Everything you need for tonight’s pre Black Wednesday get together on Madison St.
This is going to be the major story in hockey today, and it wouldn’t not be shocked if Bill Peters is fired by the end of business today. We’d like to believe it would lead to a reckoning in how hockey coaches are viewed, judged, and forced to change, but nothing works like that in hockey.
So the headline and how it relates to the Hawks first. Akim Aliu, a former Hawks draft pick, on Twitter last night was commenting on Mike Babcock’s firing when he connected it to Bill Peters, who served as a Babcock assistant for three seasons before taking the Carolina job. In those tweets, which you can see here, Aliu alleged that Peters called him the n-word several times. When Aliu rebelled against Peters, as he should have, Peters requested to the Hawks brass of GM Stan Bowman and President John McDonough that Aliu be sent to the ECHL. He was.
The Hawks released a statement today:
The Notes App press release is a nice touch.
Right, so first the Hawks. They’ll have plausible deniability on this, which doesn’t mean they’ll totally skate, or more accurately should. What they’ll say is they got a letter or request from their AHL coach, who of course wouldn’t mention what actually happened, and they took his word at the time.
Which is obviously bullshit, because they should have been doing due diligence on what was really going on. The challenge for the Hawks then, as it would be now, is hockey’s over-entrenched “stays in the room” culture, which would have made it utterly impossible for them to get corroboration from any other player who would be reluctant to speak against their coach. It’s just not done in hockey, not even now. It’s why all this Babcock stuff is coming out now instead of when it was happening, likely because no player would confirm it while Babcock was still employed (or the Toronto media is a bunch of sycophantic chicken shits, take your pick).
Still, what’s clear is the Hawks probably should have done a little more than simply taking their coach’s word for it. What some will rush to point out is that Akim Aliu was always considered a malcontent or having an attitude problem. Most of this stemmed from his refusal to engage in stupid and demeaning hazing rituals for his junior team, which led to rocky relationships with his team for his entire junior career. We could do a whole other post or six about the backward and disgusting culture of junior hockey, but let’s save it. We do know that Aliu’s refusal to “conform” to what was considered normal behavior in junior poisoned his whole time and every relationship there, because Canada and hockey are basically fucked in the head. There was talk he was disruptive in Rockford too at the time, and now we know why.
There were some NHL players on that Rockford team, including one Corey Crawford. You can bet McDonough has made sure to get to Crawford well before any media availability today (and as Crow is likely starting tonight, he wouldn’t be available anyway and now you can bet he’s starting tonight) to make sure they control the message.
Though it was only 10 years ago or so, and this is hardly a justification, it was a different culture then. The Hawks probably didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, no matter how much the claimed they were different, than what any other team would have and just took their guys in the AHL’s word for it. They’ll probably show a fair amount of contrition today, whoever decides to get in front of the cameras and mics. “We didn’t know,” “We should have looked into it further, “won’t happen again,” is probably the gist of what you’ll get today.
Throw it on top with everything else you’ve seen the Hawks do this decade (Ross, Kane, Reiff, Shaw, etc) and you can see what they’ll do to control any narrative from here. It also doesn’t extend them much benefit of the doubt if any.
As for Peters, he should be done in hockey forever, and if anything starts coming out in Carolina he certainly will be toast. It’s becoming less and less of a mystery how the Canes went from consistently disappointing to conference finalists as soon as he was gone, and you can see the cycle in reverse for the Flames. Already another former Hogs player is coming to back up Aliu and the story of Peters being a real piece of shit.
There’s no doubt Peters isn’t the only one of these in NHL, AHL, NCAA, or CHL ranks and probably in youth hockey too. Some will say it’s just being a tough coach, but that’s horseshit and you know it. There is no place for the likes of Peters and what Mike Keenan was back in the day, and we know better now. It’s not coaching, it’s posturing. It’s bullying, especially in a culture where any player who rises up against a coach is still considered the problem and a pariah. You know where hockey media almost always sides on these things, or at least used to. No one cares until the results turn sour. Frankly it’s abuse.
