Notes: Arvidsson, Forsberg, and Subban remain out…the Preds have lost six of their last eight road games…Rinne has been a touch iffy the last little bit, giving up 11 goals in his last four outings and getting pulled last night…Smith is on a bit of a heater, with three goals in his last five games…if the Hawks couldn’t handle a fourth line with Ryan Reaves on it, wait until they get a load of this one…
Notes: Well look at this happy horseshit…
Game #36 Preview Suite
‘Tis the season for extended mailbags, because no one really can stomach talking about the present state of things, and John Pullega and Rose Rankin warm themselves by the yule log. Because it’s the season of giving, no subscription is required for the episode. Sons of bitches, Bumpuses.
Since about the time the organ-I-zation fired Q, this year has been a Sisyphean attempt to roll the boulder up the hill after slamming your hand in a car door. Except now, with Crawford’s year (and perhaps career) in jeopardy, we’ve got a rabid dog chewing around the crotch, picking at what little usefulness this team has left in it. So let’s.
Dylan Strome – He’s certainly passed the eye test recently, and he’s got two goals in his last four games to boot. It looks like Colliton is done pretending to throw the ball and then laughing when the dog can’t find it, as Strome has begun skating with Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane from the outset recently. The biggest knock against him, his skating, hasn’t been as bad as advertised, and the instincts and hands are there. He’s only 21, and unless Kane’s dad decides that his son is done playing in Chicago, a DeBrincat–Strome–Kane line is something to rebuild around.
Corey Crawford – We featured him here last week based on performance. In the two-plus games he played since then, he looked to be working out whatever bugs he had in his system. Sure, a .903 SV% isn’t winning any awards, but he managed to drag the Hawks into three of four points against the Penguins and Jets. And he didn’t look terrible last night against a Sharks team that outclassed the Hawks with all the playfulness of a cat dropping a spider in its water bowl and batting at it while it drowns, waiting for the perfect point of saturation to finally eat it and end its suffering.
But Crow isn’t here for his performance necessarily. He’s here because watching him smack the back of his head against the post because Evander Kane can’t be bothered to do anything like a fucking human being with any understanding of any kind of social contract in any context was by far the worst moment of this foregone fuckfest of a season. He’s confirmed to have a concussion, and with how long and difficult it was for Crow to come back from the last one—which itself occurred on Dec. 23, 2017, because whichever god Crow has bothered adheres to an awful schedule—there are serious questions about whether he comes back at all. Sometimes, hockey just isn’t fucking fair.
Concussion recoveries vary, so it’s possible he’s back this year. You hope he is, because at least with Crow in the net, there were hopes that the Hawks could win a given game. Being elbow deep in this season, I simply can’t get onboard the tank train, even though I understand the sense it makes logically. I still want to watch this team win, even if it hurts their chances at Jack Hughes. So, in that context, watching Crow go down to a concussion again is a double heartbreaker. He wasn’t at the top of his game, but he gave this team hope. Now that he’s gone—at least for a while and in the worst case for good—the light has gone out of our lives.
Connor Murphy – You knew we weren’t going to do this without mentioning my sweet Irish boy, didn’t you? Murphy was never going to be a savior for the Hawks, as that’s simply not his game. He’ll always top out at “good,” but for a team that yearns for “competent” and rarely gets it, Murphy may as well be a savior. He got the primary assist off a point shot yesterday for his first point of the year. He’s slightly above water in CF%, with a 50.31%. He’s playing primarily with Carl Dahlstrom, but no matter whom Murphy’s been paired with, that’s consistently looked like the best pairing on the ice. We’re five games in and it’s safe to say that Murphy’s the Hawks’s best D-man, which, as you all know, isn’t saying much. But it’s hard not to like him, both on and off the ice, and on the ice, he’s looked as good as a tall guy with a bad back can look.
Henri Jokiharju – Our other “tops out at ‘good’” D-man, I wanted to be mad at him yesterday for a couple goals. But looking back, Jokiharju has two things working against him: First, he’s 19. We knew the learning curve was going to be steep, and at times, it has been. Second, Duncan Keith—and you’re going to get tired of us reminding you about how much we love him before we dump on him, but with all he’s given this team, he deserves the kisses we blow before the punches we throw—refuses to adjust his playstyle to what his body can do. That often leaves Jokiharju to clean up messes he’s probably not capable of cleaning up yet. Still, over his last four, he’s on the plus side of the possession ledger. His 98.6 PDO on the year probably tells the story for Jokiharju best. I’d love to see what a Murphy–Jokiharju pairing would look like, but the price of admission for that is Keith–Seabrook and Gustafsson–Dahlstrom. I don’t think any of us have the emotional or physical wherewithal to watch those two snuff films night in and night out.
