Hockey

In The Policy Of Truth

By Sam Fels 2531 0

Ok, so as if the Hawks week can’t get any better as they get routinely thwacked by real-ass teams in their own division (oh, and they see a potential 60-goal scorer Thursday), evidence that they actually have no idea what they’re doing in the front office continues to mount. And I don’t mean getting capped out last night to the extreme of 17 skaters.

At the top, we should say that the Hawks are just in the same net with the rest of hockey, and their actions or behavior is more just a symptom of the whole damn culture than they being unique. What it does do is tear down this idea, that they are the biggest promoters of, that they are somehow the gold standard organization.

It started last week or so, when Akim Aliu said that he had been racially abused by Bill Peters while both were in Rockford. Now we know pretty much the whole story, and it involves team captain at the time Jake Dowell having a sit-down with Peters over what he had said to Aliu.

This is hockey, and if there is any sport where this kind of thing can somehow not make its way up the food chain, it’s here. Players are afraid to cause waves, organizations are terrified of media distractions, everyone else is in the middle. However, your AHL captain meeting with your AHL coach over this, it’s nearly impossible to think that this doesn’t set off alarm bells for everyone both in Rockford and Chicago.

And as friend of the program Chris Block has pointed out, there are other people in and out of AHL dressing rooms all the time. Agents, families, team personnel, some media, so the idea that this was completely contained in the dressing room and the coach’s office, there’s just no way to buy that. Peters was gone a year later to join Mike Babcock’s staff, so maybe the Hawks just thought everything was taken care of with that. Maybe they thought the gloss of a newly contending team washed away all. Maybe they were afraid of dulling that in any way. Whatever the answer, it isn’t enough.

And now they have to investigate their own assistant coach, one they brought in to babysit their struggling young coach/take over when that young coach finally drowned. Again, I wasn’t really aware of Marc Crawford’s past, but it wasn’t really my job to be. When doing due diligence on a new hire, you’d have to believe if you scraped anywhere beneath the surface you’d find his record of abuse. Y’know, because it was in a former player’s book and all? I didn’t read O’Sullivan’s book, but someone somewhere did and might have mentioned this kind of thing. Call me crazy.

It’s kind of amazing how recently this shit has gone on. We are 40 year beyond Woody Hayes punching an opposing player, which ended his famous career, and that’s in football which is the only sport that has a bigger attitude amongst its coaches of how tough they are due to how saggy their balls are and whatnot. We’re over 20 years since Bobby Knight was kicking and choking his own players (and son) at Indiana. All this in hockey is in the last five to ten years. Amazing what happens in this dark corner.

Again, on the other side, some would tell you that hockey’s culture of “just take it and shut up” handicaps them from acting. But we know that the Hurricanes went up the chain to Ron Francis. We know the Red Wings did the same to Ken Holland about Babcock. We know Dowell confronted Peters at the very least. So while there’s certainly an element of players afraid to speak up, it’s not like they’ve been totally silent either. The problem is that when they have spoken up, they’ve faced an indifferent or callous organization looking in the opposite direction.

If you’ve paid any attention, you know the way the Hawks paint themselves isn’t anywhere near reality. Any crisis they’ve faced they’ve royally fucked up, and combined with their current fucking up the on-ice product (what only anyone really cares about at the end of the day) they’ve been revealed to be one of the more balloon-handed organizations around.

But to restrict this as a Hawks problem would be unfair and silly. I’ve thought a lot about this lately and why hockey is so far behind everything else. And it’s mostly that it operated in the dark for so long, anything could go on because no one knew except for those in it. There was no one around to point out all the things wrong, because the only ones who knew were the ones in the culture and they could behave however they saw fit. Hell, the reason some of us became fans was because no one else was. So it’s not that hockey is upset that it’s being scrutinized now, it’s upset that anyone is looking at all. It doesn’t want to jibe with the wider world because the wider world was never aware of its existence for so long. But that’s not a justification, and far from it.

