Every morning we cut right to the chase of what happened in the playoffs the night before.
Hurricanes tie Caps at 2: Fuckin ‘eh, Cotton, Fuckin’ Eh!
Blues take 3-2 lead on Jets in last 15 seconds: Fuckers to the left of me, fuckers to the right….
Sharks make it 3-2 Vegas: Why don’t you fucking do that all the time?
By now you all know about the stir caused by Tim Anderson’s emphatic bat flip following a home run against the Royals, and how he was summarily drilled by a pitch in retaliation, which led to the benches clearing and general consternation over the fact that celebrating in baseball is such a hot-button issue that a gesture after the game’s most heralded outcome of an at-bat results in dangerous physical retribution.
A lot of people have rightly observed the stupidity of baseball’s general anti-celebration stance and pointed out it’s sometimes driven by the players themselves, not just crusty league management guys and shitheads like Joe West. But we need to remember that baseball isn’t the only Buzz Killington in the sports world, when in reality there’s a depressingly large number of them.
Take hockey. Mark Lazarus tweeted yesterday about how pretty much every goal in hockey is celebrated with leaps into the glass and music and hugs, and that’s of course true—the visceral release after a goal is one of hockey’s most endearing qualities. But let’s not forget the opprobrium heaped on the Carolina Hurricanes earlier this year by established voices in the hockey world.
Of course the most obvious of these was Don Cherry. First, the fact that Don Cherry even has a job yelling into the TV when he should be yelling at traffic somewhere is absurd, but then throw in how stupid his beef with the ‘Canes was and it’s truly something to behold. The horror! A team whose job it is to physically move together in sync decided to do a different type of movement together in sync that also happened to be clever and entertaining—whatever shall we do? The NHL was rightly criticized for emphasizing faceless monotony among players as the standard of behavior, and the fact that the celebrations even caused a fuss was pretty damn sad. It threw into clear relief how much entertainment could really be getting lost because of outdated norms of behavior.
Remember when football pulled a similar stunt? Not only is excessive celebration still a thing, but it wasn’t all that long ago that group celebrations were banned outright (really, it was 2017 when they lightened up about it). There was a time when a cell phone incorporated into a touchdown celebration led to a penalty. And think of how much more fun it is now that teams can do Motown routines and conduct an orchestra?
Basketball has been better about accommodating personality in its players and acceptance of those players celebrating what they do on the court. But the NBA is basically the exception, not the rule in major American sports in this sense.
Why do leagues hate fun so much? Or, why do they tolerate certain types of fun but not others? It seems like an extension of the behavior that makes team sports function, i.e., subsuming the individual to work together in a complementary way as a whole. When someone breaks out of that systems they run the risk of upsetting the functioning of multiple personalities together, by leading to one person not playing their role or not executing on their tasks. So I guess it’s not all that surprising that even some of the athletes within these systems would want to reinforce the behavior that is fundamental to overall success.
But it’s doubtful that this contradiction is going away, and both the management of the leagues, in all of their incestuousness in terms of the same coaches/GMs/former players that borders on that of the Lannisters or Targareyns, and current players will need to recognize it. The celebrity nature of athletes isn’t going away either, certainly not in our culture right now, so the behaviors that heighten the entertainment factor and play upon the existence of outsize personalities might as well be embraced. It’s not that every player has to act that way or celebrate wildly, but for those who do, at the end of the day sports are entertainment and that’s what this is all about. The drama of competition, and the collective experience of being a fan with countless others focused on a shared goal are part of it too, but the theatrics can’t be discounted. It’s why the amazing feats that athletes can pull off—which us normies can’t even really understand how different that capability is—are cheered by spectators in the first place.
Someone should remind the rich white guys who run these leagues that they can get even richer by allowing those theatrics, and players who may resent it need to examine why they’re so mad anyway. Let’s all agree so we can stop the teeth-gnashing every time something funny or entertaining happens and all the Buzz Killingtons come out of the woodwork.
