Everything you need for tonight’s game against the Caps…
vs. 
RECORDS: Capitals 5-2-2 Hawks 2-2-1
PUCK DROP: 6pm
TV: NBCSN Chicago/NHLN Outside the 606
WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS: Japers Rink
The Hawks come in to their first game of the year on a positive base, though perhaps a touch lucky to have their second win of two. So the Hawks have a chance for their first “winning streak” of the season. The challenge is that to get to there, they’ll have to go through one of the hotter teams in the league.
The Washington Capitals come in with the second-highest point-total in the East, tied with the Penguins atop the Metro which has been their apartment for the past few seasons. Their two regulation losses have come against the Predators and Avalanche, who have been a problem for America so far on the nascent season. And they’re doing it a little differently so far than they have.
In the past, at least the last couple seasons, the Caps were not a great team when measured metrically. But they’re finishing talent would always outshoot what the chances and attempts said they should have, because when you have Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, TJ Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and some nifty bottom-sixers that’s a thing you can do. They didn’t give up too much while not being exactly defensively iron curtain, but just enough to let their array of snipers to outdo whatever they did surrender.
This year, they’re controlling play much more so far, ranking fourth in team Corsi-percentage and expected goal-percentage. Which has left them sixth in goal for, because again, they have finishers everywhere. But Barry Trotz’s ways haven’t completely disappeared, as the Caps remain one of the better defensive teams around in terms of attempts and chances against. It’s been a promising start for a team that becomes an afterthought simply because they’ve been around so long you get a little sick of them or take them as a given so consistently they just fade into the background. But it’s been a decade now where anyone trying to get out of the Metro or NASCAR Division before that had to go through DC. Still looks that way now.
The concern for the Caps so far is that Braden Holtby has been awful, and once again the Capitals are thinking about turning their eyes to a younger model. Where it was once Phillip Grubauer, it’s now Ilya Samsonov. He’s been very good in his first month in the NHL, and with Holtby a free agent after this season, you can bet there are more than a few hopes in the Caps front office that Samsonov proves he can be a cheaper, younger starter going forward. Of course, we won’t know that until April, where Grubauer faltered for the Caps a couple years ago and kept Holtby around.
The big story tonight for the Hawks is whether or not Kirby Dach is going to make his debut. It would seem silly to call him up and then just have him sit in the pressbox, but we’ve seen that before. Dach was skating as a top line winger with Jonathan Toews yesterday, as a totally charming, bright, and handsome (and available!) writer suggested just a couple days ago. Given the success David Kampf has had between Brandon Saad and Dominik Kubalik, and that Dylan Strome belongs far less on a wing, it seems the best answer. It would be the softest landing as well, and Toews and DeBrincat could use a little more dash than Drake Caggiula can provide. Then again, Caligula is the only puck winner there, and Toews might not be able to that any more. Could we see Dach with Caggiula and Toews with Top Cat sliding down to the second line with Kane and Strome? Even talking about it is kind of exciting. It could be new toy night, and what we really want is Dach just to flash what he can be this season. It won’t all be pretty, but let’s see if there’s a diamond here.
As for the rest, Corey Crawford will take the net as he and Lehner are going to split the starts over this busy stretch you’d have to think, at least until one gets hot or one turns into stone. It’s how they drew it up.
The Hawks were scorched at least in the first period by the Jackets, who are a team that’s consistently been able to use their speed against the Hawks’ lack of it. The Caps certainly can play in the straight lines through the neutral zone that the Hawks can’t handle when their defense gets squared up. Kampf can take the Backstrom assignment, but the thing with the Caps is they still feature Kuznetsov behind that. If we’re going to get excited about what the Hawks can do this season, they have to prove not only that they can survive against teams that can do that thanks to goaltending, but can actively handle it and give as good as they get. It’s been a while since that happened. Tonight’s another test.
Because of 2018’s run, Braden Holtby will probably never pay for a drink or meal in the DC area again. And he played no small part, as he came in relief in the first round of a struggling Philip Grubauer and rescued the Caps out of a 2-0 series hole on the road. He was brilliant that spring, posting a .922 in 23 games and turning back both the Lightning and Knights in the last two rounds.