I don’t know why these GMs like Holland or Treveling or Francis or whoever knew here or whoever was Crawford’s boss just tried to shoo it away. The easy answer is callousness, and that might be it. I think it’s at least part laziness too. Because if they had taken action, that would only lead to more questions they would have to answer. Questions they aren’t equipped to handle. And we know how much they hate the media and questions. It’s just easier to say “man up” even though we’ve eliminated that term as a qualified answer years ago. It’s easier to hope that things just go away, which they did.

Well, they won’t now, and it’s a bigger mess. Who’s around who is actually equipped to deal with it?

Hockey

Atop The Sugar Pile – 12/3: Your True Face

By Sam Fels 1800 0

The Dizzying Highs

Brandon Saad – It would be easy to put Patrick Kane here, thanks to his point-streak, but I don’t do easy. But Saad is the only forward I notice every night, and I know I’m not alone. He scored against Dallas in their only win the past week, and got the opener shorthanded against the Avs on Saturday. Whereas Kane can go missing when games have been close and occasionally has been cherry-picking to benefit the point-streak he’s probably all too aware of, Saad just gets on with it. And he’s been the Hawks best forward the whole season whether you like it or not. He’s piled up 18 shots in the four games here, and he’s on his best expected goal per game of his career, and he’s top-25 in relative Corsi and xG percentage among forwards in the league. He’s played so well, it probably makes sense to explore trades for him in the way they didn’t for Erik Gustafsson last year. He’ll have one more year after this left on his deal, and he’s a difference-maker on a good team’s second line. That is if he’s not part of the long-term vision here, which no one knows. He’s been good enough where you probably can’t go wrong either trading him or keeping him, but if anyone can it’ll be the Hawks.

The Terrifying Lows

The Front Office – Boy there were a lot of candidates for this. But let’s just review, and there will be more on this later, but the Hawks organization has been part of two of the current abuse/racists scandals this week in hockey (Peters and Crawford) and have turned their palms up at both with the, “Me no speaka da English” defense. Either the front office is that willfully ignorant that their AHL captain having to confront their AHL coach about his racist remarks doesn’t send alarm lights to the main office, and their assistant hire’s past abuse of players being documented in a book or two, which means they’re just about the clueless bunch of dopes around (could be!). Or they knew all this stuff…and they just didn’t care.

Much less important, but worth mentioning, is that they’ve built a team that again, is one point off the bottom of the West more than a quarter through the season, and is capped out to the point they couldn’t ice a full team last night. This collection of ne’er-do-wells and the truly bewildered costs as much as any team in the league. Your four offseason acquisitions that make significant money total  which cost $15.6M (Smith, Shaw, de Haan, and Maatta) have got you one fourth-liner who’s slow, a bottom-six winger they keep trying to play into the top six even though all he’s done this year is take o-zone penalties and wave to the crowd, a middle-pairing d-man who also can’t move, and a barely-third pairing d-man. This is how you get capped out, because all these positions are supposed to cost a fuckton less than this.

But hey…ONE GOAL.

The Creamy Middles

Patrick Kane – It’s really not surprising when he keeps scoring. He might fire in some garbage time (symmetry) goals to keep his streak alive, and he may be trying to do that too many times, but he’s also the only other threat besides Saad these days. Without either, the Hawks get clubbed 4-1 every night.

Hockey

Game #27 – I Don’t Wanna Talk About It, Want to Forget About It, Wanna Be Intoxicated With That Special Brew – Blues 4, Hawks 0

By John Pullega 1925 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Terrible.