Hockey will do well to use this as a platform to start cleansing itself of this kind of dickheadedness. If I know the NHL and hockey, it will use it as an opportunity to stick its head in the sand.
Not easy to do this when they biff all three games in the week, but hey, our is not to reason why…
The Dizzying Highs
Patrick Kane – It’s not really all that different for him, but when the Hawks score five goals all week and he sets up four of them, this is going to be your spot pretty much every time. Even though it felt like he was just kind of “there” in the season’s first month, there he is in the top-10 in league scoring, even though he likely doesn’t have the amount of talent around him as the players ahead of him do. Or their teams actually have the puck, when the Hawks generally don’t. While the Hawks had to attempt two dumbass-luck comebacks this week against Carolina and Tampa, two teams that are just vastly superior to them, they actually have a chance to do that because Kane’s around to either set up Gustafsson with a chance he can’t miss or get a shot through that Strome can pot the rebound of or the like.
The Hawks would be utterly fucked without their goalies, but they might not ever score if it wasn’t for Kane.
The Terrifying Lows
Team Harmony? – The Hawks weren’t offensively bad at least against Tampa or Dallas, so it’s hard to single out a particular player. But still, something was off with Jeremy Colliton scratching a clearly not-deserving-of-it Domink Kubalik, in order to get Slater Koekkoek into the lineup against his former team where no one remembers him. Toews called him out on it, the players openly derided going with seven d-men, and it all just harms the overall picture.
The reasoning was poor, the outcome probably worse, and now it just feels like Colliton is making things up on the fly. There’s no reason to scratch Kubalik ahead of Zack Smith or even Andrew Shaw, but these are both now entrenched vets that Colliton has also become afraid of. Shaw you sort of understand, and he’s been better of late, but Smith doesn’t draw any water. Meanwhile Kubalik has been your second or third most consistent forward at both ends of the ice.
That doesn’t mean the players have up and quit on Colliton, based on Saturday’s effort alone. But it seems that comes out of professional pride or a duty to each other or both more than a belief in the whole structure. That won’t last forever.
Also, this:
Quote from Stars coach Jim Montgomery:
“Chicago is really good at the way that they play. It’s hard to stay with your game because of it…It doesn’t matter if they get a puck at their own hash marks, they will bring it back below their goal line twice. It is a different style.”
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) November 24, 2019
Maybe this deserves its own post, but why is the first thing an opposing coach notices about the Hawks is that they spin their wheels better than anyone else?
The Creamy Middles
Connor Murphy – It wasn’t his most solid week, and the Tampa game was kind of ugly, and he’s being wasted on a pairing with Olli Maatta, and I could keep going, but this season is going to end with me screaming from whatever hill I can find in this godforsaken flatland that he’s the most underrated player in the league. Murphy was excellent against Dallas, and turned over the ice with mostly Miro Heiskanen on the other side and an anchor on his. And he at least kept Andrew Cogliano from scoring against the Hawks again, and Fifth Feather from tumescence. He’s the Hawks best d-man, and I can only pray that Kelvin Gemstone treats him like it sometime this season instead of playing Erik Gustafsson into a five-year extension.
Last week, as everyone saw coming and now everyone is aware of, the Toronto Maple Leafs finally whacked Mike Babcock after a tepid start to the season, as well as because his mostly younger players absolutely hated his guts. Since then, in true after-the-fact bus tossing fashion, plenty of stories have come out about how Babcock ruled with an iron fist and was out of touch with the modern generation of players. And while all of those stories are absolutely to be believed, it’s burying the lede on what should be the real story here, and that’s the rapid ascension of Babs’ successor, Sheldon Keefe.
Please be advised, that while the specifics remain vague, the rest of this article will discuss sexual abuse and all applicable warnings may apply.