Dylan Sikura – He’s been a ghost since his call up, but his power recovery, penalty draw, and SOG that led to Brendan Perlini’s goal last night were outstanding, so he gets a mention. He’s probably not much more than a third liner at the end of the day, but that’s fine.
The Rockford IceHogs earned five of a possible six points in a three-in-three weekend. Trust me, the piglets did earn what they got in this three-game stretch.
With offense in short supply, the Hogs turned to what has become one of the AHL’s most effective goalie tandems. Collin Delia picked up an overtime win in Grand Rapids Friday, then held the Griffins to a single goal in a Hogs victory Sunday. Anton Forsberg made 49 saves to pick up a point against Texas Saturday night, though Rockford would lose that game in Gus Macker Time.
Some time today, one of these goalies will be recalled to Chicago following Corey Crawford’s injury against San Jose last night. Both have played well and merit a shot with the Blackhawks.
Delia, in particular, has put up numbers that beg for that opportunity. The second-year pro sports a 2.34 goals against average and a .933 save percentage. He’s third in the AHL among qualified goalies in the former category and first in the latter. Sunday’s effort was an impressive audition; no way the Hogs prevail 2-1 against Grand Rapids if not for the 24-year old Delia.
The argument can be made that Delia would be better off continuing to develop in Rockford and bring up Forsberg, who spent most of last season in Chicago and has also been excellent in all but one of his nine appearances. Both Forsberg and Delia have earned a call up. The other will form a new tandem with Kevin Lankinen, who should be up from the Indy Fuel in either case.
In other roster moves, Rockford welcomed Hawks defenseman Jan Rutta after he cleared waivers Friday. He played his first game Saturday night at the BMO Harris Bank Center as well as Sunday’s contest.
Josh McArdle, who played in Grand Rapids Friday night, was sent to the Fuel on Saturday. The IceHogs also released Hunter Fejes from his PTO Saturday. Fejes skated in nine games for Rockford.
With Carl Dahlstrom currently up with the Blackhawks, rookie defenseman Lucas Carlsson has taken advantage of some increased ice time. Carlsson, a 21-year-old from Galve, Seweden, was used by Hogs coach Derek King on the power play this weekend.
Carlsson had key goals in both home games. He showed solid offensive instincts Saturday in pinching in and maneuvering into scoring position to find the back of the net. Sunday, he factored into both Rockford goals and was named the game’s First Star.
For the season, Carlsson now has 13 points (4 G, 9 A). That puts him in a tie with Viktor Ejdsell for fourth among current IceHogs.
Luke Johnson got the Hogs on the board first 3:03 into the opening period. Johnson took the puck out of the defensive zone and found Jordan Schroeder coming across the Griffins blueline. Schroeder pulled up and sent a centering pass to the slot, where Johnson had skated following his pass. The redirect got past Grand Rapids goalie Patrik Rybar for a 1-0 Rockford lead.
The power play added to the IceHogs advantage after Derek Hulak was called for slashing later in the first. Viktor Ejdsell took a short pass from Darren Raddysh at the top of the Griffins zone, skated to the slot and found Jacob Nilsson waiting at the right dot. Nilsson’s shot caught the far side of the net and put Rockford up 2-0 at the 13:48 mark.
The second period was not as kind to the IceHogs. Chris Terry scored on the power play for Grand Rapids to cut the lead to 2-1 midway through the frame. A late Rockford power play resulted in a shorthanded goal by Turner Elson with six seconds left. At the second intermission, the Hogs and Griffins were even at two goals.
The score remained 2-2 through regulation. In Gus Macker Time, the IceHogs gained a power play opportunity when Joe Hicketts was nabbed for slashing. Johnson, after having a shot turned away by Rybar a few seconds earlier, got the puck back from Raddysh in the slot. Johnson waited for a lane to open up and sent a wrister over the Griffins goalie to win it for the Rockford.