– Jeremy Colliton is not a fucking NHL coach. Bring on Sheldon Brookbank, I do not give a fuck. Jeremy Colliton is a smarmy asshole who made friends with other smarmy assholes and got a seven-figure job out of it, which is about as on brand as you can get for this fucking team now. He managed to coax a rigor mortis erection out of this fucking team for a few consecutive games in November, but tonight has once again hammered home the fact that he doesn’t know how to coach this team whatsoever, poor roster construction be damned. We could go on and on about his decision to put Carpenter between DeBrincat and Kane instead of Dach, but we won’t because you’ve heard that song before. But look at this goddamn clitoral sty:

David Perron leaves the puck in an area that Toews can’t be bothered to cover, giving Ryan O’Reilly all the time and space in world to pick it up. He demurs to Perron, and not one, not two, but yes, three fucking Blackhawks go out to the far boards—which is a very low-danger area, in case, like me, you were wondering—to cover Perron. This leaves O’Reilly whatever is beyond wide open right in front of Crawford. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen an opponent get so wide open on a designed play since five games ago.

This is what the HIGH-OCTANE DEFENSE this mead-drinking bozo farts out produces. This is by fucking design. It is time to fire Jeremy Colliton. It’s brutally clear his team doesn’t want to play for him, and his designed system produces garbage like this. All we ask for is fun. This isn’t fun. Utterly embarrassing.

– They told us that Olli Maatta was an improvement. Olli Maatta, in fact, fucking sucks. His turnover at the end of the third was a travesty. Under absolutely no pressure, he threw a pass directly onto Tyler Bozak’s stick in the slot. Bozak, in what we can only assume was a reaction to such a bald-faced insult, pounded a shot past Crawford.

– But that wasn’t the only instance of the Hawks clearly giving up. On the very first goal, Seabrook and Nylander got caught floating back on defense, which gave MacKenzie MacEachern an open lane to swat a funky end-board bounce past Crawford. If you want to argue that there’s no way they could have predicted that bounce, fuck you. A bare minimum effort would have clogged up the slot and at least made that shot a little bit of a challenge. Glad to see Seabrook still has something to give and that we got this fucking Nylander loser for the mere price of an effective 20-year-old defenseman who was traded because his stupid fucking dweeb-ass moron coach didn’t like his attitude or whatever. Can’t wait to read the tell-all book where we learn that Jokiharju’s response to everything Colliton said was “Fuck off, nerd, you suck at this.”

– And we haven’t even touched the real shit. Stan Bowman should be fired immediately for not doing his due diligence on Marc Crawford. It’s clear that they brought Marc Crawford in to take over for Colliton if he shat the bed (and not only has Colliton shat the bed but also rolled around in it). But now, three separate players have accused Marc Crawford of physical abuse and regular use of homophobic language throughout his career. If you’re the kind of person that isn’t bothered by this, fuck you. This was a Stan Bowman decision. If his shitty off-seasons over the last two years weren’t enough to show you that he’s a total goddamn moron (Brandon Manning, Olli Maatta, Andrew Shaw, Slater Koekkoek), this should.

– It’s getting more obvious that Jonathan Toews wants nothing to do with any of this. He dragged around all night, such as in that clip we had earlier. But he was also aloof on the Blues’s third goal. After Kane’s pass for Toews got intercepted in the Hawks’s oZ, Toews couldn’t be bothered to get back to defend. This left Connor Murphy to cover Schwartz on the far boards, DeBrincat to cover Walker in the slot, and no one to cover the eventual goal scorer Brayden Schenn, because Olli Maatta was busy being too slow and shitty to adjust.

I can’t blame Toews, but if you’ve lost him, you’re fucked.

– On the plus side, Brandon Saad did what he does best: everything but score. He split a couple defenders in the third for a good chance that he couldn’t finish. He was one of only three Hawks who were noticeably good tonight.

–The others were Dominik Kubalik—who will undoubtedly be scratched on Thursday for REASONS—and Alex DeBrincat, who set up a nice scramble in the first with some nifty skating and a slick backhand shot that led to a Ryan Carpenter chance. He also hit iron off a good Toews pass in traffic. Perhaps if he had someone other than Ryan Carpenter centering him, he’d have more luck.