These could be the most NHL playoff-iest of the NHL playoffs. One division winner, THE division winner, was kneecapped in four games. One is trailing 3-1. The Predators laid an egg big enough last night to feed a few villages. Even the Caps are somewhat lucky to be up 2-1 on the Canes, and were just trucked to the tune of managing all of two shots in the final 40 minutes. If you love an underdog, this is for you. Even the Islanders, though the higher-seed, were probably not the bookies’ favorite heading into that series. That’s what some people love about the NHL Playoffs, though it doesn’t happen as often as you’d think. Last year, the chalk pretty much won every first round series, and arguably every second round series. Even if the Caps getting by the Penguins was a surprise simply because of history and the connotations of the two in our heads, they were the higher seed.
But still, while we can debate whether the actual results are good or prove anything at all or if they render the regular season even more meaningless than we thought, the undercurrent here is that the two results in the books and one or two others on the cards have been a result of negative, boring-ass hockey. Barry Trotz teams are successful, they are not entertaining. The Nassau Coliseum (where they come to see ’em) might make it seem like they are, but you sat through enough Predators games in the day to know. I don’t expect or want Isles fans to care. The rest of us can, though.
The Jackets aren’t quite the same bore, as they at least turned their trap up to 11 and moved it up the ice, but it was still a trap. The results were stunning and enough to convince you the process was actually lively, but believe me it wasn’t. The Stars, giving the Preds everything they want and more, are possibly playing the most boring and conservative style still left, and will happily tell you so.
It’s sports, not television, and no team is under any obligation to do anything other than what’s best for their team. That’s all their fans care. But I can care, and I do, because I’m not invested thanks to whatever it is they do on Madison St. these days.
Which is why the best series to watch, and despite all the scary undertones for Hawks fans, has been the Avalanche’s utter destruction of the Flames the past two games. Oh sure, last night’s game went to OT, and if not for Phillip Grubauer’s spot-on Cristobal Huet ’09 impression, the Flames walk out of Denver with a tied series and home-ice back. They also gave up 52 shots, 45 at even-strength. That’s betting your ass kicked. More so when it’s the second straight game they’ve surrendered 50+ shots.
And the Avs have gone the opposite way of the Isles or Jackets. They’ve just turned everyone loose, seeing a kind of slow Calgary defense beyond the top pair. And they don’t have to worry about the top pair, because Nathan MacKinnon has ground their bones to make his bread all series. Whereas the Jackets didn’t bust over 25 shots at evens until Game 4, the Avs have done it the past three games and by some distance. They have a goalie playing well, so they’re not too concerned about needing him from time to time, and have bet that if they turn up the heat on every game, the Flames can’t hang. And they haven’t been able to.
They even took their defenseman out of college, Cale Makar, and figured by replacing Samuel Girard with him they could even play faster. He played 20 minutes last night. They don’t care about his age or experience, he just helps them do what they want to do.
After a season of a jump in offense, goals, and overall fun, it stood to reason there would be a group of coaches looking to snuff that out when things got important. It’s how this always goes, and that’s not exclusive to hockey. Look at the last Super Bowl for evidence of that.
Sure, it portends to a future of the Avs pounding on whatever process the Hawks come up with in the next few years, but that’s life. Perhaps the reputations that Trotz and Tortorella have to uphold play a part, whereas Jared Bednar doesn’t have one yet. But rare is the coach who shows up in the playoffs and says, “We can go faster.” Rare is the NHL coach who has no compunction about tossing a 20-year-old into the playoffs when he was in college last week, no matter how special the prospect he is.
Mostly, Bednar has not coached out of fear of what might happen to them, but out of expectation what could happen for them. That is refreshing, and the kind of thing that should be rewarded. I may hate Vegas, and I do, but that’s a speed of series we should probably all want to catch.
Until they run into Trotz, of course.
vs. 
