Hockey

Game #3 – Jets vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Halfwits, Nitwits, And Dimwits

By Sam Fels 1317 0

Newish feature we’re running this year instead of just one Douchebag Du Jour. We can run a collective this way. 

Paul Maurice – He could have stopped this Blues thing at the first hurdle. Instead he got an immensely more talented team to quit on him and let the monster out of the box. Kept his job though, which you have to be impressed by. Continually runs one of the dumbest teams in the league.

Dustin Byfuglien – Actually, ditching out on Winnipeg to drink on a beach somewhere is all of our dreams.

Winnipeg Airport – Because it doesn’t exist.

Hockey

Game #3 – Jets vs. Hawks: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels 1101 0

Notes: The Jets play again tomorrow at home so Brossoit could get the start tonight…Little remains out with concussion…seven of Laine’s 10 points have come in the past two games…Roslovic is the one tipped for a breakout as he’s playing for a contract out of his entry deal…

Notes: Lehner gets the start, and it’ll have been over two weeks since he last played. If he plays well, what’s Colliton going to do going forward?…Shuffles all around, and Brendan Perlini will make his season debut to take the place that Alex Nylander pissed away by not showing up…de Haan is healthy and will also make his season debut…

Hockey

Maybe Magic Training Camp Takes A While To Have Effect

By Sam Fels 1612 0

We joke a lot around here. Mostly it’s to keep from crying. It’s certainly better than thinking about anything you’ve seen seriously with this team the past couple seasons. Anyway, if you’re somewhat new or just missed it, we refer to “Magic Training Camp” because every excuse for the Hawks last year seemed to get back to the fact that Jeremy Colliton didn’t have a training camp. It’s why the penalty kill sucked. It’s why they were defensively awful. It’s why Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook essentially un-velcro’d from the season. And we could keep going. It asked us to ignore that the fact that Colliton had five months in charge to install…whatever it was he was trying to install. The problem is we don’t really know.

So tell me, is this good?

Now it’s only two games. But it’s two games against one team that isn’t any good (Flyers) and another that wasn’t particularly interested in anything other than maybe getting their coach fired but couldn’t turn down the gifts the Hawks felt it mandatory to hand them (Sharks). So yeah, this is a problem. There’s all the time in the world to fix it, but it is a problem.

If it makes you feel better, the Hawks don’t have the worst PK in the league. Yet. The Devils have killed less than half their penalties. So we have that going for us. But still, batting 50% over two games, wherever they fall on the calendar, is less than ideal.

We probably all have a theory on why the PK sucks, and the thing is they’re probably all correct. Talent-level is an issue, Crawford probably could have made a save or two more, structure, entries, whatever. It’s all a problem. Ok, the goal on the PK against the Flyers was a fluke that bounced off Koekkoek, so let’s not hold that against them.

To me, the entries for the Sharks last night were way too easy. Again and again, the QB–generally Karlsson–would skate up to around the red line, hit a man along the boards on the blue line, and that player would immediately pop it to a charging teammates at the line through whatever Hawks forward thought it was a good idea to go charging out to the boards on the PK. Not only were they in the zone, they had possession and speed. From there you’re always chasing.

The first goal was off a scramble, but look at how it starts:

Somehow, Kampf ends up with three guys to cover. Karlsson at the point he’s fronting, then LeBanc on the wing, and Kane in the middle. Murphy and Toews both go out to Couture at the point. Now I’m no expert, but two guys covering one when you’re down a man already is a Custer-esque strategy. Maybe that’s just an individual goof…but when you’re fresh out of training camp–that got something of a bonus week thanks to the schedule–shouldn’t individual goofs not be a thing that happens? Also Keith never moves here, though never really takes anyone either.

So to the second PP goal against:

Again, another ridiculously easy entry, that has the Hawks chasing. Zack Smith (who is awfully close to the Bobs question of “What is it, you would say, you do here?”) chases Gambrell (who?!) far too low in the zone, and because he’s slow he can’t get back to the point to cover for Karlsson’s shot. Seabrook and Maatta can’t recover from the rush from Gambrell, then trying to get set up for the point shot, leaving all sorts of free sticks everywhere.

There were times last night when it also looked like the Hawks were moving out of the way of shots on the PK, which is…a choice. The idea of any kill is to front the point-men, force the puck to the wide areas and block off the cross-seam pass. You want the shots coming from beyond the circles from that angle. It’s easier to block off whoever’s in front of the net there. There is far less net to shoot at. The angles are easier to cover up. And yet it feels like the Hawks never force the puck there.