The Blues never had to leave first gear to grind the Hawks down like a twisting and dry leaf in a dog’s shitty, dragging asshole. The cherry on top is that the Hawks could only ice 17 players tonight because of salary cap restrictions and a sick (of this team) Robin Lehner. Truly a sign of a well-run org, that. If Rocky gave a single shit about anything, Colliton, Bowman, McDonough et al. would be on their asses tonight. But that sellout streak continues, so fuck you.

We need new pornos. Guess I’m still writing.

Beer du Jour: Half a bottle of 1792.

Line of the Night: Mario Lemieux didn’t have the heart, didn’t have the tenacity, didn’t have the drive of a Gretzky or Kane. – Steve Konroyd

Hockey

Game #27 – Blues vs. Hawks Preview: A New World

By Sam Fels 2112 0

vs

RECORDS: Blues 17-5-6   Hawks 10-11-5

PUCK DROP: 7:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

GOOD GOD DON’T GO THERE: St. Louis Gametime

Like any adversarial relationship, or really any relationship that goes for a long time, there are different phases to it. The Hawks and Blues have had theirs. They were scraping for bottom of the barrel rewards in the 80s together. They were playoff rivals in the early 90s, each with hopes of breaking through the post-Oilers scene (never did). Both were hapless background pieces to the Wings, either in the mid- or late 90s. Both have been unequipped batting practice for the other at times, for instance the Pronger-era Blues were far ahead of the Hawks and obviously what came before here not so long ago. Both have been mud people at the same time.

We thought we’d permanently left them behind this decade. That’s the arrogance that comes from multiple championships. But you can never leave something like this behind. It’s always there, even if you have to squint, and it’s always a reminder of what you truly are. It feels like getting hit with a large fish in the face when you realize that, but here we are. Last spring was a reminder that some things are always like this, no matter how it might look.

And now it’s reversed. The Blues are in the sunshine, seemingly clicking everywhere, seemingly have figured out when everyone had assumed they never could. That it would always be that way. And the Hawks are the ones with their shoes tied together, valuing all the wrong things with an inability to take any step forward. Oh sure, maybe it’s only been two seasons like this, instead of the seven or eight we enjoyed laughing at the unwashed down I-55. But it’s gone now, isn’t it? Oh yes, yes it is.

So the Blues will show up for the first time this season tonight, with their unfathomable champions pedigree and their first place standing now and the added arrogance not just of having done all that, but of having done it when no one ever thought they could. These aren’t the Blues you remember, and it’s likely they will never be again. We’ve lost something. They’ve gained something, and that is truly world-shattering. They’re 15 points ahead of the Hawks.

The Hawks are 15 points behind, five points out of a playoff spot, and one point ahead of the basement of the entire damn conference. Has anything moved forward? Does it feel like it will anytime soon? Aren’t the questions all the same as they were before? The lack of answers sure are. This is supposed to be them. It was them. And we figured it would be them forever. Because it felt like it would be, when it was and we weren’t. We had all the answers before there were questions. And then in a flash it reversed, and now we’re the laughingstock in the relationship. “Look at how far behind they are,” they crow, and rightly. The gap is bordering on a gorge.  Cruel world.

Anyway, on the ground, the Blues are in first but in some ways they’re a lot like the Hawks. They’re not a great possession team. They get great goaltending and they’re getting some fine finishing from more sources than the local outfit. They’re still pretty good defensively, in that they hold down attempts, shots, chances among the better teams in the league. They don’t create much, but with the way Jordan Binnington is playing they don’t have to. The more you suppress shots and attempts the more games come down to a moment or two. And when your goalie is better most nights, you’ll win most nights. When you allow chances and attempts to flow like and Elvin-conjured river, you make it more likely that results will match what the teams are. That’s how you get the Hawks, no matter how good the goalies are.

