Ryan Johansen – Treat Boy here always gets labeled as one of the top centers in the game, and we still can’t figure out why. His numbers the past two seasons mirror that of Jonathan Toews, and everyone’s relatively sure he looks like the host of “Tales From The Crypt.” RyJo Sen played his ass off just long enough in 2017 to get a fat new deal from the Preds, and then he became a fat new deal. The dude has one 70+ point season. When the Preds get bounced early again, it’ll probably be because Ryan O’Reilly or Nathan MacKinnon hand him his considerable lunch.
Matt Duchene – Rich kid face with an Oakland booty!
Austin Watson – Any day now, David Poile is going to yell, “I’m so fucking glad we have Austin Watson” at some female reporter. Except it’s Nashville, so that’s probably like an every day thing there.
The chatter of late, if you have your ear to the Hawks’ wire, is that they’ve really tapped into their offense, unlocked the cheat code, their heads have gotten super huge and now all they do is the flying triple-flip dunks (man I need to play some NBA Jam soon). You can find symposiums on it here, here, or here.
We talked about it on the podcast, and before the Vegas game we did notice that the Hawks were looking to get out into space more…which is just about the aim of every team that’s worth a shit. But hey, we want the Hawks to be worth a shit, too! Colliton did let it out that they’d moved their weak-side forward closer to the point-man, because when the Hawks were recovering pucks they found that having him four feet away wasn’t leading to a lot of breakout possibilities. They were starting out with the opponent’s d-men and third forward already in front of them. The hope was that they could get behind them a bit more with a second forward ready to spring. Makes sense.
Is it really working out, though? Get ready folks, I’ve got more charts! Oh do I have charts! First, their attempts per game:
Corsi For/60
Hmm, not really much there. Kind of trending down all season. Ok, let’s try just actual shots-on-goal…
Shots For/60
Not much there either. I know, let’s got to expected goals for, because that will tell us if they’re getting better chances even with the same or slightly less amount of attempts and shots.
xGF/60
A little better. Some of this is score-effects of course, but overall the Hawks are still trending down. Now, it’s important to mention that as the season goes along, pretty much every team trends down a touch, because October hockey is the most open and then teams really start to lock it down, or stop caring about getting up the ice as fast, fatigue is probably a factor, as are injuries to key players. But still, for all the noise you’d like to think the Hawks are trending a little better than this. Could it be something else?
Shooting Percentage
Houston Hello!
Now, again, we have to be fair to the Hawks. For most of the season they were shooting below 7%, and with the snipers they have that simply was never going to continue. There was always going to be a market correction, though it would have been hard to predict this violent of one over three games.
But let’s be positive, while admitting this is far too small of a sample size to know what’s really going to happen. But check this out:
xGA/60
Whatever the Hawks have been doing, this has held pretty steady over the season. So you could say that the threat the Hawks have carried of last has kept some teams on their heels. Both the Knights and Leafs piled up shots but not exactly a ton of great chances until score-effects kicked in, and even then it wasn’t huge. The Knights especially, given how immobile their defense is in spots, were hesitant to get them too involved, and when they did we saw the amount of odd-man rushes the Hawks got in the other direction.
Will that work tomorrow in Nashville against perhaps the most mobile defense in the league? Most likely not. But the thing is, few teams have the mobility on the blue line the Preds do, and they can get overly adventurous here and there. We need more games to know for sure, and probably isn’t worth revisiting until the new year, but so far the Hawks have benefitted from their marksmanship returning to their normal levels more than some systematic change.
I should state right at the top that I’m not much one for confrontation either, and have spent a lifetime running from my problems. So to say I understand where the Hawks are coming from would be putting it lightly.
The Hawks have taken seven of the last eight points. They just got their first win over Vegas. They seem to have found a balance with what their coach wants and what the players want. They’re scoring, the goalies are playing spectacularly. They’re back to .500 and there’s at least a glimmer of hope that they could springboard from here into at least making the season interesting. It’s easy to understand why the Hawks don’t really want to be rocking the boat right now.
With that in mind, they sent Adam Boqvist back to Rockford this morning. Which means Connor Murphy is ready to go on Saturday in Nashville, for another impressive 11 minutes before something else on him goes TWANG! All makes sense. But the hard conversation is coming for the front office, so they might as well have it now.