The thing is, those free drinks and meals might only do Holtby any good once or twice a year after this season.
Holtby is off to a woeful start, with a .862 SV% and a goals-against creeping up on 4.00. Holtby’s SV% at evens is just .868, and it’s not like he’s getting peppered, as the Caps have kept him at a respectable .919 expected SV%. He just hasn’t made the stops. And what’s worrying for Holtby, perhaps more so than the Caps as you’ll see, is that this isn’t not a one-off.
Holtby has been subpar the past two regular seasons, getting himself out of jail with that Cup run. He had a .911 last year and a .907 in that season before the parade. So this would be the third year in a row that Holtby hasn’t been up to it, which you can’t just chalk up to a spike of bad luck.
It couldn’t be more poorly times for Holtby for a couple reasons. One, he’s a free agent after the year, his first and perhaps only chance to cash in as an unrestricted free agent. While the gloss from backstopping a champ almost never wears off in the NHL, there won’t be the quite the same market for a goalie who has three seasons of too many whiffs. Perhaps a great defensive team would think they could shield him and could use “the experience,” but more and more teams are getting away from that kind of thinking.
Second, the Caps already seem to have a backup plan in place. Ilya Samsonov is already clawing starts away from Holtby. Samsonov had something of a rough go of it in his first year in North America last year in the AHL, but has some glittering numbers in the KHL and so far this year has been great in four games. He’ll certainly be getting more starts while they let Holtby try and find it again with less pressure.
While Holtby’s name will go down in Capitals history, his play is making it less and less likely the Caps are going to have any interest in signing him. They have the space, but have Nicklas Backstrom to re-sign (if they so choose) and room to leave themselves to improve. Most of the rest of the core of this team is locked in, though Alex Ovechkin will see his contract run out after next year, and he’ll be given pretty much whatever he wants. Having freedom in the cap will be ideal for the Caps just in case, which means Holtby doesn’t fit.
What’s gone wrong for Holtby is hard to pinpoint. He was certainly overworked there for a while, having 73, 66, and 63 starts the three years before he fell off the table. But at 30 he shouldn’t be fatigued that much. Generally we think of goalies having longer aging curves than skaters, but Holtby and Martin Jones seem to be doing their best to disprove that. It could be that Holtby is missing the tutelage of Mitch Korn, who followed Barry Trotz to the Islanders. But the first year of his decline was with Korn around.
Holtby really couldn’t have timed this worse. In some sense, it couldn’t actually be better timing for the Caps.
After a monumental diaper filling in the first period that would have made even Bobby Hull ask, “What the fuck am I doing here?” the Hawks managed to mostly lock their shit down and scratch out a victory on none other than Jonathan Toews’s stick. Which is good, because you wouldn’t be remiss to wonder where the fuck he’s been lately. Let’s clean it up.
– If you’re a “stick to sports” kind of fella (and you absolutely are a fella if that’s your mind-set, and if you don’t like that assumption, fuck you), skip this bullet. Or better yet, don’t.
Pat Foley is the voice many of us have followed forever and ever now. We were all pissed when the Hawks flicked him like a well-rolled booger back in the dark days, and we were overjoyed to have him back initially. But it’s probably time for this motherfucker to go.
At the tail-end of the first period, Nick Gismondi did a nice spot about how 35 Olympian women hockey players were playing a four-team tourney at Fifth Third Arena (or whatever corporate horseshit it’s named after). He mentioned that the morning before today’s game, they were skating with about 65 girls, aged 5–16, and that the tourney was to raise awareness and support of women’s hockey. Gismondi said that Hilary Knight made a comment about maybe having Foley and Edzo call a couple of their games. After sharing a laugh, Foley said, “Well, that’s be the best-looking team we’ve ever covered.”
That’s grade-A, unfiltered horseshit.
I’m sure Foley thought it was a cute compliment. It isn’t. These are Olympic athletes, some of whom have won gold motherfucking medals. They take their sport seriously and are doing their absolute best to make others take it seriously too. To have someone as well-known as Pat Foley minimizing what these women are doing by commenting foremost on their looks is a waste of everyone’s time. Foley’s job, whether you like it or not, is to inform people who are listening about the intricacies of the game. By minimizing these women’s accomplishments to make what he likely thought was a cute joke, he’s established that this tournament is a joke, which is unfiltered dogshit.