If the name Sheldon Keefe sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Keefe was a notorious delinquent even in junior, when as captain of the OHL champion Barrie Colts in 2000, he famously refused to shake the hand of then-commissioner David Branch, as well as staged a walkout during an awards banquet, and threatened future Conn Smythe winner Brad Richards. All of this was under the manipulation of Coach David Frost, who had several run ins with the OHL himself, and even had an assistant smuggle a player into the country and was ultimately fined $25,000. Frost’s name should ring a bell too, as he was the target of a murder for hire plot from one of his former players Mike Danton/Mike Jefferson, who had accused Frost of sexual assault as a motive for his actions. Danton and Keefe were teammates and friends, having played hockey together from an early age. And at Frost’s trial, Keefe provided testimony as Frost’s alibi witness.
After only 125 NHL games, Keefe’s NHL playing career ended, and began coaching the Pembroke Lumber Kings, a Junior A team he’d purchased, which is a level below the Canadian Major Junior leagues of the CHL (Ontario, Quebec, Western leagues) that most are familiar with. Keefe allowed Frost to even lurk around the periphery of his junior team even in the midst of all of the accusations. But, given his success at that level, it led him to a job with a major junior club, the Soo Greyhounds, hired by their child GM, Kyle Dubas. And it was there, and under Keefe’s watch, that three of his players were charged with sexual assault, Andrew Fritsch, Mark Petaccio, and current NHL-er Nick Cousins. As many, but not enough people have noted, that in the aftermath of the investigation (which was dropped by Canadian investigators given the unliklihood of a conviction, which is what oddly enough always seems to happen in cases like this), Dubas was famously flippant in his comments, and even went so far as to claim that his players were victims too:
“But as the manager of a junior hockey club, you’re entrusted with the lives of 16-20-year-olds,” said Dubas, who’s now completed two seasons in his present position. “We don’t judge how we went about things. We would never look back and say that we’re pleased or not. We just wanted to handle things the best we could. We supported the players as best we could with what they needed off the ice.”
“From the beginning, our team supported the legal process and law enforcement as they performed their investigation,” he added. “The scars remain for all of the people involved. But unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that.”
That language flatly shows zero concern for the victim in this case, and even goes so far as to paint his already shitty, entitled players as victims themselves in this scenario. It’s an all too familiar refrain within the self perpetuating rape culture of the Athletic Industrial Complex, and is particularly rampant in junior hockey, which puts children as young as 14 at center stage even more than high school football in Texas does with its frequently maladjusted young athletes. It preaches entitlement and it breeds behavior like this.
And now that Keefe has ascended to the Leafs’ head coach after a stint (and a championship) in the AHL with Toronto’s affiliate Marlies, it’s behavior like this that deserves much closer scrutiny. While many were praising Dubas’ hire of Hayley Wickenhiser last summer in a player development role as a progressive and forward thinking move for a hockey organization, in the face of Keefe’s promotion it simply feels like window dressing, a bone to be thrown to the masses to chew on while all of this seedy behavior gets ignored and enabled. Dubas may look the part of the boy genius, right down to glinting smile and faux-nerd glasses, but make no mistake, he absolutely does not give a shit about any kind of actual progressivism as evidenced by his words and actions when pressed, and also by bringing on Sheldon Keefe and all his baggage at any point possible. He clearly only needs the appearance of it, and if the league or sport as a whole actually gave a shit about any of this, they’d call him on it repeatedly. But they’re too concerned if Mike Babcock made his rookies make ranked lists of the most hard working teammates, and if Keefe actually wins with this talented group on the ice, all of this will be shouted down from everyone in Canada anyway.
The Rockford IceHogs had themselves a roller-coaster weekend on the road, earning three or four points in the first two games of a three-game Lone Star set. The Blackhawks AHL affiliate let leads slip away in Texas before dropping a 7-6 decision via shootout. The next afternoon, the resilient piglets stormed back from two goals down in the final half of the third period to beat San Antonio in overtime.
Goalie Collin Delia did not play in either affair; he backed up Kevin Lankinen on Saturday, then was a scratch Sunday. After Lankinen let in six goals on 36 Texas shots, he backed up Matt Tomkins against the Rampage.
It was the Hogs AHL signee who posted the standout performance of the weekend for Rockford, keeping the Hogs in contention with 21 saves on 23 shots until the offense got on track late in the contest. In his first action in two weeks, Tomkins won his third game in four starts this season.