Lines (Starters in italics)
Alexandre Fortin-Jordan Schroeder (A)-Luke Johnson
Viktor Ejdsell-Jacob Nilsson-Anthony Louis
Tyler Sikura (A)-Nathan Noel-Nick Moutrey
Matheson Iacopelli-Terry Broadhurst-Henrik Samuelsson
Darren Raddysh-Joni Tuulola
Josh McArdle-Andrew Campbell (A)
Blake Hillman-Lucas Carlsson
Collin Delia
Power Play (2-4)
Fortin-Johnson-Schroeder-Samuelsson-Carlsson
Louis-Ejdsell-Sikura-Nilsson-Raddysh
Penalty Kill (Grand Rapids was 1-3)
Johnson-Nilsson-Campbell-Carlsson
Fortin-Noel-Hillman-Tuulola
Moutrey-Sikura-Raddysh-McArdle
The IceHogs kept the vaunted Stars offense at bay for most of regulation. Anton Forsberg stopped 49 of 52 shots but Texas prevailed in Gus Macker Time.
The Stars got on the board with a power play tally by Eric Condra early in the second period. Rockford was ineffective offensively for the bulk of the evening. In the closing seconds of the middle frame, however, the Hogs managed to tie the score.
With a man advantage due to a Colton Hargrove slash, Anthony Louis got a shot on net that glanced off of Stars goalie Phillipe Desrosiers and briefly settled in front of the crease. Jordan Schroeder was on hand to knock it off the right post, then again into the Texas net with just over three seconds remaining in the period.
The IceHogs gained a 2-1 advantage on a wonderful pinch by Lucas Carlsson 8:04 into period three. Carlsson slipped into the slot to nab a rebound of a Luke Johnson attempt. He stick-handled into an open shooting lane and went high past Desrosiers to cap the scoring play.
The lead was short-lived. Joel L’Esperance dug a puck out of the corner of the Rockford zone and made a strong power move to the front of the net. His shot got by Forsberg, just catching the right post and banking into the Hogs net at 11:11 for the equalizer.
Texas ended the contest 2:52 into the extra session with a goal by Adam Macherin. This put an end to Rockford’s hope to establish a win steak.
Lines (Starters in italics)
Alexandre Fortin-Jordan Schroeder (A)-Luke Johnson
Viktor Ejdsell-Jacob Nilsson-Anthony Louis
Tyler Sikura (A)-Nathan Noel-Nick Moutrey
Matheson Iacopelli-Terry Broadhurst-Henrik Samuelsson
Lucas Carlsson-Jan Rutta
Dennis Gilbert-Andrew Campbell
Blake Hillman-Darren Raddysh
Anton Forsberg
Power Play (1-5)
Fortin-Johnson-Schroeder-Rutta-Carlsson
Louis-Ejdsell-Sikura-Nilsson-Raddysh
Penalty Kill (Stars were 1-4)
Johnson-Nilsson-Campbell-Carlsson
Fortin-Noel-Hillman-Gilbert
Moutrey-Sikura-Raddysh-Rutta
Collin Delia held off the Griffins until Rockford potted a pair of opportunistic goals in the third period. Delia stopped 37 shots, 30 of which came at him in the first 40 minutes.
The Hogs got all the offense they would require in the final frame, starting with a Lucas Carlsson goal a bit past the midway point of the period. Luke Johnson set up Viktor Ejdsell for a one-timer in the slot with Rockford on a power play. The shot was stopped by the pads of Griffins goalie Patrik Rybar; Alexandre Fortin got a stick on the rebound and slid it to Carlsson near the bottom of the right circle. Rubber met twine at 11:31 of the third to give the IceHogs a 1-0 lead.
Another rebound was the catalyst for the second Rockford mark. This time, it was a Carlsson shot that settled at the right post for Jordan Schroeder to knock in at 16:03.
Delia’s shutout bid was foiled by a Chris Terry goal with eight seconds to play. The Hogs still finished the weekend on a winning note, beating the Griffins for the second time in three days.
Lines (Starters in italics)
Viktor Ejdsell-Jacob Nilsson-Anthony Louis
Jordan Schoeder-Luke Johnson-Alexandre Fortin
Nick Moutrey-Graham Knott-Nathan Noel
Terry Broadhurst-Tyler Sikura-Henrik Samuelsson
Dennis Gilbert-Andrew Campbell
Lucas Carlsson-Jan Rutta
Joni Tuulola-Darren Raddysh
Collin Delia
Power Play (1-3)
Nilsson-Sikura-Louis-Ejdsell-Raddysh
Johnson-Fortin-Schroeder-Carlsson-Rutta
Penalty Kill (Griffins were 0-4)
Johnson-Nilsson-Campbell-Carlsson
Fortin-Noel-Tuulola-Gilbert
Moutrey-Sikura-Raddysh-Rutta
Rockford (13-10-2-4) is still in sixth place in the Central Division standings with a .552 points percentage. The Hogs welcome Milwaukee to the BMO Wednesday night before visiting Chicago on Friday.