As a professional broadcaster, a person whose sole job is to communicate expertise to people who might not otherwise know better, Foley should absolutely know better. Fuck you if you think it’s innocuous, because it isn’t. Framing women’s hockey as a glorified peep show isn’t something we need or want (and again, if you think this isn’t a big deal, I can’t suggest that you fuck yourself more than I am right now).
While I’m pretty sure it was just Foley being out of touch, rather than consciously shitty, it’s inexcusable.
If there’s one positive that came out of this dick tripping, it’s the exasperation that came from Edzo, who tried to cover for his out-of-touch partner as much as possible with a “You hope everyone gets a chance to watch” comment immediately after.
Women aren’t just things to look at. Believe it or not, they’re living, breathing, shitting fucking people with goals, ambition, and aspirations. Foley either needs to either get with it or hang it fucking up.
– Now, to the hockey at hand. Thank Christ Robin Lehner showed up. The first period saw the Hawks get annihilated in possession. If Lehner isn’t at the top of his game, we likely have a Hagar going into the second.
– There wasn’t much to like about anything outside of Lehner tonight. Somehow, Maatta and Seabrook were the two best defenders in terms of Corsi (60+% and 50%, respectively). Coach Kelvin Gemstone leaned mostly on the Shaw–Strome–Kane line, because double-shifting Kane is his fucking counter-clockwise swirl at this point.
– We all like Saad–Kampf–Kubalik, but at some point, Colliton is going to have to put those two wingers next to Toews. He simply doesn’t mesh well with DeBrincat, and Caggiula—for as nice as he is—isn’t a top 6 guy. Toews brought up the rear in Corsi with a putrid 28% at 5v5. Yeah, scoring an OT game winner is cool and all. But it’s a waste of DeBrincat and Toews’s skill, and Caggiula’s . . .whatever. . .to keep them together.
– Caggiula’s goal was nice, though. Floating at center ice and a quick snap shot gave the Hawks an entirely undeserved 1–0 lead. Caggiula is useful, but probably not on the first line is all.
– Connor Murphy got totally horsed on Markus Nutivaara’s goal. I kept looking for the penalty Edzo was talking about, but all I saw was a D-man beating another D-man.
– Kubalik didn’t show up on the score sheet, but his vision is excellent. He had two excellent passes in the first—including a one-handed attempt—that found Saad on the doorstep. But as is Saad’s wont, he couldn’t quite pot them. Putting Saad and Kubalik with Toews is something that should happen in the next game. You can always revert to 20–64–8 when facing the likes of McDavid. In the meantime, stack that top line.
– Good to see Erik Gustafsson continue to do his best Bitcoin impression.
– Calvin de Haan is a wonderfully representative defensive defenseman. He made a couple of odd-man-rush plays that made me say, “Ah, that’s what a defenseman is supposed to do there.”
– Top Cat got off the schneid on the power play. It was the old Gus–Kane–Top Cat connection, with Kane slinging a saucer onto Top Cat’s stick through the slot for an easy one timer.
The Hawks will welcome the Caps on Sunday. The Caps have legitimate scorers on their team, so this dragging-their-asses-like-a-dog-with-worms play style won’t cut it there.
Onward.
Beer du Jour: Victory Sour Monkey
Line of the Night: “Not a good piece of skin cancer.” Pat Foley, describing John Tortorella’s basil-cell carcinoma removal.
Everything you need for tonight’s soiree with the Ohio boys.
As the Blue Jackets pick through the half-drank bottles and empty plates of the party and simultaneously the ruins of the team of the last two years, the only one to ever bring a playoff series win to Ohio, they must figure out where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. Even with the departures of Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, and their deadline acquisitions, there does seem to be a foundation with which to start again.
There’s a solid top pairing, and that might even be underselling Seth Jones and Zach Werenski. Ryan Murray finally overcame the obstacle of his body being made of Tonka toys to emerge as a solid second-pairing option. Vlad Gavrikov has turned some heads in the opening of this season.