Tomkins has allowed two goals or less in each of those three victories. He currently has a 2.48 GAA to go with a .915 save percentage. You can forgive Lankinen for a stinker, considering he’s been excellent in his other five starts this season.
Delia’s goals against average remains at 4.09 after sitting out the weekend. It would seem like Hogs coach Derek King would give Delia the net on Tuesday in the rematch with San Antonio, but time will tell soon enough.
Roster Move
On Wednesday night, it was announced that the Blackhawks had traded Graham Knott, Chicago’s second-round selection in the 2015 NHL Draft, to Pittsburgh in exchange for veteran forward Joseph Cramarossa. Cramarossa, 27, was on the ice for the Hogs in both games this weekend.
This move was a response to the retirement of Kris Versteeg earlier in the week. In Cramarossa, the Hogs get a physical, veteran who is joining his fifth AHL team in Rockford. The six-foot, 195-pounder has a rugged style that is in short supply on the Hogs roster.
Cramarossa found himself in a scrap behind the Stars net early in Saturday’s game in Texas, then played a key part in Rockford’s first goal against the Rampage. He should be able to make the Hogs a little tougher to play against. Cramarossa kills penalties pretty well, is not a stranger to dropping the gloves, and can chip in offensively on occasion.
The price for this veteran pickup was Knott, which is to say that Chicago bolstered the AHL roster without giving up a piece of said roster. With his entry contract expiring this season, Knott spent the first two months of the season in the ECHL. Knott had five goals and four assists in 13 games with the Indy Fuel but has has been assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton by the Penguins.
Recaps
The IceHogs (9-7-0-1) own a .589 points percentage, though they are sixth in the Central Division with 19 points. Rockford is 7-2-0-1 over their last ten games and have several games in hand compared to the rest of the division.
Saturday, November 23-Texas 7, Rockford 6 (SO)
Rockford blew a two-goal lead in the second period and rallied to tie the game in the closing minutes. Ultimately, the Hogs came up short in the shootout in a wild affair at Cedar Park.
Alexandre Fortin put Rockford ahead 1-0 with his second goal of the season 6:31 into the game. The Stars scored twice to take the lead on goals by Jason Robertson and Michael Mersch before an unassisted power play marker by Tyler Sikura tied it at two goals at 15:25 of the first period.
John Quenneville’s pair of goals resulted in a 4-2 Rockford advantage by the mid-point of the contest. However, Texas would return fire with power play goals by Joel L’Esperance and Nicolas Caamano. Late in the second, Anton Wedin tipped in a caroming puck for a 5-4 Hogs lead after 40 minutes.
The Rockford lead would turn into a 6-5 deficit after Gavin Bayreuther and Robertson found the back of Kevin Lankinen’s net. It would take a Brandon Hagel put back with 3:24 to play in the game to draw the teams even once more.
The outcome remained up in the air following Gus Macker Time. In the shootout, Robertson and Dylan Sikura traded goals in the second round before L’Esperance beat Lankinen in the fourth. New IceHogs acquisition Joseph Cramarossa was stopped by Texas goalie Landon Bow to give Texas the win.
The Hogs power play found the net on both attempts, though Rockford did give up three power play goals to the Stars.
Sunday, November 24-Rockford 3, San Antonio 2 (OT)
The Rampage scored on their first shot of the afternoon. Ryan Olsen guided a deflected centering pass under IceHogs goalie Matt Tomkins at 3:30 for a 1-0 San Antonio lead. That lead was extended at the close of the first period on a Derek Pouliot goal with five seconds left.
Rockford broke the lock Adam Wilcox had on the net midway through the third period. Joseph Cramarossa found Adam Boqvist skating into the offensive zone. The shot was stopped by the Rampage goalie, but the rebound came out to Boqvist, who skated toward the right post looking for a pass recipient.
Tyler Sikura was in the slot waiting; Boqvist found his stick and Sikura cut the San Antonio lead to 2-1 with ten minutes left to play. Tomkins, who kept Rockford in the game throughout the third period, was brought to the bench in the final minutes for an extra skater.