The other excuse I’m supposed to give you is that Calvin de Haan hasn’t played. That’s cool, but Calvin de Haan is Calvin de Haan. He’s not Larry Robinson circa ’77. He’s also not all that quick, so if everyone else is getting pulled out of position–or not in one to begin with–there is little he can do.

Not exactly the start they were hoping for.

Hockey

High On The Hog: Weekend Preview

By Jon Fromi 1046 0

The Rockford IceHogs, the Blackhawks AHL affiliate, kick off the home portion of their schedule Saturday night. After dropping the season opener in Iowa last Friday, the IceHogs are at home for their next three games.

Following Saturday’s game with the Grand Rapids Griffins, Rockford hosts the Laval Rocket for the first time ever on Monday afternoon. The home stand concludes October 18 with the first tilt of the season against the Chicago Wolves.

 

Roster Moves

With Dennis Gilbert joining Rockford this week, defenseman Jack Ramsey was assigned to the ECHL’s Indy Fuel.

The Hogs currently have 17 forwards, seven defensemen and three goalies on the roster. I would expect that to change, starting with Matt Tomkins being sent to Indy soon.

 

Spotlight On The Opponent: Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids reached the postseason last spring, losing in five games to Chicago in the first round. The Hogs took seven of the ten meetings between the two teams in 2018-19. Four of those wins were decided in Gus Macker Time. Rockford was 4-1 against the Griffins at the BMO Harris Bank Center last season.

After besting the Wolves 8-5 in Chicago Saturday night, Grand Rapids will be hosting Milwaukee Friday before pulling into Rockford.

Grand Rapids is a veteran-laden club, with a lot of players who have put in their time in AHL rinks. The Griffins also present a physical challenge to a Rockford team that is predicated on pushing the tempo.

Leading that bunch is Chris Terry, a 30-year-old wing who has been a points machine in the league for the last decade. Terry, who had 29 goals and 32 assists in 2018-19, will be a focal point of the Griffins attack.

Matthew Ford, who turned 35 this week, has been with Grand Rapids the last three seasons. Matt Puempel has nearly 300 AHL games under his belt and is coming off a 50-point season.Turner Elson, a seventh-year pro, starts his third season in the Wings organization. He had a pair of assists in the Griffins 8-5 win over Chicago. Center Dominic Tergeon is back for his fourth year with Grand Rapids.

Givani Smith is a hard-hitting forward that comes back for his second full season with the Griffins. Also returning up front is Filip Zadina, who will be looking to improve upon a solid rookie campaign (16 G, 19 A)

On defense, the Griffins are also very experienced. Alex Biega comes over from Vancouver, where he has 179 NHL games to his credit. He joins Brian Lashoff and Dylan McIlrath, two physical veterans who have been in the league for years. Joe Hicketts returns for a fourth season with Grand Rapids.

Goalie Calvin Pickard has faced Rockford while with Lake Erie and San Antonio earlier in his career. Rockford will be shooting at Pickard or rookie Filip Larsson Saturday night.

Among the newer faces in the Grand Rapids lineup are Joe Veleno, who was Detroit’s first-round selection in the 2018 NHL Draft. Veleno is a speedy forward who had 104 points with Drummondville in his last year of juniors. Also coming from Drummondville is Gregor MacLeod.

Jarid Lukosevicius is entering his first pro season after a college career at Denver. Princeton’s Ryan Kuffner and Northern Michigan’s Troy Loggins also begin their first full seasons in the AHL.

6’6″ center Michael Rasmussen, the Red Wings 2017 first-rounder, spent most of last season in Detroit but is starting 2019-20 with the Griffins.

Newcomers to the blueline include Oliwer Kaski, Gustav Lindstrom, Moritz Seider and former Cornell skater Alec Mcrea.

Follow me @JonFromi on twitter for updates on Saturday’s action well as news and opinions on the IceHogs all season long.