We talked about this on the podcast, but this week is another chance to have a sit-down with Brent Seabrook. Because the clock is ticking very loudly and the Hawks have run out of ways to avoid it now. No later then next summer they’re going to have to do this, and if they are in a playoff chase (which they aren’t yet) it’s probably coming sooner. So why not get ahead of it?
Have Stan and Colliton and McDonough meet with him in Nashville or wherever the next two days, and calmly explain that they can’t keep Boqvist in Rockford forever, and it’s about winning games and he helps us do that. Again, make it clear how much Seabrook has meant to the organization and his teammates and fans. You’ve already prepared the ground a little by his double-scratching, which they handled poorly (even if it was the right decision at the base of it). Tell him this is where he is, this is where the team is going, and if that works for him or not. Assure him you’ll try and accommodate him if it doesn’t, but he should also know that a trade is hardly a guarantee given the factors involved. Just keep him informed and feeling like he has some control of the situation.
We know what Seabrook’s voice means in the dressing room, and they don’t want to lose that. But the players also want to win and get back into the playoffs. Adam Boqvist helps that cause. He helps it more than Brent Seabrook does. And though they’ll never say it out loud, the players know that too.
Sure, you could duck out of it and start scratching Olli Maatta whenever Boqvist returns. If it was good enough for the Penguins and all that. Doesn’t seem like the way this is trending.
And as we’ve said, this is coming. Even if you say that Boqvist will take Gustafsson’s spot after Gus leaves in free agency or is traded, whither Ian Mitchell? Or Nicholad Beaudin or Chad Krys if they pop up into the frame? This is precisely why you don’t trade for vets with multiple years left on their deals when you’re trying to pivot to younger d-men, but this is the bind you’ve put yourself in.
You can only put it off for so long, and everyone would be healthier if you start dealing with it now. What if Boqvist spends the next two weeks or month simply lighting up the AHL while Seabrook continues to gasp for air? And if the power play goes stale? And the record never really gets far away from .500 in either direction?
There will only be one answer. Best to start preparing for it now.
Holy shit, that was fun. I would like every game to be like this going forward. Air raid, motherfuckers. Let’s clean it up.
– Corey Crawford is a goddamn treasure and he should have his number retired. Nights like tonight remind you just how important he’s been to this team for the last nine years. Per usual, the Hawks got mauled in shots on goal, but Corey Crawford could not give less of a fuck about that if he took a vow of celibacy. He made 39 saves on 42 shots, including about 10 high-danger saves. Not one of the goals he gave up was on him. He kept the Hawks ahead in the second, when the Knights pressed the hardest. He even got called for a bullshit “throwing object” penalty and withstood a Marchessault penalty shot.
We say this just about every game, but without the goaltending, this is a route. Corey Crawford was the star of this shootout.
– The 12–17–88 line was furious tonight. DeBrincat and Strome were nails with their passing, and Garbage Dick scored a much-needed answer goal in the first. On that goal, DeBrincat shrugged off pressure from Karlsson and left a soft pass for Strome along the far boards. Then, Strome fired a cross-ice pass to a streaking Kane, who was left all alone for a quick one timer.
Then, for the coup de grace in the third, Strome took a backhand saucer pass from DeBrincat up the middle and potted the Hawks’s fifth goal high glove side. The Hawks scored three of their five high glove.
– Kirby Dach is going to be a special player. I bitched and moaned when they took him over Byram, but I’m happy to be entirely fucking wrong about that. Can you believe that his goal was probably the second most impressive play he made tonight? And boy, what a goal it was. Zack Smith (more on him shortly) made Ryan Reaves look like, well, Ryan Reaves, along the near boards, angling a pass toward Ryan Carpenter. Carpenter pushed the puck up to Dach, who stuffed home his own rebound after Flower’s initial denial. That would have been impressive enough. But check this fucking shit out:
Seabrook makes a pass up the boards to a well-covered Dach. Despite getting imprisoned along the boards by Nick “The” Hague, Dach managed to shovel a one-handed pass to Zack Smith (there’s that name again), who then fed a pass to de Haan for the Hawks’s second goal. The strength and poise to make a play like that is exceptional, and Dach made it look easy. Just imagine what he’s going to do with 30 extra pounds. Plus, he led all Hawks in possession and was one of just four Hawks to finish above water (Maatta, Carpenter, DeBrincat). Holy shit, what fun.
