Everything to get you ready for tonight’s festival of fun at 1901 West.
vs. 
RECORDS: Lightning 9-7-2 Hawks 9-8-4
PUCK DROP: 7:30
TV: NBCSN Chicago
THE GUYS WHO DON’T LOOK LIKE XQUISITE: Raw Charge
It may sound strange to say the Hawks have more points than the Lightning, but that’s the case as the two ’15 Finalists get together again on West Madison. But of course, as we know here, that doesn’t mean the Hawks are better off than the Bolts. The Hawks collected their 22 points in the Cirque de Stupid that is the Central Division and Western Conference as a whole, whereas the Lightning are trying to fight through the gauntlet of the Atlantic. And one of these teams did put up 128 points last year, while the other missed the lowest bar for the playoffs in years by a good distance. And not that much has changed.
That’s not to say everything is rosy in Tampa. They’re sitting just three points above the Eastern cellar, though only two points out of the last playoff spot. While watching the Lightning, or trying to measure them by various metrics, it’s kind of clear that there’s still a malaise from last spring hanging over and in this team. Nothing they do in the regular season is going to matter to anyone, but sadly with the division they’re in they can’t play the whole regular season like it doesn’t matter. Which is kind of what they’ve been doing. Other than their power play, which has reached that “self aware” level, everything else is just meh. Right in the middle of the league.
The Lightning still score, as their overall goals-per-game and even-strength goals per game are in the top five. With the king of marksmen like Kucherov and Stamkos and Point and others, they don’t need to dominate possession to get the scoring they need. Which is good, because they aren’t. Their possession and expected goals numbers re firmly middle of the pack. Again, they can get away with that given the talent for long stretches, but it’s not ideal long-term.
Especially as they may not get the PDO balance at the other end right now. When picking through the rubble of last season’s meltdown in the first round, it was hard not to start with Andrei Vasilevskiy‘s .856 SV%. Anyone can have a bad four games of course, but any big save from Vas in at least Games 1 or 2 could have pivoted that series. The Bolts never got one. That hangover seems to have carried over to this season, where he’s carrying a .906. The Hawks will get the backup tonight, as Curtis McElhinney will take the start.
And that’s probably the biggest factor for the Bolts to get back on track, because they don’t give up a ton of great chances. They’re not among the league’s best, but comfortably in the top half. If Vas can get back to .915 or better, everything should be fine in Tampa.
It also might not hurt the Lightning that they’ve only played seven home games so far, and after this one tonight 14 of their next 17 will be in Tampa. You wouldn’t be shocked by a charge up the standings before New Year’s.
To the Hawks, who could or could not be with Andrew Shaw tonight. He didn’t practice yesterday so they’re going to see how he shows up tonight. If he doesn’t go, the Hawks will dress all seven d-men as they don’t have an extra forward at the moment with Drake Caggiula in a dark room somewhere (my whole life is a dark room…). Every time in the past the Hawks have tried the 7-D look it has gone horribly, and everyone bitches to high heaven about it after. I still think it should be something they try more often and with Boqvist involved, if only to shelter him and Seabrook better. It also provides extra shifts here and there for Kane, Toews, Saad, Dach, DeBrincat, which is a good thing. But what do I know? I’m just a drunk in the rain. Corey Crawford will be your starter.
The Hawks got embarrassed twice by the Lightning last year, though no scoreline truly reflects it. This was the opponent that put up 30 shots in a period on them at the United Center last time around. Quite simply, the Hawks aren’t built to deal with this kind of skill and speed. And really, neither of those things have changed.
The difference, albeit small, between what the Hawks saw on Tuesday and what they’ll get tonight is the Lightning defense isn’t as consistently mobile as Carolina’s. Sure, Hedman and Kirk ShattenKevin are, and Sergachev and Cernak are too. But Sergachev can get wayward when under pressure, and whether it’s Schenn or Rutta joining him that can be exploited. So can Ryan McDonagh on the second pairing. Whereas the Hawks couldn’t get behind Carolina’s last line, they can on this one.