Of course, the Blues are here without their main sniper in Vladimir Tarasenko, who might not play again in the regular season. They’re also without Alex Steen, which doesn’t mean much these days, and Oskar Sundqvist, which is somewhere in the middle. In their absence, Ryan O’Reilly, David Perron, and Brayden Schenn have fucked off just like they did last spring that landed us in this mess. Alex OrangeJello seems intent on having a true free agent year, and Jayden Schwartz is actually healthy. Imagine what happens when Justin Faulk actually gets comfortable. Fuck this life.

Anyway, to the Hawks, who will be without Duncan Keith, Dylan Strome, and now Robin Lehner as well as Andrew Shaw tonight. Lehner has the flu, which is a strange code for telling his teammates they suck on the bench and being given a day or two to calm down, even though he’s right. Without Keith, and he really shouldn’t matter this much, the Hawks roll out an AHL defense behind Connor Murphy. And we already said Connor Murphy shouldn’t matter this much either. Oh, did we mention they’ll have to do the same against the best line in hockey Thursday? On the road? ONE GOAL.

Because of all of this, the Hawks will skate one player short due to cap constraints, with the recalling of Kevin Lankinen putting them up against it. Real tight ship, here. A cap team that’s one point above the West basement. Everything’s fine. They have a process. They know what they’re doing. Everything is on course.

It won’t take more than four minutes for Pat and Eddie to comment on the Blues “grit” and the forecheck the Hawks apparently want to emulate without realizing what they’re actually talking about. The Blues can get in your shirt because they’re actually really quick. It’s not just about dressing psychopaths, which used to be their M.O. They upgraded the speed, and with Pietrangelo, Faulk, Colton Burpo, they’re mobile enough on the blue line to not worry if their forwards occasionally get beat. They defense can just step up behind it. The Hawks d-men can’t. So you get what the Avs did to them, which is streak to an odd-man whenever they felt like it. And failing that, they could just wait for that moment when four Hawks were trying to find the Big Dipper in their own zone and tralalala their way down the slot. The Blues are no more stupid than the Avs are.

The season is almost certainly already toast, but it’s for sure going to be if the Hawks don’t ace December. They can rant and rave all they want about where the Blues were on New Year’s Day last year, but that team was built to contend and needed to fire a coach who was clearly a moron and everyone knew it to get where they were supposed to be (say there’s an idea). This might be where the Hawks are supposed to be. Starting the month off with the two Finalists isn’t exactly cherry. The rest of the slate isn’t either.

The difference between the two might not any clearer after tonight, or at the end of the month. You’ll just have to wait for the day when the relationship shifts again. It might be a long way off.

Hockey

Game #27 – Blues vs. Hawks Spotlight: Was Justin Faulk Really The One Who Got Away?

By Sam Fels 1344 0

We had pined for the Hawks to get Justin Faulk for years. There were always rumors that the Canes were going to move him before they had to sign him longer-term, which would have happened this upcoming summer. The summer of ’18 there were actually rumors the Hawks and Canes had talks, circling around Brandon Saad or Nick Schmaltz (whoops, huh?). The Hawks’ need for a quick, puck-moving d-man has only gotten larger. And yet Faulk went to what used to be their main rivals. Did the Hawks drop the ball on this one?

It’s gone ok for Faulk in St. Louis. He’s still getting the same amount of time with the Blues, and his zone-starts are just about the same. The actual metrics are down a bit, like his Corsi and expected goal percentage. But relative to the Blues, who have shitty overall metrics, he’s actually ahead of the game.

Which arrests the pattern Faulk had last year. He fell way behind the Canes’ rate on those things, which is probably what spurred them to finally trade him after years of rumors. He was some five points off, though to be fair to him the Canes were one of the most dominant overall even-strength teams. Someone was going to have to take the brunt of that.