RECORDS: White Sox 7-10 Tigers 8-9
GAMETIMES: Thursday 12:10, Friday 6:10, Saturday and Sunday 12:10
TV: WGN Thursday and Sunday, NBCSN Friday and Saturday
SPARKY’S SPAWN: Bless You Boys
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Ivan Nova vs. Tyson Ross
Carlos Rodon vs. Jordan Zimmerman
Ervin Santana vs. Daniel Norris
Reynaldo Lopez vs. TBD
PROBABLE SOX LINEUP
Leury Garcia – CF
Yoan Moncada – 3B
Jose Abreu – 1B
Yonder Alonso – DH
Eloy Jimenez – LF
Tim Anderson – SS
Yolmer Sanchez – 2B
Ryan Cordell – RF
PROBABLE TIGERS LINEUP
Josh Harrison – 2B
Nick Castellanos – RF
Miguel Cabrera – DH
Niko Goodrum – 1B
Jeimer Candelario – 3B
Dustin Peterson – LF
Gordon Beckham – SS
Grayson Greiner – C
Jacoby Jones – CF
The Sox are seeing the two other sides to the rebuilding troika of the AL Central this week. After taking two of three from the Royals at home, the Sox will head to Detroit for the first time on the season. The Tigers are supposed to be a year or two or three behind the Sox in their recycle, yet are a game ahead of them in the current standings. But nothing other than the Marlins being an affront to nature is working out as it was supposed to yet.
The Tigers though are at least speeding to where they’re supposed to be. They’ve lost four in a row and five of the last six, after getting off to a hotter start than anyone would have guessed. And the offense would seem to be the big culprit. They’re last in all of MLB with their 45 runs scored, or just over two per game. There are only three semi-regulars producing at even above average at the moment, and one of them is Gordon Beckham and his hair that can never die. Niko Goodrum is taking advantage of his first everyday role, and a pretty high walk-rate of 15%. But other than that, there’s nothing here. Even Ervin Santana might find safe-haven here working through this lineup. Miggy Cabrera just might make you cry…well, Sox fans will probably really enjoy the decrepit version of one of their greatest tormentors. Josh Harrison literally has a wRC+ of 0. He technically doesn’t exist. The Tigers would be just as good sending no one to the plate as they are sending Harrison right now. It would be equal. He’s already been worth -0.5 WAR. In 17 games. That’s….that’s just amazing.
The rotation has held it together for now, but is taking some serious hits. Matt Moore was lost for the season a few days ago with knee-knack, and Michael Fulmer never made the bell. Jordan Zimmerman takes up space as he kind of always has the past five years, and Tyson Ross is also here in his role of “Official Seat-Filler For Subpar Teams’ Rotations.” The Sox will miss either or both of Matthew Boyd and Spencer Turnbull, who have done most of the good work so far, though one could go Sunday. Daniel Norris, who is somehow only 25, will slide back into the rotation after coming out of the pen for the start of the year. If you can’t tell Norris, Ross, and Zimmerman apart, no one will blame you. If you can…well, you may want to think about some changes in your life.
The Tigers are carrying the third best bullpen ERA in the AL, even though they have the 10-lowest strikeout-rate and middling walk numbers. You can go up to get a beer when Daniel Stumpf comes in, as not much will happen. He’s striking out nearly 15 hitters per nine innings, but he’s also walking nearly five. The fielders can all work on their arm-balances when he comes jogging in.
As for the Sox, they’ll begin their post-Daniel Palka era in right field, which we know you’re excited for. Palka was punted back to Charlotte after his only good game, which seemed a tad cruel but entirely justified. Ryan Cordell will be the first to start out there, and 27-year-0lds coming up from the minors are definitely always worth paying attention to. Carson Fulmer is also up to replace Lucas Giolito on the roster.
Grey weekend in Detroit. Just seems right.
Every day of the playoffs, we’ll get right to the point of the previous night’s action.