Which means some other d-men besides Connor Murphy have to get the puck out of the zone as quickly as possible to get the defense to back up, which in turn will give everyone more room to breathe. As we saw last year, when the Hawks try their 17-pass breakout, the Lightning’s plus-plus speed at forward and on the forecheck swallows them whole and spits them back out inside out. There just isn’t time for that, at least not until you back them up by proving you can and will stretch the ice.
It’s a rough part of the schedule, as the Hawks again get one of the better teams in the league, whatever the standings say, before two with the hottest team in the league and then two with maybe the best team in the division. But if you want to go somewhere, you can’t always take the path of least resistance.
Sometimes your aimless speculation turns into reality. You should probably just accept the good fortune that makes you look prescient instead of questioning the randomness of the fates.
Yesterday, Mike Babcock was fired, which started a flicker that could turn into a full out flame of wondering and soon rumors that he could find his way to Chicago. If the Hawks were to fall on their face at any point this season and miss the playoffs by a huge margin, Jeremy Colliton‘s position would certainly be awkward if not untenable. Babcock’s name has cache, would command respect immediately from the main vets in the room (three of whom have played for him at the Olympic level), and at least provide a floor of professionalism and structure.
It would also be the wrong move.
We broke down why it would be on the podcast, so let’s shift the focus. We’ve had a lot of fun with Jon Cooper around here (a lot of fun), but what that doesn’t change is that he’s a very good coach. Perhaps the leader in the “Not A Moron” category in our binary system of rating coaches around the league.
The Lightning have never finished with less than 94 points under his watch, now in its 7th season. The one year they missed the playoffs, Steven Stamkos played just 17 games, Ben Bishop was hurt as well and Andrei Vasilevskiy was making his first foray into being a starter. And they still gathered 94 points. He was the captain on the ship that gobbled up 128 points last year.
Moreover, Cooper has been able to integrate and develop a wave of young talent to turn the Lightning into a power. First it was the Triplets of Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov, and Ondrej Palat, with the middle guy there becoming an MVP. Of late it’s been Brayden Point and Yanni Gourde and Mikhail Sergachev and Eric Cernak. He knows how to put people in the places they will have the best chance of succeeding. And he plays an up-tempo, get up the ice style that meshes with what the NHL is these days.
Mike Babcock does none of these things.
However, Babs’s name will carry more weight because of the trophy cabinet, a mark Cooper has yet to make. Two conference finals, a Final appearance, and all were lost to modern dynasties by the tightest of margins (yes, it’s a stretch to call the Caps that, but their decade-spanning stay atop their division certainly makes them one of the teams of the era). No other coach around is matching that aside from Mike Sullivan in Pittsburgh of late, aside from one Joel Quenneville.
Which you might think would make it pure fantasy that Cooper could even get fired, let alone come to Chicago. But is it? Along with that record-breaking season last year comes the weight of the embarrassing first-round collapse. And as the malaise from that has carried over into this season, one wonders how much the pressure is already ramping up. The enduring image of Cooper at the moment are his exclamations of “This is our chance!” during Game 4 in Columbus last year when an offsides challenge had canceled out a Jackets goal.
Really? You had the greatest team of the modern era, or at least the best regular season, and this is what you need to get past a team 35 points behind you in the standings? Clearly, it wasn’t their chance.
Cooper has to wear that, though there isn’t anything a coach is going to do about a goalie who puts up an .856 SV% over four games. Still, the Lightning seemed to freeze in the headlights after a Game 1 loss.
Which isn’t fair, because Cooper has playoff success on his resume, which means he’s instilled a confidence and fight in his team before. Couldn’t it just be an anomaly?