As the final seconds ran out, Matthew Highmore gained possession of a loose puck off the half boards. Highmore found Dylan Sikura at the right post; Sikura the Younger elevated the puck over the glove of Wilcox to tie the score 2-2 with three seconds left.
Overtime did not last long. Boqvist got the biscuit to Jacob Nilsson at the Hogs blue line. Nilsson did the rest, splitting the defense to spring himself for a breakaway. One backhand later, the Hogs had pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Tomkins played very well between the pipes for Rockford, saving 21 of 23 shots to post his second win of the season. Neither team was able to score on the power play; San Antonio was stopped three times, while the Hogs failed to convert their only opportunity.
This Week
The road trip concludes with another tilt in San Antonio Tuesday night. Rockford then comes back to the BMO Harris Bank Center for post-Thanksgiving clashes with Chicago (Friday) and Grand Rapids (Saturday).
Follow me on twitter @JonFromi for thoughts on the Rockford IceHogs throughout the season.
Many of you dear readers have far better things to do with your Saturday night than watch the Blackhawks play the Stars in Dallas, and for that I sincerely envy you. I truly did not expect much from this game between these two teams, but this one turned out to be pretty intense despite the lack of scoring. I still have plenty to say about it and a few thoughts coming out of it. Dive into my mind:
THE BULLETS
– About 10 minutes into the game, there was still no score, but it felt like the Stars should’ve been up by 4. The night never really changed from that kinda feel, either, and in the end Dallas probably should’ve won something like 6-1. It never really should’ve gotten to a shooutout, let alone overtime. The Stars had notable whiffs on wide open nets from from Jamie Benn and Corey Perry, along with a few other missed opportunities – they registered TEN High Danger Chances in the first period but came away with just one goal. Those coupled with another strong game in the crease from Robin Lehner really kept the Hawks in a game they didn’t really deserve to be in.
– Kind of riffing off that first bullet as well, while the Hawks dominated the attempts in the second period and controlled most of the play, all that work still only resulted in six total scoring chances and just two of them being High Danger. All those shot attempts basically amount to empty calories if you’re not generating opportunities from them.
– I’d like to give a special nod to Coach Mayor Buttigieg for giving Erik Gustafsson and Brent Seabrook 16+ minutes of 5v5 ice time in spite of the Stars eating them up for breakfast lunch, and dinner. Those two finished with CF%’s of 39.29 and 38.46 respectively, which is impressively bad. Gustafsson also had an embarrassingly bad turnover that led to the open net chance I mentioned earlier that Perry whiffed on.
We are to the point with Gustafsson that each game it is getting more and more predictable that he is going to have a costly turnover, and he is finding new ways to turn the puck over each time. I really don’t want to become a broken meatball record with this dude, but he has to be gone. Soon.
– Let’s stick with Mayor Pete Colliton, though, because if the performance and playstyle of the team in the first month of the season wasn’t enough to get him fired outright, there were moments tonight that might be the final straw. The Hawks took bench minors for Too Many Men twice tonight, once in the third period and once in overtime. Those are just backbreakingly stupid penalties to take, especially in those moments, and the Hawks were lucky that *those* mistakes weren’t the ones that finally cost them. And maybe you can chalk the OT one up to a twitchy whistle from the refs on a change, but that still comes back to coaching and knowing when to send your fucking players onto the ice.
For all the talk of how fun the Hawks were in their winning steak when they went back to new-old system so that the skill players could open up the ice a bit more, we haven’t seen those efforts come to fruition in the last three games. The Hawks haven’t been playing terrible, but they’re still getting boat raced at various moments in games, which is just not something you can ignore. And with Toews all but calling Colliton a fucking dumbass for playing seven D against Tampa a few days ago, it’s still clear that the locker room is not a fan of this guy. It has to end.
– Hawks are off until Tuesday when they get a rematch with these Stars at home. Until then.
Everything you need for tonight’s tilt in Texas (alliteration!)