Faulk had also fallen behind Dougie Hamilton and moved to the second pairing, and Brett Pesce and Jakob Slavin had been higher valued for a while. Investing heavily in what would be a second-pairing d-man for them probably didn’t make a ton of sense. What the fuck Joel Edmundson does for them is another question.

The Blues had no such compunction, trading for Faulk and immediately signing him to a six-year extension that will take him to 33 at the rate of $6.5M per. It’s the same was what Alex Pietrangelo makes now, who enters his free agency in the summer. Will the Blues give him more and pay him that until his mid or late 30’s? Maybe Faulk is insurance on that.

Overall he hasn’t been able to swing the Blues much, who don’t have the puck a lot but have leaned on their goalies heavily. They still limit attempts and shots well but don’t create much. Maybe as Faulk adapts he’ll help out with that.

Would he have made sense for the Hawks? With the impending free agency that’s harder to judge. The Hawks have already entrenched d-men, contract-wise, that’s going to make a real trick to get Adam Boqvist and Ian Mitchell on the roster. Even if you subtract de Haan, it’s still a jam with Seabrook, Keith, and Murphy around. However, must Faulk instead of Maatta and de Haan would have given the Hawks the mobility and skill they don’t have. Locking him in for a few years wouldn’t have been a bad idea either, as Mitchell and Boqvist won’t be able to do it themselves for a while.

It’s certainly frustrating for Hawks fans, who watched the always-fucked up Blues show the urgency the Hawks passed on two summers ago to get Bozak and O’Reilly and then win the Cup. And then take the d-man the Hawks had been after for a while and we still watch Gustafsson turn the wrong way, Maatta get beaten to the outside, or Seabrook shit his pants.

Nothing ever stays the same.

Hockey

Game #27 – Blues vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Mugs, Pugs, And Thugs

By Sam Fels 1383 0

Brad Marchand – What, you say? The Hawks play the Bruins on Friday, not tonight? Oh, our innocent friend. Don’t you see it’s Brad Marchand who changed everything? Don’t you see it’s his disappearance last June that let this unimaginable hell into reality? Had he not shriveled into nothingness, perhaps the Blues would still be the Blues, and not…whatever this curse is now. No longer the redheaded stepchild of the world, the Blues have legitimacy. And who wanted that? No one. Absolutely no one. It’s changed forever. It’s not coming back. And that lays at the feet of that rat-nosed phony. Don’t you forget it.

David Perron – Were we ever to do a Hall of Fame for this kind of thing, Perron would be in the first class. An enraging asshole for his entire career, the world is off its axis as he was a main inspiration for last spring’s unfortunate series of events. Perron is still a coward, and when the Blues retire his number (and they will) or honor him in some way, he’ll be right there to punch the host while two linesmen hold him.

Justin Faulk – The Hawks got the wrong d-man from Carolina, and now we’re going to have to be reminded of that for the next half-decade.

Hockey

Game #27 – Blues vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

By Sam Fels 1208 0

Blues

Notes: The Blues are beat up, missing four forwards who would be playing. They picked up Brouwer from whatever hay-pile he was staring at in BC, and that’s when you know it’s a problem…the Blues are throwing Jay Gallon at the Hawks, which gives you some idea of what they think the challenge will be here…that gremlin Perron has a seven-game point streak…Scenn is shooting over 20%, that won’t last…

Hawks

Notes: Nope, that’s not a mistake. The Hawks will go with 11 forwards and six d-men tonight, and this isn’t the end of “Leatherheads,” a movie only we saw and only because it was on late one night when we were too shitfaced to go straight to bed. Due to cap constraints the Hawks can’t call up another forward, so they’ll skate Kane 42 minutes and call in innovation…Andrew Shaw is probably hurt, but it would not be a bad idea to scratch his ass with the normal allotment of forwards because he’s been abject…that’s an AHL defense plus Connor Murphy…

Hockey

High On The Hog: November Surge

By Jon Fromi 1473 0

The Rockford IceHogs finished the month of November with an 8-3-0-1 record. The ‘Bago County Flying Piglets have picked it up on the offensive end, rising from the league basement to a more-than respectable three goals per contest. Not bad for a team that is as green as the IceHogs.