Still, this Lightning team is now as Cup-or-bust as it gets. And sitting second-last in the Atlantic probably isn’t what the front office had in mind when they basically held the line on personnel this summer (as they should have). Could they get itchy? Could they conclude something broke last spring and only a new voice will snap the players over that hurdle? Not so outlandish, is it?
Should it happen, the Hawks should be all over Cooper. Maybe he doesn’t carry the cache of Babcock, but you know what? He’s the better coach. If you’re a Hawks fan hoping for a seismic change behind the bench, this is the one you want.
Pat Maroon – A fine fourth liner, and yet he’ll get to wear the label of “the final ingredient” because he happened to be on the Blues last year and from St. Louis. Oh sure, he scored the goal that beat the Stars, a team that took the Blues to seven games even though they couldn’t actually score. And after their first round debacle, the Lightning felt they were missing something, which actually was a goalie who didn’t spend all four games sneezing bending himself into a pretzel but they thought was some goof on the fourth line. What happens if the Bolts go out early again? Does Maroon lose his magic?
Cedric Paquette – Remember when this dingleberry couldn’t wait to suck up all the press about how he was the ultimate pest in Game 3 of the ’15 Final because he had one good game? Yeah, well, Toews ate his heart the rest of the series and the Lightning scored two more goals. Never heard from him again.
Kirk ShattenKevin – Because the Hawks could have had him for the same song the Bolts got him, and they needed his mobility more than Tampa did. But that would take actual vision, and not clogging up your blue line with multi-year deals for the likes of Olli Maatta.
Lightning
Notes: Kucherov suffered a concussion on Tuesday against St. Louis (go figure), so he’s out tonight which shifts Stamkos to the top line wing and Johnson back to center…The Hawks will get a look at the backup tonight in McElhinney…Jan Rutta might replace Schenn in the lineup on the third pairing, which…Yeehah!…Hedman has eight points in his last five games…Point hasn’t scored in November…
Hawks
Notes: Shaw is a gametime decision. If he doesn’t go the Hawks will dress seven d-men, which has been just short of a disaster every time they’ve tried it, and also causes mass bitching from Seabrook and Keith…Toews has strung three good games together, and if Point is left to Kampf he might get an easier matchup tonight…Dach finished the last game with Kane and DeBrincat, see if they go back to that if things aren’t clicking again…
Rose, Sam, and I discuss the recent “streak”, as well as the viability of a recently dismissed head coach. No subscription required, audio after the jump.
I like to do this at the watermarks of the season. If you’re new, and some of you shockingly are, I take an analytic look where I can on where the major hardware should go, but sometimes won’t, at this point in the season. For the most part, it sticks to where you think it would go anyway, but sometimes it diverges. Anyway, to it…
Hart Trophy – Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl Split It
This would certainly drive the hockey world mad, and you’ll have more than enough saying that Draisaitl’s stats and success are merely based on playing with McDavid. And I could probably accept that, and if they just wanted to hand it to McDavid I wouldn’t complain. McDavid is almost certainly going to wind up like Mike Trout, where he wins three or four of these and then when he retires we realize he probably should have won eight or nine and there was no good reason he didn’t.
Either way, the Oilers suck to high heaven and yet are comfortably in first in the Pacific because of these two. They are both leading the NHL in scoring at 44 and 43 points. No one else on their team has more than 17. Along with their linemate James Neal, they have 43 goals. The rest of the team has 33. If you were to go totally rudimentary on this, the rest of the team is getting slightly beyond one goal per game. These two are accounting for over two.
Norris Trophy – John Carlson
Believe me, this seemed way too obvious for me but it’s hard to make a case for anyone else. And he’s already going to win it, given the buzz his point total at this point has generated. When you’re a defenseman and you’re on pace for 124 points, people tend to take notice.
So I looked for a metric way to get beyond Carlson, but he’s ahead of the team-rate in Coris and expected goals. The argument that will be brought out by someone is that he doesn’t play great defense. But the Caps are scoring 50% more goals when he’s on the ice than they give up, and the whole point of the fucking sport is to score more goals than the other team. Carlson is helping the Caps do that more than anyone.