 

Hockey

Game #2 – Sharks 5, Hawks 4 – It Was All Illusion, A Fragment of the Whole

By Rose Rankin 1796 0

OK, so it certainly wasn’t dull. That’s one thing I can definitely say about this home-opener-legit-season-opener since the Prague game felt like a weird extra preseason game. There were goals, there were changes to the lines, there were shameful defensive breakdowns—a little something for everyone. But at the end of the day, the Hawks lost to a struggling team they should have beat. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

–There was a lot to unpack with the forward lines here. First of all, Saad-Kampf-Kubalik looked outstanding in the first period and Kubalik opened the scoring while in total that line had 11 shots. They had the puck constantly when they were on the ice together—an 87.5 CF% at evens. So everyone was thrilled and of course Coach Cool Youth Pastor had to go changing it up by the second period, moving Kubalik to the top line. Now, Kubalik played really well and he replaced the hapless Alex Nylander (more on him later), but once that happened Saad and Kampf basically went dark. They had precisely zero shots in the second period and not much more than that in the third. So while I understand the desire to stack the top line, there is also the “if-it-ain’t-broke” side of things to consider. And messing with what’s working so suddenly may not have been the mark of true leadership.

–Also, can we just have Top Cat-Strome-Kane on a line please? The give-and-go that they had on the fourth goal was a thing of beauty. It does not take a hockey genius to see this. And the argument (if there was one) for keeping Kane and Toews together is backed up by nothing. They had a 14 CF% together and generated no shots. Seriously. If CCYP is going to shake up the lines reflexively, then he should at least follow the empirical evidence with the second line, maybe keep Kubalik with Toews and put Shaw with them. Of course there may be better answers but it’s not some great mystery the world can never solve.

–So back to Alex Nylander for a minute, who didn’t make it past the FFUD over/under of being on the top line through the second period. Essentially he just sucked, I’m not really sure how else to say it. He gave up turnovers in the defensive zone and at his own blue line, he whiffed on a wide open shot in the high slot, his passes were off the mark, and to top it all off, he brought DOWN Saad’s and Kampf’s production. He was like the Cone of Ignorance around Bart Simpson. I realize we may be subjected to watching this fool for a while longer but it’s going to be really cruel really soon, especially given the state of the defense, which is acquisition only worsened. Switch him out for Brendan Perlini—equally lazy, can’t be any worse?

–And yes, Andrew Shaw scored two goals. And yes, the crowd loved him and cheered wildly during the pregame. And yes, he took dumb penalties and no I am not convinced he’s worth the money or will actually help the team. All that “scrappiness” the broadcast likes to go on about didn’t score at the end of the game when he had a point-blank chance and couldn’t finish. I know, I’m motherfucking this guy into a 100-point season and if that’s the case, so be it. But he’s not “my guy,” despite what my esteemed colleagues may say.

–The defense was…what we both feared and expected. Erik Gustafsson and Slater Koekkoek on a pairing should be a war crime, and it led directly to the Sharks’ winning goal as Gus practically stared at the puck while it was being taken from him, and Koekkoek was somewhere out in the boondocks near where I live, that’s how far he was from the play. Beyond that, most everyone was bad anyway, the lone exception being Connor Murphy who was above 50% in possession and had a few key break-ups of passes. Ya know, playing defense, as is his job description. Yet, he managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for a deflection that led to one of the Sharks’ goals, so even though that’s not his fault (he was in position in front of the net), that’s how things went. Olli Maatta and Brent Seabrook were, shall we say, not the top defensemen that they were made out to be in the preseason. The argument (if there was one) against having Boqvist up here is looking flimsier by the minute.

–Honestly the Sharks weren’t that good tonight, but it’s pretty damn sad when a guy older than me can score multiple goals on you. Just sayin’. What they were able to do was convert on their power plays, which is just another way of saying the Hawks’ PK is as putrid as where we left it last season. They managed to kill off one penalty! This is where we’re at.

–On that note, the Hawks got nothing on the power play and they were mostly just chaotic. Granted they only had two chances, but their first one was nothing but bad passes, an offsides on a messed-up zone entry, and not pulling the trigger when a shot was open. So it wasn’t their typical issue with standing still and waiting for Patrick Kane—it was more of a clusterfuck that came to nothing.

–Corey Crawford had an .853 SV% tonight, which is not exactly inspiring, but honestly a number of those goals can’t be pinned solely on him. Still, he should have had at least the fifth one. His team didn’t play well enough in front of him and you know I’m not going to throw him under the bus, but it would be nice to see a stronger performance.

Well, we’re underway for real now in 2019. There were flashes of brilliance, potential for things that will actually work, and there were cringe-worthy mistakes. Pretty much like we thought there would be. Buckle up for the rest of it. Onward and upward…

Beer de jour: Odell Oktoberfest

Photo credit: NHL.com

 

Hockey

Game #2 – Sharks vs. Hawks Spotlight: Is Martin Jones Broken?