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 9-9-4 Stars 13-8-2
PUCK DROP(S): Tonight and Tuesday at 7pm
TV: NBCSN Chicago Saturday, NBCSN Tuesday
TEXAS FLOOD: Defending Big D
It’s a bit strange that almost two months into the season, the Hawks have only played three divisional games. They haven’t seen St. Louis, or Colorado, or Minnesota, or Dallas yet. That will change over the Thanksgiving holiday, as the next five are within the Central and four of them will be amongst home-and-homes. It kicks off tonight with the first saunter of the campaign down to Texas, where the Hawks will start two against the hottest team in the league.
It’s been a miniature version of last season for the Stars, who won one of their first nine and now have ripped off 12 of their last 14. But whereas last year Jim Montgomery switched gears midseason to go all Trotz/Lemaire to shoot the Victory Green up the standings and into the playoffs, this year he’s loosened the reins a bit to give his team a little more freedom. But basically what both seasons boiled down to is either Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn are scoring or they’re not.
Montgomery even pulled the same switch as the owner last year, calling out his two stars in the press. He walked that back immediately, because he knows they’re the reason this team will be good or not, especially with John Klingberg out injured (again). Not that it didn’t work, as Seguin has piled up eight points in six games since and Benn seven. These two were playing well before of course, just weren’t getting the bounces.
It also helps that THE BISHOP has started flashing Vezina form again, which is the real strength of the team. Whatever the Stars do he is the backbone, and a .942 in November will backstop just about any system or teammates Montgomery would choose. The Hawks will duck Bishop tonight by the looks of it, but will probably see him on Tuesday in the return. Not that Anton Khudobin is some easy task either, as he also has a .942 in four November starts.
The Stars are a bit beat up, as Klingberg is a big miss and Roope Hintz being out erodes some of their depth as well (both returned on Saturday and both scored last night, so it’s pretty much the full strength Stars now). Miro Heiskanen has made up for a lot of what Klingberg would do, and has even inspired Jamie Oleksiak into some form of competence, which is a true upset.
That doesn’t mean the Stars are without depth. Joe Pavelski has gotten used to being in green and not teal of late, and is dovetailing with Alex Radulov on the second line. Even shit-demon Corey Perry has chipped in on the bottom six, and you know what Andrew Cogliano (NBA Jam voice: COGLIANO!) can do to the Hawks (and Fifth Feather’s little cartoon hearts).
Perhaps the main feature of the Stars forwards is they can adapt to a variety of styles given their IQ and speed. Montgomery certainly hasn’t shied from trying just about everything.
To the Hawks, who shouldn’t see too many changes from Thursday aside from putting the seven d-men plan into the freezer for good. As we’ve said, in a vacuum it makes sense and would make more with Adam Boqvist around. But this isn’t a vacuum, the players clearly hate it, and we likely won’t see it again for a while unless Colliton has a point to prove tonight. Certainly Dominik Kubalik has no business being scratched other than he’s the lowest hanging fruit to do so being a rookie. Enough of that shit.
The Stars are almost already out of touch for the Hawks, six points ahead though having played a game more. Still, the Hawks aren’t going to climb the standings if they can’t get wins within the division, and if they fall on their face in the next five they could be season-boned as it is. The Stars aren’t quite as stout as they insisted on being last year, but their goalies are so the Hawks will need a big performance from Lehner tonight you would think. And probably Crawford again on Tuesday. Montgomery might sense that without a puck-moving d-man, the best route for the Stars is to back up for these two and just trench the neutral zone and see what the Hawks can do about it.
The most familiar rivals for Thanksgiving. Isn’t it that way for everyone?
We, and many others, have long lamented that NHL coaching and GM hires seem to come from the same shallow and brackish pool they have for decades. Once you get one job in the league, you get 17, as comrade McClure is often fond of saying. And with that, there’s always going to be a lack of new ideas and creativity. The league just keeps rehashing the same ol’ shit.