Goalie is obviously a problem, and forward isn’t far behind. While Cam Atkinson poured in 41 goals last year and has consistently provided around 30, he just turned 30-years-old and for a player who relies on speed, one has to wonder how much longer he can contribute top line numbers. Then again, he could be the much more chipmunk-faced Patrick Marleau. It’s clear Nick Foligno and Brandon Dubinsky are past it. Boone Jenner is somehow only 26 still but has proved to not be much more than a middle line pivot.
So a lot of where the Jackets are going to go, and how they’ll get there, is riding on Pierre-Luc Dubois. See if this sounds familiar, a big center with nifty hands taken third overall? That was Dubois back in 2016, though he came out of the runway-to-the-net that is the QMJHL instead of the we’re-still-cowboys WHL that Kirby Dach might emerge from this year. Dubois has had the bonus of centering Panarin and Atkinson his first two years, which resulted in a more than respectable 64 points at just 20-years-old last season.
But Panarin is gone now, so whatever aid or safety net he was providing Dubois went with him. Is he up to the challenge? On the scant evidence we have, he should be. Dubois’s attempts-share fell off a cliff away from Panarin in his first two seasons, from 56% with to 48% without. Luckily for the Jackets, Dubois’s xGF% didn’t suffer near the same drop, though a drop nonetheless, which means though they might not be in the right end as much without Pantera they’re still getting the better chances.
He still has Atkinson of course, and though it’s only six games the results are good so far. They’re in the positive in both attempts and expected goals, with Gustav Nyquist standing in for Panarin, and who’s made a career of being just north of representative. Long season to go, of course.
And it’s a big one for Dubois, because it’s after this one that his entry-level deal expires. The Jackets are well set-up to give him a big contract, as they have $18M in space as of now with only Dubois being the must-have among all their free agents. Yes, they’re going to have to find a goalie somewhere, but they’re just as likely (and probably better off) trying to find a young one of those that they don’t have to overpay to pretend to care about OSU football and emphasize the pronunciation of “the.”
Still, the Jackets might want to take a breath before they decide whether or not to hand the boat to Dubois. 64 points at 20 is a hell of a thing, but they’ll need to see this year that he can be a 80-90 point guy. GM Jarmo Kekkalainen didn’t think Ryan Johansen was that back in the day, and he got Seth Jones out of it. It’s that type of shrewdness that might be the way to land himself a goalie, though it doesn’t have to be Dubois to get him that.
Teams find it hard to get anywhere without a true #1 center. Dubois has this year and maybe a couple more to prove that he is that.
Brandon Dubinksy – Perhaps the leading example of a belcher/grunter/scowler that is held up as leadership and grit for a team when his actual usefulness disappeared somewhere during Obama’s second term. Certainly doesn’t hurt that he has a last name that’s a modern iteration of “Grabowksi,” which the Ditka-philes that make up a majority of NHL front offices cover themselves in vaseline for. Dubes has spent the last two seasons getting his team backed into its own zone while he points and yells at clouds. He’s currently pulling his patented move of being hurt.
Nick Foligno – See above, but with the captain’s “C.” Foligno also has the added bonus of being a former player’s kid, which in the NHL boots your overall rating at least 25%. He’s only ever scored more than 20 goals twice in his far too long career, and for that he’ll take him $5.5M this year and next before the Jackets extend him so he can be the Ohio version of Mikko Koivu.
John Tortorella – This guy won a Cup, folks. While we’ll always stan for a guy who loves and rescues dogs as much as Torts does, you can bet one of the reasons both Bobrovsky and Panarin wanted to beat it out of town as quickly as possible was to get away from this guy. But this is the NHL, where a coach like this can pants an actual forward-thinking coach like Jon Cooper (not that Cooper ever needs much of an excuse to toss his pants aside). Clock must be ticking on this guy as the Jackets head into another rebuild after the monumental accomplishment of winning one playoff series.
vs 
Game Time: 7:30PM CDT
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, ESPN+, WGN-AM 720
Bring Back Craig Krenzel: The Cannon
Tonight on West Madison the 7 game homestand rounds the turn and kicks into the final stretch, with four games in the next seven days starting with the visiting Blue Jackets, who have won their last two games, and currently sit at 3-3-0.