Follow me @JonFromi on twitter for thoughts on the IceHogs throughout the season.
Listen, I know my job is to write about the Blackhawks here, but at this point I am running out of things to tell you. They’re bad, get over it! The Bears beat the fucking Packers to win the NFC North! Mitchell Trubisky outplayed Aaron FUCKING Rodgers at Soldier Field. In real life!!!! That’s all that matters, folks! Alas, I do have some things to say about the Blackhawks tonight. Let’s dig in:
– Every time I do something like this, I feel the need to preface it, so I’m gonna preface this – you all know I love Duncan Keith. You all know that everyone here loves Duncan Keith. With that being said…. I am getting kinda tired of Duncan Keith. I legitimately feel like every time I watch the Hawks this year, I find myself thinking “damn, Keith is not playing well tonight.” Maybe it’s just me. But he was ass again tonight, and any chance the Hawks had at being a respectable team this year (which was slight anyway) went out the door tonight because of a bad play by Keith. It sucks major ass. Please be better Duncan, because I do not want this fanbase to turn on you like they have on Seabs.
– To expound upon an assertion in the above point, holy shit does this situation with Crawford suck ass. Yes, there’s the hockey side, and this team is now completely fucked without him. They might as well pack it in, and just finish 31st to give themselves the best chance at Jack Hughes or Crapo Cracko (that’s close enough) in the draft. But Crawford is more than a hockey player – believe it or not, he’s a real human being with a real brain that has now been put through a blender two years in a row. Fuck hockey, I just hope this dude can live a normal life. He’s turning 34 in two weeks, so he was on the downswing of his career. He won two Cups. He might be better served to retire at this point. I wish it wasn’t this way, because he deserves to go out on his own terms and deserves a better send off. But there’s more to this than hockey, and I just hope he’s okay.
– I like Dylan Strome. That’s all I have to say about this at this time.
– Go watch Mitchell Trubisky’s TD pass to Trey Burton (I tweeted it, so here ya go) and tell me your pants don’t get tighter/moister immediately. What a fucking stud. That’s a franchise QB moment. That was a franchise QB game. I love him. I want to protect him. I want to see him grow. BEAR DOWN.
vs 
Game Time: 6:00 CST
TV/Radio: WGN Ch. 9, WGN-AM 720
Housing Crisis: Fear The Fin
As the Hawks continue on this absolutely brutal stretch of the schedule which as salted the earth on an already napalmed season, tonight they welcome a presently underachieving Sharks team to West Madison.
There are very few players whose switching of conferences can change the entire outlook of one. So when one of those actually does switch conferences, and he doesn’t light up the world and then tear a hole in it that he fills with peanut butter cups, most are inclined to tell you he’s a disappointment. Erik Karlsson is one of those players of the three or four there are. And most think he’s having a down season. In some ways, he’s actually having his best.
Yes, there are only two goals. Yes, none of them are at even-strength. His points-per-game are his lowest in about seven years. We get all that. And yet on the most talented team he’s ever played on (it’s not even close), Karlsson has the best relative stats of his career.
Karlsson’ +7.07% Corsi-relative is the second highest mark of his career, only bested by his ’15-’16 when he should have been racking up a third Norris instead of having Kings fans wet their bed so much they nearly solved the California drought problem to get Drew Doughty his. His relative-xGF% of +8.91 blows anything else he’s done in his career out of the water. When Karlsson is on the ice, the Sharks are getting far more good scoring chances than the other team, they just haven’t buried as many of them.
There are caveats. Because the Sharks, unlike the Senators at any time, have other good d-men (including a Team Canada worthy ones in Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Brent Burns), Karlsson doesn’t have to do everything for them. So he’s starting nearly 60% of his shifts in the offensive zone, also a career-high. And his quality of competition has dipped a little, as the really hard stuff is left for Vlasic and Justin Braun. They always did the mine-sweeping for Burns, and now they’re doing it for Karlsson as well. That said, you can’t ask more of Karlsson than to simply turn the opponent into a pot pie with that, and Karlsson is doing so.