– Calvin de Haan put on a “Fuck Your Analytics” clinic. He and Seabrook may have gotten pasted in possession to the tune of a 29+ and 34+ CF%, respectively, but it didn’t matter. De Haan’s goal was a masterful high-glove shot. Though we usually scoff at blocks, each of de Haan’s three was purposeful. His defense after the first period was essential.
Yeah, his piss coverage on the PK—wherein he floated toward the near boards to cover a low-risk Marchessault, giving Karlsson a parting-of-the-Red-Sea-sized lane to drive down—led to a goal. And his questionable coverage of Patches earlier in the first period—covering Patches, who was skating behind the net, by flying in front of Crawford—nearly led to another goal. But he tightened up in the second and third and was the good kind of noticeable the rest of the way. Fuck Corsi, indeed.
– I would like to officially take back any bad things I’ve ever said about Zack Smith. A penalty shot, two outstanding assists, embarrassing Ryan Reaves more so than Ryan Reaves does naturally, and a 100 GF% is quite a night. He was one of the most fun guys to watch out there tonight.
– Nylander had a couple of nice passes again, sandwiched between a few bad turnovers and a lot of invisibility. Conversely, Kubalik was quiet most of the night until the end of the second, when he had two prime chances stuffed. I get not wanting to change what’s working (for whatever reason it’s working), but I’d like to see those two flip spots. Just to see.
– With Connor Murphy coming back this weekend, this was likely the last we’ve seen of Boqvist for a while. It’s dumb, but I guess in context, it makes sense. He had a really strong first period (72+ CF%, 89+ xGF%), but he sort of tapered off as the game went on. We would have loved to see him on the PP1 instead of Keith, but Colliton is in this weird hockey libertarian phase right now. His interference penalty in the third wasn’t all bad though, as he showed that when he puts his ass into it, he can overpower NHL players. Small things.
– I’m only going to mention how bad Brent Seabrook looked because he is a seventh D-man whom the Hawks are too scared to scratch for Boqvist’s sake. He was overmatched by the Knights’s speed all night and didn’t really have a single positive contribution. It’s profoundly stupid that he gets to play over Boqvist, because Boqvist—for all his greenness—is still a bigger threat.
– Erik Gustafsson is coming back to life. He was uneven on the defensive side, which is good for him. His goal was a prime example of what he can do when he plays with talented players. Strome fed him a perfect pass from just above the goal line, giving Gus a chance to skate one way and shoot the other. Let’s hope that he continues to score so the Hawks can get more than a bag of pucks for him at the deadline.
It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s fun. If the Hawks continue to commit to the air raid, they’re going to win more games than if they go back to whatever the fuck MAGIC TRAINING CAMP produced. It looks more like individual brilliance than anything systemic, but for now, who gives a shit? Just win, baby.
Also, fuck the Knights.
Beer du Jour: Jefferson’s Very Small Batch and Bell’s Best Brown
Line of the Night: “Almost touched it in the restricted area as that puck was coming hot and heavy.” –Eddie O.
The Hawks will begin a mini-roadie through the nouveau riche of the NHL, with tonight’s stop in Sin City before heading to Music City on Saturday night. Clearly Sin and Music go together, as every person who’s thrown a bible at you has told you.
And these are not two venues that many in the following will be greeting giddily. We know what happened to the Hawks the last time they were in Nashville, and they have yet to get a point out of Vegas in two seasons and three trips. In fact, they’ve been done to the tune of a combined 13-7 there, and last year’s 4-3 loss was the only time they were within a zip code of the Knights in their own resort.
You can debate whether or not it’s a good time to catch a team after they’ve lost four of five and six of eight. Clearly, they’re not playing well. But also clearly, they’re probably pretty angry and going to come out with a fair measure of piss and vinegar. Especially as those four losses for the Knights were on the road and this is their first home game since. The archers and drummers will be even more amped up.
Not that there weren’t some bad losses for them on their recent trip. There are few excuses you can come up with to justify losing to Detroit and barely squeaking by Columbus in regulation. OT losses in Winnipeg and Toronto are more understandable, as is getting kicked to shits by the Caps in DC. Just kind of a thing they do these days. That all happened to Vegas.