Of course, it would help if when the new blood do get a chance, they didn’t prove to be a complete pillock. David Hakstol flamed out in Philadelphia pretty hard. You’ve seen what Jeremy Colliton can do, or can’t. Guy Boucher was an original hire a while ago. He proved he could only trap and that worked for one season. David Quinn is currently fucking with every young kid’s head in New York.
So perhaps we should take some satisfaction that the one in Dallas, Jim Montgomery, has found a path to success. Whether it involves any original thinking is up for discussion, and we’ll get into that forthwith.
Monty came in with about as much pedigree as you can get outside of the league and paying your dues as an assistant or slogging in the AHL. He turned a good U. of Denver program into a power, with two Frozen Four appearances, one NCHA conference championship, and an NCAA one to cap it off. Denver did it with a swarming, up-tempo style, which he had hoped to bring to the Stars.
It didn’t quite work that way. The Stars were a middling team last Christmas, right around .500 and just kind of treading in the fetid water of the bottom rungs of the Central and West. From there until the end of the season, the Stars went 25-16-3 to get into the playoffs, where they then upended the Nashville Predators in the first round before taking the Blues as far as you can go without winning.
Sadly, Montgomery had to do that by turning the Stars into the most boring outfit around. From Christmas on, Dallas was the most defensively tight unit in the league. They had the lowest goals-against at even-strength, top-10 in expected goals against, all the while eschewing offense as they also had the lowest goals for at even strength. They were dull as shit, trapping the will to live out of everyone but their own players and fans. Which is all that matters, really.
But when you have one of the league’s best goalies in Ben Bishop, and really a plodding defense behind John Klingberg and Miro Heiskanen, and really only one line of offense, what else are you supposed to do? Montgomery fit the system to the parts, which must be really nice.
When a coach goes the Mourinho route, generally you’ll get results for a year because limiting things means you can get a coin to land on your side more often, and when you’re reducing chances and goals you’re basically turning more and more games into coin flips. Or more likely, teams in the middle of an interminable regular season just aren’t going to want to work through you, and you are more desperate because you need the results more. And then good results start to pile up, the confidence and belief in what you’re doing grows, and there you go.
But after that, players really don’t want to work that hard without the puck for very long. Not without at least getting to play a bit more and try and score a bit more and make games easier. You can only work in the gulag for so long before you spirit breaks.
It would appear Monty figured that out, too. The Stars started the season horribly, and stood at 1-7-1 after nine games. They’ve gone 12-1-1 since. And check out their expected goals numbers as the season has gone along:
They have opened things up, and traded a little security to allow Seguin, Benn, Radulov, Pavelski et al some more space. They’ve scored 49 goals during this 14-game spree, or just about 3.5 per game.
Now it’s not all that simple. Some is just luck. Tyler Seguin has been Tyler Seguin, but only bagged two goals in the season’s first month due to just rotten luck. Ben Bishop has posted a .942 in November. Heiskanen has eight points in his last four games. Players get hot, players get cold. But the Stars have also had to negotiate around injuries to John Klingberg and Roope Hintz, two big pieces. Maybe it evens out.
It at least feels like Montgomery knows which buttons to push and when to maximize what he has. And we look on with longing eyes…
Corey Perry – Perhaps the king of all in this category. We were convinced the Hawks were doing to sign him this summer because they believe in “that element.” Maybe they realized he was another veteran who at least played with Keith, Toews, and Seabrook on Team Canada and would quickly see through Kelvin Gemstone’s shit and figured it wasn’t worth the risk. It’s gone all right for Perry so far in Dallas, but wait until the games pile up and he starts to break down. All he’ll have left are spears to the balls and punches to the back of the head through two linesmen after the whistle. This guy has been a coward his whole career and that’s while being 6-4. His permanent hang-dog expression only worsens it. We look forward to his retirement where he shuffles off to the Orange County dump to eat rats full time.
Jamie Benn – Can you call someone a twat when they’ve never seen one? Probably not.
Roman Polak – Conning yet another coach into thinking he isn’t an utter disaster. He’s Czech Seabrook, except without the passing skill and an actual beer fart for a face. More power to him for all the money’s he’s stolen, though.