You could make a small case for Dougie Hamilton, as his possession numbers are better. But beyond that, his argument would be the same one for Carlson. Kris Letang has actually been magnificent for the strangely dominant-at-evens Penguins, but as always he’s been ouchy and isn’t scoring enough.
If there were a Rod Langway Award–for best defensive defenseman–and he had been healthy, I could make a serious case for Connor Murphy here. No, seriously, I can. Murph has the second best relative Corsi-against rate in the league, and the second-best expected goals-against rate. While the Hawks remain The War Rig at the end of Fury Road defensively overall, they’re actually somewhat stout when Murphy is on the ice. No d-man has improved his team’s defense more than Murphy. It won’t get him any hardware, and it’ll probably only get him traded in the offseason as the Hawks continue to cower in fear of Seabrook and need to find room for Boqvist, Mitchell, et al, but everyone should know just how good Murphy has been.
Vezina – Robin Lehner
Fuck you, let’s go with the hometown vote. While Kuemper and Greiss have better SV%, they’re playing behind better defensive teams. So is every other goalie on the planet, essentially. Those two also have bigger differences when it comes to expected save percentages and expected goals and such, but Lehner has had to have great games while still giving up three or four to keep it from being 10. We know what Trotz systems do for goalies. We probably know what Colliton systems do for then too, and it ain’t the same. Lehner has had to perform miracles to keep the Hawks on the periphery of they playoff chase. And I’ll be goddamned if I’m handing anything to Darcy Goddamn Kuemper.
Calder – Cale Makar
This one isn’t even close. Makar is blowing away the rookie scoring race from the blue line, and he has a +7 relative xG%. While the Avs have gone without Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel ThreeYaksAndADog for a good portion of the season, they’re still hanging around the top of the conference with games in hand on everyone because of Makar and MacKinnon. He’s been everything as advertised, and is probably the best hope for a non-truly evil team to come out of the West this year.
Selke – J.T. Miller
Most voters would light themselves on fire before they give this award to a winger, which is why Marian Hossa doesn’t have the three he should, but if you dig deep on the metrics it’s pretty clear. Miller sits atop the rankings when it comes to attempts and expected goals against relative to his team, and in both cases it’s by some margin. Oh, and because morons care about this, he’s been taking Elias Pettersson‘s draws for the most part and is clipping in at a 59% win rate. So there.
Once again, and this was a mistake I made a ton in the past and shouldn’t have given my family’s proclivities, the Hawks are not at “the quarter pole.” That’s when there’s a quarter of the season left. Anyway, the Hawks played their 21st game last night, which crosses the 1/4th threshold. So let’s do a basic version of what you’ll see at times like this, and try and suss out what the fuck these Hawks are, hmmm?
Biggest Surprise
Duncan Keith – I know, it’s kind of ridiculous to categorize a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer (and a genuine one at that, not some ridiculous Hockey Hall of Fame version of that) as a surprise. But Keith has been fading for at least the past two seasons previous to this, and you could argue it even started the season before that which became evident when the Nashville Predators turned him into a fine paste in the Hawks’ ever so brief appearance in those playoffs.
Keith had been openly prickly with his coach last year, and it was not outlandish to suggest he had just checked out and if you squinted you could see a path to him asking out and playing somewhere else (despite his denials of that late last season). Before this season, Keith’s current rep wasn’t all that much higher than Seabrook’s, if you were honest with yourself. It was thought that he could still have use as a second or third pairing player, but that would still leave the Hawks with a major gap at the top. And that would only be if he felt like it, no sure bet, and was willing to shape his game to compensate for his age.