And it’s mostly because the offense has dried up. They scored 10 goals in those five games, and they haven’t managed more than three goals in any game in November, nor more than two in their last four. They only managed 19 shots in their loss to Detroit, which was definitely a “Let’s get this the fuck over with and get home” kind of effort. They kind of did the same thing against Columbus, which sort of indicates they’re picking their spots a bit.
Don’t worry, the Knights are still going to be annoying all season. They’re still one of the better metric teams around, and they produce just about as good and as many chances as anyone, ranking third in xGF/60 at evens. They’ve had issues with the other side, as they’re barely middling in the ones they’ve given up, and that might have something to do with having a pretty immobile defense beyond Nate Schmidt. They’re also unlucky in that they’re shooting less than 7% as a team, and they can’t get too many saves with just a .909 at evens. The former will straighten itself out before too long. The latter…
…maybe not so much. As you know by know. Seabiscuit lookalike Marc-Andre Fleury is old and has been abhorrent of late, with an .877 SV% over his last five starts. Malcolm Subban isn’t going to save any team, and counting on him for more than a spot start here and there is going to lead to a downfall. The Knights had better hope for that goals-explosion soon, because there’s a more than zero chance their goaltending just never quite comes around again. They’re just going to count on a soon-to-be 35-year-old Fleury to find it.
Still, this is a test of the Hawks apparently new “system” of being more open and adventurous…which saw them give up 57 shots to a barely interested Leafs team. If the Knights are fully engaged, then they might give up 75. This is a team the Hawks really haven’t come close to being able to run with since they came into existence, and now they apparently seem intent on going toe-to-toe with just about anyone, it could be ugly. It could also be the only way.
The Hawks almost got their first regulation win against the Knights the last time they played, but that involved maxing out while the Knights were kind of only there. And even that got them a last-minute equalizer. The Hawks were able to skate with them in the neutral zone and Duncan Keith had his best game in three seasons or so to cut off things at the blue line. That game also cost the Hawks Connor Murphy, which indicates some of the strain of the effort.
The tweaks the Hawks have made are meant to get their forwards out against d-men they’re either faster than or more skilled than or both, and usually that will be the case. It will be here, as you want to get isolate in space against the likes of McNabb and Engelland and Holden. The problem is you have to sacrifice a bit the help you’re giving your d-men to get out from under the frightening speed of the Knights forwards, so how the Hawks escape will go a long way to indicating where this one will go. Can the Hawks D find enough time to even just chip off the glass and behind the Knights defensemen for their forwards to skate onto?
Good test for Boqvist tonight too, as this is the exact type of opponent the Hawks need him for while also being the one he has to figure out how to get out from under. He has the feet to actually open himself up and get the Hawks into the neutral zone and beyond, and he’s the only one, but he also has to navigate his way through the furious Knights forecheck which has buried basically all of his teammates on the blue line in every meeting. See how he handles it.
If the Hawks are serious about taking their hand off the throttle, then it won’t be boring. At this point, we can’t ask for much more.
If you want to feel better about organizational methods, it’s always good to laugh at someone else. It doesn’t mean your team is run any better, but at least you know there are other idiots along with you. Misery loves company, and so does idiocy. AMERICA.
Cast your mind back three years ago, when the Montreal Canadiens traded PK Subban to Nashville. Part of the reason they did that was they felt he was a problem in the dressing room, and the reason they felt like that was their captain Max Pacioretty pretty much made that clear. Because Pacioretty is the most boring person in the world and adheres to the strict hockey code that no one can ever be interesting in any way, or something.
Well, less than two years later Pacioretty was gone to Vegas, so that’s some excellent long-term planning there. And the Habs haven’t won a playoff series since all this started anyway. Sounds a touch familiar. Strange that Les Habitants are run by a former Hawks employee, no?
Not that Pacioretty has been all that glorious himself. A big reason the Canadiens decided to punt him before he hit free agency is they felt he was already on the decline. And there was reason to think that. His last year in Montreal saw him play only 64 games, and score just 17 goals. And while a 4.7% shooting-percentage at even-strength and an 8% overall just aren’t Patches numbers, there were other warning signs. We would never trust Marc Bergevin to actually heed them, but maybe he got it right anyway.