Boston ties Toronto: Fucking figures.
Dallas blanks Nashville to tie series at 2: Who even fucking cares?
Colorado goes 3-1 up on Calgary: Jesus fuckin’ christ!
In a very special installment of Live From The Five Hole, we join forces with Jay Zawaski and James Neveau from the Madhouse Chicago Hockey Podcast to bring you a lengthy, verbose, mostly coherent wrap of the the Hawks season that was, and a look ahead at the summer to come. As always, the podcast doesn’t require a subscription, and please give Jay and James a follow.
Game 1 Boxscore: Cubs 7 – Marlins 2
Game 2 Boxscore: Cubs 4 – Marlins 0
Game 3 Boxscore: Cubs 6 – Marlins 0
I suppose, if I were just taking the Cubs words at face value, the last game of this series would be the kind of one they referenced at the end of last year or in spring training this year as the ones that got away from them last season. Where they lost focus or didn’t quite close out the past couple seasons like they did in 2016. They’ve said it, but I’m not sure how much I buy it when you put together 95 wins with a banged-up roster. But whatever, if they say it they probably believe it to an extent. So the Cubs didn’t let up, didn’t check out against a team full of future gym teachers and possibly current squeegee-men. Cole Hamels certainly wasn’t in any giving mood, and the Cubs have their first series sweep of the year and are looking at being .500 with a series win against Arizona.
Let’s clean it up.
-These are the kinds of trips through the rotation that the Cubs envisioned when this all started. Darvish still couldn’t quite there, as it should not take 96 pitches to get 17 outs against whatever is masquerading around as Marlins these days. But hey, it was only two runs. I don’t think I’m a big fan of him talking about maxing his velocity when he’s coming off an arm injury and what makes him special is the diversity of his pitches, but at this point I think we’re all just going to take the ride with him and be done with it.
-No such problems with Quintana and Hamels, who are as dialed in as it gets. Q spotted that change-up he’s been saying he wants to use more, though not as much as he probably will in the future. Hamels, being the savvy vet that he is, knew he could just pour everything into the strike zone and are this collection of extras to do their worst. Winner winner chicken dinner.
-The Cubs still haven’t gotten anything out of Bryant and Rizzo and are second in the NL in runs. Tell me why you’re paranoid again?
-While his signing was derided simply because it was the only one the Cubs made for the lineup this winter, Daniel Descalso is hell of an upgrade on Tommy La Stella so far. In fact, even if Ian Happ were to get hot I can’t quite figure out where he’d go right now anyway. And no, I don’t want to see him in center or right. Which means, as we thought all along, it might come down to a debate between him and Schwarber in left. But that’s not a problem for now.
-Contreras only had one hit today. What a bum.
-Please don’t make me start believing in David Bote. I’ve been here too many times.
Onwards…
Well that was fun, right? The first two games of this series featured some of the more timely hitting this club has done all year. Of course, by “timely hitting” I mean “Mashing Dongs Out Onto The Dan Ryan.” While the third game…well…we’ll get to that in a minute. Suffice it to say, it was anything but boring, especially with Professional Diva Joe West along for the ride.
Anyways- MOAR BULLETS
-The first game started out exactly like Ervin Santana’s last start. His fastball had the movement of Brent Seabrook chasing down an icing (SYNERGY), and was being clocked at a steaming 89-91 MPH. Pitches like that to major league hitters tend to fly a long way, and that’s exactly what happened. Dingers by Hunter “I’m Not Brian” Dozier, and Chris Ownings quickly put the Royals up 3-0, and a feeling of doom settled in the air. To my pleasant surprise, he pulled himself together, and pitched well enough after that to keep the Sox within striking distance.