By Sam Fels 1467 0

For most of last year, if you paid attention to the underlying numbers, or metrics, or analytics, or whatever other scrabble word you use, you knew that the Sharks were one of the best teams in the league. In fact, by those measures they were basically blowing away the Western Conference, and somehow losing the division to the Flames was basically a crime. They always had the puck and were creating most of the chances.

You also knew that they were being let down by simply horrific/comedic/surreal goaltending, with Martin Jones putting up a .896 SV% on the season. Aaron Dell wasn’t any better, and all the good work the Sharks skaters were doing was undone a lot of the time by Jones and Dell whiffing and whatever puck was half-heartedly flung in their direction, with opponents apologetically celebrating the goals they never saw coming or considered were a possibility.

There weren’t a lot of options for the Sharks at the trade deadline, and you could see why they stuck with Jones as well. In his three years as the Sharks starter previous to last season, he had never been below .912, and also had been dynamite in the playoffs. In San Jose’s run to the Final in 2016, he was .923 in 24 games. The following season he was .935 in a first-round loss to the Oilers, and then .928 as the Sharks went out in the second round. The policy of keeping the faith made sense, or at least was defensible.

Still, Jones wasn’t very good in the playoffs last year, and had he even been average perhaps the Sharks find their way past the Blues (GRRRRRR….). Again, the options in the offseason weren’t exactly shiny and must-have. Perhaps they should have put in a call to Robin Lehner, as Sergei Bobrovsky would have been out of their price range. Perhaps they wanted to give Jones another half-season to prove he can come back to what he was. And only at the next trade deadline will they pull the trigger if it’s warranted.

Still, it’s hard to find a comp of a goalie that fell apart at 29 and then rediscovered it. As a warning, these should always be taken with a grain of salt, because Jones is his own man and whatnot. His season won’t be affected because of what other goalies did in the past. As Fifth Feather would say, it’s like deciding what the next hand of a blackjack will be because of what’s going on at another table. The odds say one thing, but they don’t actually force certain cards to be turned over. Still, let’s take a look.

Since the great Lockout of ’05, Jones’s season last year was the 12th worst for goalies 28 or above who made 40 starts or more. Ben Scrivens had a worse season at 28 after being pretty good, and was out of the league in less than a year. Marty Turco struggled out of the lockout at age 30, posting a .898. He recovered a very little, posting a couple .910s but never coming close to the Vezina form he had before. And really that’s about it for comparable age and falling off a cliff at said age.

The Sharks would happily take that .910 Turco put up after his stumble, as given what else they are capable of that would be more than enough for another 105-110 points. If Jones can’t get there, and he is indeed this broken bumper car now, the options again aren’t great. Would they take one of the Hawks’ goalies if they indeed have to sell at the deadline (or would even admit to)? If the injuries to the Penguins become too much, would Matt Murray be available? Laurent Brossoit from Winnipeg? These are all reaches in terms of availability.

The Sharks clearly don’t have much time. Even with Joe Pavelski put on his bike, Logan Couture, Joe Thornton, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Brent Burns are all over 30. Erik Karlsson will be soon. They probably can’t toss away another spring on the hopes that Martin Jones finds it for no reason other than HOCKEY.

The opening signs aren’t encouraging. Getting blitzed by Nashville and Vegas twice isn’t exactly shameful, but those are the teams the Sharks will have to get through come springtime. It was a rough opening for sure, but the Sharks might have liked it if Jones had stood tall in any of the games. And he only faced over 30 shots in one of them.

This is a game of chicken the Sharks are playing with themselves. Someone is going to have to swerve or the whole thing is going to pieces.

Hockey

Game #2 – Sharks vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Nitwits, Halfwits, And Dimwits

By Sam Fels 1326 0

Slightly tweaked feature this year. Instead of the Douchebag Du Jour, we’ll list a couple doofuses on the opponent that night. 

Evander Kane – Always the king, one of the bigger scumbags in the league, and now comes equipped with a victim complex that somehow justifies pushing and slashing referees. There isn’t a manhole deep enough for him to fall into.

Brent Burns – Looks like a jackass, mostly plays like a jackass, but no one seems to notice until he gets his hairy ass scorched in the playoffs by any team that bothers to notice he can’t play defense. This man has a Norris, people.

Pete DeBoer – Yet another coach who has passed over young players to play genuine turds like Michael Haley last season. It wasn’t the only season that he was fascinated by Haley or some other drooler who needed help tying his skates. Holding the Sharks back.