Rockford’s average age on its current roster is 23.12 years. That is the second youngest in the AHL behind only San Jose. The piglets are the least experienced club in the league by a fair sight. Rockford skaters have played just 2, 359 AHL games combined, nearly five hundred less than the Barracuda.

As in past years, it’s been offense by committee in Rockford. The Hogs have no veteran scorers squirreled away to bolster the organization, so the kids will be shouldering the load for better or worse. Recently, it’s been the former.

Here are some of the contributors to the recent surge:

The Brothers Sikura

Whether they are teamed on a line or on separate units, Dylan and Tyler have been Rockford’s biggest point producers. The two brothers each have eight goals and five assists to pace the Hogs offense.

Sikura The Younger kicked off November with a hat trick on the third of the month. Two of his five goals last month were of the game-winning variety. A four-game point streak was snapped Saturday, but Dylan is getting pucks on net at a steady rate. His 83 shots on goal is by far the team lead in that category.

Sikura The Elder was just named captain of the IceHogs Friday night. Tyler had eight points in November (4 G, 4 A) and is instrumental at evens and on both special teams.

 

Brandon Hagel, Forward

Hagel put up five goals and three assists in twelve games last month. He leads the IceHogs rookies in scoring with ten points (5 G, 5 A) this season. Hagel, who was also a plus-six in November, has shown a knack for driving hard to the net with the puck. It’s paid off for him this past month.

 

MacKenzie Entwistle, Forward

Entwistle’s defensive play has shown up on the scoreboard. He has been solid at both ends and had three goals and three helpers in eleven November appearances. His skater rating of plus-six is tied for the team lead among forwards. Along with Dylan Sikura, he shares the team lead with two game-winning goals.

 

Lucas Carlsson, Defense

Carlsson took advantage of some increased opportunities during Adam Boqvist’s stint in Chicago and showed off his own offensive prowess in November to the tune of two goals and six assists. His nifty moves produced a highlight-reel goal in a win over the Wolves November 10.

 

Matt Tomkins, Goalie

Tomkins was in net for that November 10 win over Chicago. It was one of two victories he had over the Wolves and one of three wins the former Ohio State goalie posted this past month. Tomkins gave up just five goals in those three games.

With a 4-1 record in 2019-20, Tomkins leads the Hogs goalies with a 2.38 goals against average. He also sports a .921 save percentage and has worked his way into a tandem with Kevin Lankinen the past couple of weeks.

 

Roster Moves

Just before Friday’s game, the Blackhawks recalled defenseman Ian McCoshen and assigned forward Matthew Highmore back to Rockford. Highmore skated for the Hogs on Saturday night.

I would have figured that Philip Holm would have been in line for the call up to Chicago. Unfortunately, Holm did not play over the weekend. The most productive of Rockford’s defensemen must be a little banged up at the moment, paving the way for McCoshen’s promotion.

Alexandre Fortin sat out Saturday’s game with some bumps and bruises, according to Hogs coach Derek King. Mikael Hakkarainen continues to be on the shelf after being injured in Rockford’s first game October 4.

 

Recaps

With a pair of home wins this weekend, the IceHogs improved to 11-8-0-1 this season. Their 8-3 home record would be the best in the Central Division, save for the juggernaut that is the Milwaukee Admirals. Milwaukee, who visits Rockford for the first time this season on December 7th and 10th, are 8-1-1-1. By the way, the Ads have won 13 straight games heading into play this week.

The Hogs inhabit fifth place in the division standing with 23 points, though they have at least two games in hand on the rest of the Central. Rockford’s .575 points percentage is third-best in the division.

 

Friday, November 29-Rockford 4, Chicago 2

Rockford won over its Interstate 90 rivals for the fifth time in five meetings, scoring three times in the second period to pick up two points.