-And strike they did, scratching out a couple runs thanks to a timely challenge at first base, and a Leury Garcia double. The Sox managed to give it back by having Manny Banuelos issue a lead off walk to Flash Hamilton who promptly beat a Wellington Castillo pitchout attempt that missed second base by what appeared to be 6 miles and ended up standing on 3rd. One sac fly later and the Sox were down again. Castillo didn’t let it get him down, as he took a Brad Boxberger 2 seamer opposite field for a 2 run shot, and the win after Alex Colome mowed down the Royals in the 9th.
-Game two featured a battle of the Lopez boys, as Reynaldo took the mound against Jorge in an attempt to get his ERA to a number that wasn’t cleanly divisible by 5. He actually pitched well enough, even though it looked like the wheels were near to falling off in the 2nd with a solo shot off the bat of The Duda. Much like Santana before him, he settled down for a solid, if unspectacular, start. He was able to secure his first win thanks to…
-MONCADABOMBZ! Seriously, I realize that the sample is still small but it’s hard not to watch Yoan at the dish and get super excited about what he could be. His first dinger was awesome, as he worked the count in his favor, then was able to take a good looking 2 seamer tailing out of the strike zone opposite field about 5 rows deep. His second one he took a hanging breaking ball and scorched it into right field. He’s displaying pop to all sides of the diamond, and his eye for pitching combined with a newfound aggressiveness at the plate is awesome to see.
-Timmy continued his assault on major league pitching, raising his average over .450 going into today’s game. The same game where he took a Brad Keller fastball and atomized it behind the Sox bullpen. He then had the sheer AUDACITY to be excited about vaporizing Keller’s shitty fastball and gave a bat flip that would make a Korean-leaguer blush (If you don’t get that reference, google “Best Bat Flips in KBO,” it’s worth your time). Wouldn’t you know it, the next time Timmy came up in the 6th inning, Keller drilled Anderson directly in the buttcheek. Tim walked down to first very slowly as the benches cleared jawing at Keller the whole way down. Then some more shit was said, and baseball tempers flared again and there was some light pushing and shoving which resulted in both managers getting tossed. Then, just because he couldn’t stand that it wasn’t about him yet, Joe West decided to toss Anderson out for having the temerity to turn his ass towards West’s general direction.
-There’s a lot to unpack here, but the fact that it’s still acceptable in baseball to hurl a stone at a human being 90+ miles an hour because some dumbfuck unwritten rule got broken or your fee fees got hurt is absolutely asinine to me. If MLB wants to market these amazing young players to a dwindling fan base then they need to take shit like this and fine/suspend it into oblivion. Who’s more important to MLB’s future, Tim Anderson or some slack jawed John Lackey lookalike who’s gonna end the season with a 5.22 ERA and 4 wins?
-Anyways, the Sox couldn’t buy a hit after that, and still managed to lose in extra innings, so…progress?
-Finally…….fuck Joe West into the sun. If you think he tossed Anderson today because of something he did on the field and not what he said 2 days ago about him (“everybody knows he’s terrible”) then I have several bridges and penny stocks to sell you. Umpires have hard jobs, and 9 out of 10 times I feel for them, but 99% of the time, Joe West is the 1 out of 10 where I throw my hat at the tv and he needs to waddle off into the sunset.
Anyways another series win, and with the moribund Tigers looming this weekend a chance to make it 3 in a row. I’d also like to point out the Sox are 2-0 in series where I do the recap, so you’re welcome Ricky.
“How did it come to this?” Jon Cooper asked, as he removed his chaps and put on a robe, a little alarmed at the amount of scented massage oils on his hands and elsewhere. He looked out the window of his yacht, and no it wasn’t him wondering how he ended up with this curious yet staid housewife of Tampa, who not only wouldn’t leash him but didn’t even know what it was, but why he wasn’t working at the moment.
And that’s how most of Tampa will spend the next month or two, because God knows there’s nothing else to do there. How did the best team of the recent era go poof! before we even had time to get drunk? Move over, Leftovers, HBO is going to have a new show about a mysterious happening that no one can explain. Except the fallout will still be everyone living in Tampa or St. Pete, wondering how they got there and yet never figuring out a way to leave. Vibrant, this show will not be.