Pacioretty’s chances and attempts were dropping. After topping out in ’15-’16 with exactly an 1.00 xGF/60, he had declined in the next two seasons. His attempts per game also fell by a quarter in the next two seasons. Same with his scoring chances. Pacioretty simply wasn’t getting to the same areas. A shooting-percentage spike saved one of those seasons, but he fell to just 17 goals in his last season in the Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge.
Things didn’t improve much in his first year in the desert, either. Patches once again saw his body let him down, as he only played 66 games last year. He did manage 22 goals, but still wasn’t anywhere near the 35-goal machine he had been in Montreal and which the Knights probably thought they were getting some version of when they traded for him and gave him an additional five years on his contract. Again, his metrics continued to slip.
It appears that slide has arrested, at least in the open environs of October hockey.
So far, Patches is averaging more shots per game than he has at any point in his career. His expected-goals is higher than at any time since he became a genuine top-line threat. His attempts per 60 are up around 2016 levels. So even though he’s getting no luck with a 7% shooting-percentage overall, he’s still managed six goals and you’d expect with the chances he’s getting that he’s going to have a binge here pretty soon. Just hopefully not tonight, but when has anything like that worked out for the Hawks against the Knights?
You can probably thank Mark Stone‘s arrival for this. All of Patches’s numbers took a bump up when Stone was on the other side of Paul Stastny from him, and that’s continued this year. Although it could be argued he’s having just as big of an impact on Stone, as in very limited time without each other (just 57 minutes or so), it’s Stone’s numbers that fall off a cliff more than Pacioretty’s. Either way, they make for quite the force. Especially in the playoffs last year, where Pacioretty threw up 11 points in just seven games against the Sharks. Too bad he doesn’t kill penalties though, huh?
They’d better. Pacioretty’s contract was starting to have real potential to become James Neal-like if he’d continued tumbling down the mountainside. He’s signed until he’s 34, and power forwards do not tend to age well in a league that keeps getting faster. And we’ve been over how capped out the Knights are in the near future.
That’s a worry for another day though, because the Knights look primed to take another serious run at a less and less impressive Western Conference. Pacioretty is going to have a major role in that.
Ryan Reaves: It was ever thus. In the latest instance of why garbage cans like this have to be tossed out of the league but never will, we present Reaves’s bullshit with Adam Lowry. Last week, Lowry hit Alex Tuch. Was it totally clean? Perhaps not. It certainly wasn’t completely malicious either. But of course, whether it was clean or not doesn’t really matter, does it? Because players and teams lose their mud over clean hits all the time. Which is another thing the league needs to do away with.
So on Lowry’s next shift, and this is something that actually happens in this league that any other sport would suspend a coach a quarter of a season for, Gerard Gallant sent Ryan Reaves to take the draw against Lowry. You can imagine where it goes from here, and no, he doesn’t fix the cable.
This is clearly, patently ridiculous, and the only reason a player like Reaves–who can’t do anything else–is even in the league. The fight didn’t make Tuch less hurt. It didn’t take the hit away. Nor will it deter Lowry from hitting anyone else. This is just macho bullshit so everyone can feel like they did something while accomplishing exactly nothing but making the league look Mickey Mouse and opening up even more players to concussion problems. Oh you so tough, Gallant.
But of course, you’ll find it championed on the league’s broadcast partner’s site. Which pretty much tells you what the league thinks of this stupid and seedy underbelly.
You may think we’re being hypocritical, given that Jonathan Toews went after Jake Muzzin on Sunday for a clearly dirty hit on Alex Nylander. In the moment, it’s hard to not understand. And also, Toews is an actual player. This isn’t his only use. He doesn’t have to justify his existence through this kind of thing, which makes it even more noticeable when he does this kind of thing. It was also in the spur of the moment, not planned out like Gallant and Reaves to exact a pound of flesh for perceived injustices.
Gallant planned this out and sent Reaves out to do his dirty work. We know Gallant played in the 80s with the asshole-riven Wings, but that time is past. But the league will never look twice.
Brayden McNabb: Sneaky dirty. We didn’t realize until last meeting. But as he gets slower he gets much more cross-check-ier.
vs. 