Well, Keith has been better than that, for the most part. It hasn’t always been perfect, but there certainly have been a few games or more where he’s at least reminded of you of what he was, which is the best Hawks d-man there’s ever been. Not to say he’s been at that level, but it at least looked like that same guy who could once do that, where before it just seemed like an alien form. Especially with Connor Murphy, which hadn’t worked in the past, Keith was again stepping up beyond his blue line–and successfully–while playing the angles only he could see again. Of late, he’s actually been happy to play free safety for Erik Gustafsson, something he’s blanched at before.
Keith’s actual metrics mirror the team’s in the “horror show” category, but his relative marks are the highest they’ve been in three or four seasons. The Hawks are simply better when he’s on the ice, and that hasn’t been the case in a while.
Biggest Disappointment/Question Mark
Jonathan Toews – This may not be the time to write this, because the past three games have been better from Toews. He managed CF% of 54, 64, and 63 the past three, which is far better than when he was getting his skull kicked in earlier in the year. We’re used to slow starts from Toews, last season aside, but he had looked particularly behind the play in the season’s first month or so.
Still, four goals and 11 points has him on pace for just 15 goals and 42 points, and and the 3% shooting-percentage at evens and 8% overall would suggest that he’s due some correction. But his individual attempts and chances are down to 2016 levels, which is when all this talk of decline started. And for the most part he’s been paired up with the Hawks most consistent forward in Brandon Saad.
It’s left a question as to how exactly the Hawks can, should, and will be able to use Toews going forward. He no longer is the center who can do everything, which is fine. He shouldn’t have to be at 32. But can he actually slide down the lineup to accommodate Kirby Dach and play more of a checking role? Is he up to that? Can he score enough from here on out to justify manning the top line? What is he willing to do? He’s never been asked that, and the time may soon be coming. He can avoid that with a binge, but it hasn’t really looked like coming.
And if it doesn’t, there will be more ugly questions for a coach and front office that has done its best to duck them for as long as they can.
Biggest Storyline
The Seabrook Saga – It’s going to hang over the Hawks all season, and it didn’t have to. Perhaps the AHL’s more physical/neanderthal ways will keep Adam Boqvist from really lighting up the statsheet and causing more pressure on the Stan Bowman and Jeremy Colliton. They’ll never admit it, but somewhere within them they may be hoping for that. But as the Canes showed last night, the Hawks simply aren’t quick enough or anywhere near it to compete at the top of the NHL, and maybe not even the middle. Boqvist proved already he’s an NHL player, and can help them with they speed they lack.
This is only going to get worse as the season rolls on, and the Hawks can’t always count on injuries to help them shuffle the deck to keep avoiding the question. Well, maybe with Connor Murphy they can. Maybe they can start to pin it on Olli Maatta to keep avoiding the big decision. But his double scratching earlier in the year will not be the last time this rears its uncomfortable-looking head.
Team MVP
Robin Lehner – With Corey Crawford taking a couple weeks to find his rhythm, which much like Toews has usually been the case, the Hawks would have been utterly buried without Lehner. Even when they did lose, he kept them from truly morale-sapping results in Nashville and San Jose that might have turned things for the organization. There are seven or eight or even nine points on the board right now that he had a major hand in, and without even half of them the Hawks would be rooted to the bottom of the NHL standings. Crawford is joining him now, which has led to this streak of competence (or competent results), but it wouldn’t have mattered in the least without Lehner’s season-long efforts.
Dach Report
Solid B – We may look upon last night as some sort of turning point, as for the third period Dach replaced Dylan Strome with DeBrincat and Kane. That line produced both goals, and while I doubt that’s how they’ll start Thursday, you can bet this is a switch that Colliton will pull again.
Dach has been pretty well sheltered, as he should be, mostly playing on the third and fourth line 10-12 minutes and almost always starting in the offensive zone. Which is how he should be spoon-fed at his age, and the Hawks have the flexibility to do that. But that might be running out, thanks to Toews’s waywardness and Dach’s precociousness. He’s sixth in rookie scoring even though he’s played six to eight games less than everyone ahead of him, and has made a play or two every night that makes you take notice.