John Quenneville gave the Hogs a 1-0 advantage late in the first, taking the puck from Alexandre Fortin and looping into the slot. His snipe zipped past Wolves goalie Oscar Dansk at the 15: 25 mark.

Fortin would put Rockford up 2-0 3:50 into the second period when his putback of a Dennis Gilbert shot beat Dansk from the left post. Dylan Sikura converted on Phillipp Kurashev’s pass on the rush for a 3-0 IceHogs lead 6:01 into the second.

Chicago got a goal from Ben Jones midway through the second to cut the lead to two goals, but Brandon Hagel came up with a great individual effort from neutral ice, swiping a puck and beating Dansk on the breakaway at the 11:27 mark.

Brandon Pirri snuck in a power play goal 15:42 of the middle frame, but that’s as close as things got. Hogs starter Matt Tomkins picked up his third straight win with 31 saves. Quenneville, Tomkins and Sikura were voted the game’s Three Stars.

Lines (Starters in italics)

John Quenneville-Tyler Sikura (C)-Alexandre Fortin

Dylan Sikura-Phillipp Kurashev-Brandon Hagel

Tim Soderlund-Jacob Nilsson (A)-Joseph Cramarossa

Nick Moutrey-Reese Johnson-MacKenzie Entwistle

Lucas Carlsson-Dennis Gilbert (A)

Joni Tuulola-Adam Boqvist

Nicolas Beaudin-Chad Krys

Matt Tomkins

Kevin Lankinen

 

Saturday, November 30-Rockford 3, Grand Rapids 1

Despite falling behind in the opening frame, the Hogs prevailed behind two first-time scorers and 29 saves by Kevin Lankinen.

The Griffins got on the board 6:17 into the game, just after a Nicolas Beaudin slashing penalty came off the board. Brian Lashoff faked a shot from the point, drove to the left circle and sent a shot to the Hogs net. Lankinen got his pads on the shot but not enough to prevent it from trickling into the cage.

It took a while, but the IceHogs evened things up late in the second period. The scoring play capped a very productive shift in which Rockford kept the pressure on Griffins goalie Pat Nagle. Tim Soderlund, brought the puck around the Grand Rapids net and out to Dennis Gilbert at the left point. GIlbert slid a pass to fellow defenseman Lucas Carlsson, who sent a shot off the end boards.

The carom came out to Soderlund, who was salivating near the bottom of the left circle. His attempt caught twine at 17:38 for Soderlund’s first professional goal. The teams went into the second intermission tied at one.

The Hogs took a 2-1 lead 8:49 into the third when Joni Tuulola guided Phillipp Kurashev’s pass past Nagle. Tuulola had missed on a slap shot on net seconds earlier but looped back into position at the left circle to get his stick on Kurashev’s feed for his first goal of the season.

Rockford potted some insurance seconds after Nagel skated to the bench with just over two minutes left in regulation. MacKenzie Entwistle picked up a loose puck, skated to center ice and sent the biscuit into the empty basket to make it a 3-1 final.

Lines (Starters in italics)

John Quenneville-Tyler Sikura (C) Dylan Sikura

Matthew Highmore-Phillipp Kurashev-MacKenzie Entwistle

Joeseph Cramarossa-Jacob Nilsson (A)-Brandon Hagel

Nick Moutrey-Reese Johnson-Tim Soderlund

Lucas Carlsson-Dennis Gilbert (A)

Joni Tuulola-Adam Boqvist

Nicolas Beaudin-Chad Krys

Kevin Lankinen

Collin Delia

 

This Week

The Manitoba Moose pay a visit to the BMO Harris Bank Center on Tuesday night before Rockford goes to Grand Rapids Friday. The Hogs get their first look at white-hot Milwaukee on Saturday.

Follow me @JonFromi on twitter for tidbits on the Hogs throughout the season.