit chances, and Bishop and Khudobin are rocking SV%’s over .920, leading the Stars to have the second-best ES SV% at evens.

    Because they certainly don’t score much. The Stars don’t have anyone with 20 goals or averaging anywhere near a point per game. They’re 24th in goals per game, but you can get away with that when you’re third in goals-against. There is some spreading out of threats here, with Seguin, Benn, and Radulov now on three different lines, but it also tamps down their threat when not together. Benn particularly seems to be on the spiral down, and we know how he feels about going down.

    It’s still a stout defense, which has been buffeted by the return of Stephen Johns after he missed a season and a half with concussion problems. He and Heiskanen have dovetailed well which makes for a hell of a second pairing behind Klingberg and Lindell.

    This is the first time the Hawks and Stars have seen each other since right before Thanksgiving, when the Hawks played well enough to win twice but only gathered one point. Penetrating the middle of the Stars zone will be the order of the day for the Hawks, but that’s much easier said than done.

    It’ll be a stripped down Hawks team soon. They’re only playing for the future. But hey, maybe that’s when you find something.

  • Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: Hedley Lamarr’s Mugs, Pugs, And Thugs

    Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: Hedley Lamarr’s Mugs, Pugs, And Thugs

    Corey Perry – There really was nothing better than Corey Perry having to do the football field walk of shame at the Winter Classic not five minutes in. Except that it nearly ended Ryan Ellis’s season, it was a terrible ad for the NHL on its biggest stage, and Corey Perry should be locked in a phone booth full of wasps. This guy can’t score anymore, can’t move anymore, so all he can do is his bullshit. He’ll be out of the league next year, and we can’t wait. He’s been Milan Lucic for years, except even dirtier.

    Jamie Benn – It ain’t easy to get to heaven when you won’t go down.

    Andrew Cogliano – Only because he’s assuredly going to score against the Hawks again today. With Zucker off to the East, he’s in contention for biggest Hawk-annoyance left.

  • GAme #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

    GAme #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

  • Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: Lineups & How They Were Built

    Game #62 – Hawks vs. Stars: Lineups & How They Were Built

    Hawks

    Notes: Gustafsson didn’t travel, so if he’s not gone by gametime he soon will be. We don’t know if Carlsson will make his debut but he should, because we’ve had enough of Seeler. Koekkoek skated with Keith on Friday but the three penalties should punt him back down the lineup, or you’d hope…Boqvist didn’t see the ice for the last 15 minutes on Friday. His feet stop moving as soon as he gets the puck, which is the exact opposite of what’s supposed to be happening…

    Stars

    Notes: The Stars have split things up here to spread scoring out, so Benn is on the third line and the Shit Demon is skating with Seguin for some reason…That hasn’t stopped Hintz from going cold as he’s got two goals in his last 16…Bishop also dropped off in February, with just a .909…

  • Game #61 – Predators 1, Hawks 1 (Hawks win Jimmy Jab Games): A Night To Remember

    Game #61 – Predators 1, Hawks 1 (Hawks win Jimmy Jab Games): A Night To Remember

    Box Score

    Natural Stat Trick

    That was one of the better games to watch in a long while. But instead of the steely-eyed and acerbic analysis you come for, there’s just a couple things I want to talk about.

    -I don’t know if that was Corey Crawford’s last start as a Hawk. If the Canes were watching, they should be absolutely salivating at bringing Crow aboard to take advantage of their contender-worthy roster instead of trusting everything to James Reimer. Unlike Robin Lehner, Crow is playoff-tested and passed.

    The purely factual, analytical way to look at the Hawks right now is that they should trade both goalies. Sell everything, get as many pieces back as you can for anyone that another team will give you something for, and try and reload this up next season. But being a sports fan isn’t just about being analytical and results-based and only viewing things as a process to wins. When it gets like that, you get the fucking Houston Astros.

    One the one hand, Crawford deserves the chance to go somewhere where he’ll be appreciated in a way he never was here, take a team deep into the playoffs one more time, and possibly win the Conn Smythe and break it over Pierre McGuire’s bald head for costing him the one he more than earned in 2013. That would do my heart and many others’ well.

    On the other, I and many others never want to see Crawford leave. Too many Hawks fans haven’t appreciated what he’s been, and seeing as how he’s the only goalie living that’s won two Cups for the Hawks, that’s pretty fucking weird. Tonight was another vintage Crow performance, standing up to a barrage that lasted for 40 minutes at least and required 39 saves just to get the Hawks to OT. He was brilliant, as he’s been thew past six weeks or longer.

    It’s obviously more than one night with Crawford. He’s been made to eat shit by the organization itself, the media, and the fans for very little reason. Not only that, but he’s had to face his hockey mortality more directly than any player on this team. When he hit his head against the post against San Jose last year, most of us didn’t just wonder if he would ever play again. We were pretty sure he wouldn’t. And a lot of us thought he shouldn’t. And while he said he never considered retiring, it must have been discussed in that household at least once.

    And yet Crawford has answered the bell again by doing what he does after every challenge faced. Simply ball out. After McGuire called out his glove hand simply because it was an easy-to-reach story, he gave up three goals in two games to the Bruins to provide a parade. After struggling in the opening round of 2015, he went .931 in the last three including giving up two goals against in the Hawks last three wins of the Final. He returned from missing nearly a full season to concussion last year by balling out again. He watched the Hawks bring in someone meant to take his job this past summer (and that was the plan for the Hawks, don’t you doubt it) and has just outplayed him for the past two months. He’ll even grease Lehner’s tracks out of town.

    Crow is just about the easiest Hawk to root for, and I don’t know why more people aren’t doing so. He never complained when the front office hung him out to dry, nor pointed any fingers when the defense simply turned to dust the past couple seasons. He just gets on with it. Maybe the fandom or the league in general doesn’t know what we have here, but we do.