Let’s dispel the myths that will hound the Lightning through all of next year. That somehow dominating the league left them unprepared for games that meant anything. Hmmm…seems to me when you’re chasing a points and wins record, every game means something. You’re not just going through the motions. And seeing as how the last two relevant Hawks teams and the two Penguin champions basically took March off, this doesn’t hold much water (or in Cooper’s case, water-based lube). You’re professionals, almost everyone on that team was in last year’s conference final and a few before that, so to act as if they were unprepared for the playoffs is a stretch at best, an absolute falsehood at worst. It’s a foothold for the stupid.
They aren’t tough enough, that’s what every breathing-too-hard-after-three-stairs media person in Canada and in hockey will say. They lack grit. They lack heart. And Columbus doesn’t because Brandon Dubinsky yells a lot or something. Again, this is a Lightning team that’s been within no more than five wins of a Cup three times in the last five years. It must know something about advancing in the spring. Perhaps it forgot, as most residents of the area tend to with a lot of things. Or wish they could. Perhaps it’s contagious.
No, eventually, between planning his next swingers’ club outings to Tampa’s one cocktail lounge, Cooper will come to realize he just got out-coached, and his goalie barfed up a poltergeist or two. The Bolts still wanted to weave their pretty passing patterns through an amped-up and moved-up trap of Columbus. They wanted to Quenneville, when Quenneville hockey was shown to not work anymore three years ago. And it was especially silly with a battered and then absent Victor Hedman, and Mikhail Sergachev’s legs more and more covered by his own urine. Out and up was the order of the day, which is also what they tell you to be aware of when walking into Cooper’s office.
Even that doesn’t explain it all, not as much as Vasilevskiy’s .855 SV% for the series does. Whatever plan you have or the opponent has doesn’t matter much when your goalie looks like Gumby in the freezer. Pair that with Game 7 last year against the Caps, and suddenly there’s a lot of baggage in the young man’s head. Baggage he can’t do much about until next spring. Makes for a fun follow-up season, with no questions at every stop or anything.
In the end, it might be nothing more than the perfect storm of a bad week, a goalie slump, an injury or two, and every opponent getting hot. The thing with hockey is that it defies explanation a lot of the time, and trying to stab the smoke of reason it has is what lands organizations in bigger trouble than it already was.
The questions now of course will be do the Lightning panic and change things in search of the more and more nebulous “grit and heart and fire and passion and FAARRRRRTTTT?” Are players who are considered to have snuffed it on the big stage this past week all contenders to be moved along? Could there be something wrong with a group that put up the best regular season in recent memory? That’s a pretty tidy list, consisting only of Stamkos, Kucherov, Palat, Vasilevskiy, Sergachev, Point, Johnson, and Hedman. Should be easy to move all of them along, no?
Luckily the GM who was hailed a genius for trying to reconstruct the 2014 Rangers blue line isn’t around anymore, so he can’t be hurled overboard. Then again, it was his replacement who actively sought Jan Rutta, so there must be some kind of gas leak in the GM office at Amalie Arena that causes one to see a blue line as a place for surrealism. Seriously, Braydon Coburn, Rutta, and Ryan Callahan played playoff games in 2019. When you have to absolutely play at high speed, the first or second call probably shouldn’t go out to Dan Girardi or Ryan McDonagh. Maybe it’s not all that mysterious?
You know how this goes. Tampa could easily hold everything together, win next year at a canter, and then this flop will be cited as their rallying cry and inspiration among the champagne and confetti. It can be the chip on the shoulder everyone seems convinced you have to have to succeed in April and May. Hockey is nothing if not filled with people angry at figments, or their struggle to cope in the every day world.