We’re not too far off from Dach having to play higher up the lineup, which is exciting and daunting. He’s already gotten less and less of his tendency to glide out of his game, and has not shied away from doing the work low and on the boards to make plays. He still can get a little lost in his own zone, but so can the whole team, and the Hawks have tried to keep him from being there at all as much as they can.
Now get him on the power play and stop with this Nylander nonsense on that unit.
This game was extremely boring for about 53 minutes, then the Hawks made some shit happen but ultimately not enough. Carolina pretty much waxed the Hawks asses for most of the night but even that wasn’t all that interesting, so I just spent most of the time thinking about how much I still love and miss Teuvo Teravainen. I still love and miss him a lot, you guys. Remember when he took over a Stanley Cup Final game? Remember when he got the Stanley Cup and looked like the happiest boy ever? Remember when he talked about how horny Chicago girls were, like an innocent little boy? I remember all of that. I still remember where I was when I heard he was traded and how disappointed I was.
I was very disappointed. I still have his jersey, though. I will never get rid of it.
Oh yeah, this game. I almost forgot about that. Here are your bullets:
THE BULLETS MISS TEUVO, TOO
– Look, as an avid baseball fan and especially as a fan of a rebuilding baseball team with a good farm system, I fully understand the value of extended control of should-be-elite young players. So I get why the Blackhawks sent Adam Boqvist back to Rockford last week, keeping him short of 10 NHL games this year and allowing the first year of his ELC to slide to next year, at least if everything keeps as is. It is, as they say, smart business.
With all of that being said, Boqvist being in the AHL to “develop” while we are forced to watch Erik Gustafsson play hockey at the NHL level is insulting to our intelligence. Maybe I am a bit too high on Boqvist in his current state or too low on Gus, but I am fairly certain that there is not any one thing that Gustafsson does any better than Boqvist does right now. Boqvist could absolutely use some improvement in his defensive zone and using his body to out-muscle guys, but even with that in mind I believe that those two players are a wash right now. Boqvist obviously has the higher ceiling and is part of the long term plans. This is all Gustafsson is and will ever be, and he will be (or should be) gone after the season.
The bigger problem here really is that you can’t quite get rid of Gus at this point in time. Nobody is probably ready to move for a defenseman of his ilk quite yet, so you wouldn’t get much of consequence. In reality, Gustafsson should’ve been gone at the deadline or the draft, and obviously we all know that and have beaten this horse to death so many times we’re now beating its grandson. But truthfully, I am of the opinion that anything you can get for Gustafsson is a win considering he can walk for free in July, and replacing him with Boqvist is a net-win for the organ-i-zation because Boqvist will develop in the NHL while playing important minutes.
Thank you for attending my TED Talk.
– Kirby Dach is going to be a gosh darn DUDE. I am have to admit I am still of the opinion that the Hawks should’ve taken Bowen Byram, but I am inching ever closer to thinking Dach was, indeed, the correct pick. Obviously at just 18 there are plenty of areas he still needs to work on, but he is doing enough well right now, as an 18-year-old, for me to feel very confident that he will be very good for a long time.
– I don’t want to get too giardiniera-soaked here, but how Sebastian Aho did not get penalized for his hit on Patrick Kane in the last minute is beyond me. Quite frankly, the refs could’ve spun a fuckin’ wheel and picked the penalty. It was a Cross Check (1) From Behind (2) on a player that didn’t have the puck (3- interference) and he shoved him into the boards (4 – boarding). And he got nothing! Normally I am not a fan of hockey players getting their panties in a twist and talking shit about plays way after the fact, but Kane getting in Aho’s face later and getting penalized accordingly was good, IMO. Toews and Teuvo got into it as well, but I imagine that Teuvo was just telling Toews how much he misses Chicago and wants to come back.
– I miss you, too, Teuvo. Come back to me.
– Hawks go next on Thursday when they welcome Tampa Bay to town. Until then.