    And I’d hate to see him go. He doesn’t have the NTC that the other four vets have. But ask the four of them and I bet they’d tell you he should. Just as I’d love to see one more run with them, I want even more badly one more run for Crow here. Maybe then he’ll finally get the appreciation he’s lacked in this town and league-wide for so long.

    It makes way more sense for the Hawks to cash in on Crow. But we’re not in this for sense. The heart wants what it wants.

    -Anyway, quick story. I had the pleasure of sitting next to a lovely, elder gent names Harold tonight from London, Ontario. He has been an occasional billet for players for the Knights. A few years ago, his wife and him decided they wanted to see a game in all 31 arenas. Sadly, his wife passed a year or two ago. But Harold decided he would do the trip anyway for her, at the age of 81. Tonight was #28, and St. Louis, St. Paul, and Winnipeg will round it out next month. Oh, and at 81 he also has two full sleeve tattoos, so he’s basically a vision of my future.

    You don’t get that kind of thing anywhere else but sports. It’s kind of why we’re here. It was nice to be reminded of that again.

     

  • Game #61 – Predators vs. Hawks: Gamenight Conspiracy

    Game #61 – Predators vs. Hawks: Gamenight Conspiracy

    Everything you need for tonight’s tilt on Madison St. 

    Preview

    Spotlight

    Hedley Lamarr’s Muggers, Buggerers, and Bushwhackers

    I Make A Lot Of Graphs

    Lineups & How They Were Built

  • Game #61 – Hawks vs Predators Preview – Where Are You?

    Game #61 – Hawks vs Predators Preview – Where Are You?

    vs

    Game Time: 7:30PM CST
    TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
    Send David Poile To Gitmo: On The Forecheck

    In a less-dystopian universe, one where each team played to what their roster says they should be, tonight’s matchup on West Madison would be one filled with Western Conference playoff intrigue. The Predators jockeying for home ice in the first round and the Hawks clinging to hold on to one of the last wild card spots. But instead, it’s the Preds still trying to figure themselves out as they keep running out of road in the regular season, and the Hawks actively imploding.

    (more…)

  • Game #61 – Predators vs. Hawks Spotlight: Seriously, What Is John Hynes Doing Here?

    Game #61 – Predators vs. Hawks Spotlight: Seriously, What Is John Hynes Doing Here?

    Needing to fire Peter Laviolette isn’t a huge surprise. Hopefully, it’s a feeling we’ll get here one day, as that will mean the Hawks hired him in the first place. He’s a good coach, maybe even a very good one, but his style tends to grate on players pretty quickly. He burned himself out in Philadelphia, but the Flyers haven’t really been the same since, and it’s kind of amazing he lasted as long as he did in Nashville. It’s no surprise they had their greatest success under him as well.

    But eventually the time comes when the players are sick of his act, and the Preds clearly were. This is not a team that should be floating outside the playoff spots, or even anything close. It was built to compete for the Western crown, not slap-fighting with the Coyotes over the leavings. And yet here we are.

    But hiring John Hynes smacks of GM David Poile only having half of a plan. He knew he needed to fire Lavvy but didn’t have any idea who should replace him. And then he was forced to hire what was out there, which was Hynes.

    Hynes’s claim to fame is that he happened to be standing behind the bench when Taylor Hall went on a “Fuck Edmonton” world tour after being traded to Newark, earned a Hart Trophy, and dragged a thoroughly unimpressive Devils team to the playoffs where they were promptly thwacked by the Lightning. The Devils never came close to the playoffs since, and in fact that was the only year that the Devils even finished above .500.

    Sure, Hynes was never given a real roster to work with, and maybe that’s the best he could do. He certainly helped transition the Devils from a war crime to a fast-moving team, but that was a few years ago. The Preds already were that. So why is he here?

    Poile will tell you it’s to improve their defensive game, as they’d become lax under Lavvy. Ok, how’s that going? Under Lavvy, the Preds were still one of the better possession teams around, ranking 8th in the league in Corsi-percentage at 52.8. Under Hynes, they’re 22nd at 48.2. And they’re giving up five more attempts per game than they were before the firing. But hey, they’re also generating four less attempts too!

    When it comes to xG%, the Preds under Laviolette were again top-1o, ranking 8th at 52.5. Hynes has managed to fuck that up too, ranking 20th since he was hired (behind the Hawks!) at 49.6. Oh, and their xGA/60 went from 2.08 to 2.37 since the change. This is going well! We’ll give Hynes this, at least the attack has stayed steady at 2.3 xGF/60 per game. He hasn’t blown everything up yet.

    Hynes has even gotten better goaltending than Lavvy did, with Juese Saros has at least shown some competence of late whereas before Hynes was hired neither Saros or Rinne could find their ass with either hand. And yet the Preds have still gone just 10-8 under him, which isn’t exactly the bump Poile would have been hoping for.

    This isn’t a team built to play defensively, and if it isn’t skating with its hair on fire it can be awfully open. But that’s how they were designed, with their go-go defense. Hynes hasn’t been helped by Ryan Ellis being out for his entire stay so far, but there’s more than enough here to do better with. It’s also not Hynes’s fault that Johansen and Duchene spend most of their time having money-fights in the dressing room, but he was probably brought in with the idea that he could get them to snap to attention. Still waiting on that one. This is still a team where a d-man leads them in scoring by 17 points!

    There probably can’t be a more clear exhibit of how in the NHL if you get one job, you get 17. Hynes never did much in New Jersey and yet somehow ended up with a better team in Nashville. And when this goes balls-up, which is looking soon, you can bet he’ll get another job because someone will think if the Predators hired him he must be good. And so it goes.