But that will be just another Cup win. What the Lighting have done here is truly unique. Never happened before, in fact. A Cup win next spring just adds you to the list. Here you stand alone. It’s all yours. Everyone will remember this one. Which is just about the only thing memorable to happen to Tampa, ever. They say the Bucs won a Super Bowl once, after they got to play a team too stupid to change its signals to avoid detection from their old coach who just happened to be on the other sideline. All that got us were Hooters ads and some of the most awkward exchanges on Sportscenter ever seen with confused and impatient college kids. And that’s saying something. Still, I don’t believe it actually happened. I know it didn’t matter if it did.
No, this should go on all the signs. Next to Magic Mike and the reasons for not going to Rays games which consist only of, “Well, it’s over there.” (which would have made Tampa the perfect landing spot for the White Sox, come to think of it)
“Welcome to Tampa, the site of the only Presidents’ Trophy Winner to belch themselves inside-out in less than a week.” Now that’s something. They’ll come from miles to see that…or to avoid whichever machete-wielding neighbor escaped his basement dungeon that day in some podunk Florida town. Either or.
Goodnight, Tampa Bay Lightning. You are history. No, literally, you are. An accomplishment, a touchstone, a benchmark. No one else can say that this spring. Just make you take extra care to knock on Cooper’s door this summer. He’s got a lot to work out.
Well, this offseason is off to a great start.
For the link-shy, what that says there is Ian Mitchell is returning to Denver University for his junior season. That has been speculated on these pages and elsewhere, but now it’s official.
Which puts the Hawks in something of a bind. Of their magic quartet of defensive prospects, Mitchell is the closest to ready and probably could have cracked the Hawks lineup and skipped the AHL next year if he so chose. Certainly in the current configuration, and depending on how (or if) the Hawks make any changes there this summer. Adam Boqvist may have the highest upside, but Mitchell is probably the surest thing. Highest floor, let’s say.
It could be as simple as Mitchell telling the Hawks he wants to play just one more year, making up for Denver’s national semifinal loss last week, and then come over and almost assuredly walk onto the NHL roster. Except the Hawks wanted him in the system after last season, certainly after this one, so it doesn’t appear Mitchell is inclined to be all that interested in the Hawks’ interests. Which is his right, and mostly what you hear is that he wants the education, which one day will make him one of about five NHLers who can read and write above a 7th grade level. Fair enough, his life.
It does put the Hawks in something of a quandary. As we’ve said over and over, they’ll never fit all of Mitchell, Boqvist, Henri Jokiharju, and Nicholas Beaudin on the roster together, not while they still have a chance of being relevant at least. Five years from now doesn’t matter.
But Mitchell staying in college drops his trade value through the floor. After his junior season he’ll only be another year removed from being able to sign anywhere he chooses, and if he truly does like being at college and getting a degree and he’s already defied the Hawks wishes twice, there’s little reason to believe he’s not going to see it out. No one’s trading for a player they can’t sign eventually.
So he’s not helping next year, he’s 50-50 to help the year after that, and he’s not going to help via trade. That doesn’t make him a useless chip, but the only hope the Hawks have is that he still comes after three or four years in college and plays for them. That’s about it.
Which punts Boqvist and/or Jokiharju more into the trade window, if indeed the Hawks are serious about getting good next season. They’ll have the most value, they’ll have really any value (it’s just a hunch that Beaudin’s is lower). And they may be expendable depending on what the Hawks do with the third pick. Say, if they decide they’re taking the surest thing of all in Bowen Byram, as in he’d vault right to the top of their defensive prospect tree.
It also might push the Hawks even more to Byram, as he does seem a surer bet than either The HarJu or Boqvist and now Mitchell’s future is murky. Again, a lot of this depends on what the Hawks really want to do and not just what they tell you they want to do. If they’re looking at a serious turnaround next season, then one or both of the two above have to go. Or the third pick has to. If the Hawks are still embarking on a multi-year rebuild, then they don’t really have to do anything and we don’t have to pretend that next season is worth anyone’s time.
Who’s excited?