Karlsson’s lack of goals is curious, as this is the second straight season his shooting-percentage has dipped. He shot 4.6% last year and this year it’s 1.9%. That seems ridiculously low. Even stranger is that Karlsson is getting more shots than he has in four seasons, over three per game. You can expect a binge somewhere around here that will make his points-total look a little more like we’re accustomed to seeing.
Which leads directly to questions about Karlsson’s future. It could already be sorted, of course, as the Sharks aren’t allowed to sign Karlsson to an extension until the new year. Perhaps they have a handshake agreement already. If they don’t, it gets a little tricky. The Sharks have something around $28M in space for next year, which seems enough. But Joe Pavelski is a free agent. So is Joe Thornton. Joonas Donskoi will also be a UFA, and Timo Meier–fresh off what looks to be a career season–is going to be RFA.
The Sharks may be secretly hoping Thornton retires, and maybe a Cup win assures that. Without him, it could still be a trick, as even at Pavelski’s age he’s due a raise from $6M a year. Meier’s raise will be huge. Donskoi’s slightly less. And then you figure Karlsson is looking at Doughty money of $11M or $12M a year. It can be done, but it’s going to be a squeeze.
If there’s a bidding war for EK, it’s hard to figure what kind of years will be acceptable. He will be 29 when he hits the market. His skating doesn’t figure to deteriorate at a rate that will make him a problem for a while, because it’s so far above the mean. But how much can he lose before he can’t dominate? Another team can’t ask him to do everything, but not every team comes with a Vlasic to keep him shielded either. He’s going to want the boat of seven years, but like anything else the last three years of such a deal would be ugly.
Then again, no one else does what he can do.
Could the Hawks swing it? Maybe, though convincing him to come to a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in two seasons will take quite the presentation. They could ask Keith and Murphy to simply be the human shield, but neither has proven at this point in time they can handle that level of competition. Could Jokiharju and Murphy do it? The Hawks will have what they hope is Baby Karlsson in Adam Boqvist, so who better to show him the way?
If the Hawks are looking for a quick turnaround though, he makes that far more possible than Artemi Panarin. Maybe you just do it and figure out the rest later.
Game #35 Preview Suite
@ItWasThreeZero followed us home one day. We fed him at the back door of the building. He won’t leave us alone. We figure we can at least use him to get Sharks info.
Three points behind the Flames isn’t where the Sharks were supposed to be. Everything metrically looks great, so is their lack of taking off simply down to Martin Jones?
A lot of it is. It’s hard to win games when your starting goalie is throwing up a sub-.900 SV% for the majority of the season. That said the Sharks are also top third in the league at yielding high-danger scoring chances so they haven’t been doing Jones or Aaron Dell many favors. The team adopted a higher-risk, higher-reward style of play in the middle of last season in response to Vegas’ success and while it’s made them infinitely more bearable to watch than the previous iteration of Peter DeBoer hockey, it’s also resulted in giving up quite a few more five-alarm chances. Still, it’s not unreasonable to expect Jones to at least be within striking distance of league average and once he starts trending in that direction the Sharks theoretically have the offense, possession numbers and penalty killing to run away with the division.
Is it really worth complaining about Erik Karlsson, as some have done, when he’s got 21 points and appears to be driving the play as he always has?
Nah. Karlsson has clearly been the team’s best overall player to anyone watching the games and controls the pace of play every time he’s on the ice. What is concerning is that, over a third of the way through the season, the coaching staff still hasn’t quite figured out how to use him. They’ve paired Karlsson with Brenden Dillon at even strength despite how dominant the pairing of Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic was to start the season. They haven’t figured out how to best combine Karlsson and Brent Burns’ talents on a single power play unit, often having Kevin Labanc quarterback the struggling man advantage instead. Then they turn around and throw arguably the two most offensively dynamic defensemen in the league out there together in bizarre situations, like on the penalty kill or a defensive zone faceoff. I don’t think the Sharks are a serious Cup contender until the coaches can figure out how to get the most out of Karlsson.
Meanwhile, Joe Thornton is average a near career-low in points per game. Just getting that old? Reason to worry?
2018-19 is in all likelihood the Joe Thornton Farewell Tour so by those standards he’s been surprisingly effective. It helps that the Sharks haven’t really needed him to be more than a third-line center and occasional contributor on the power play and he’s played both of those roles admirably. Really the only goal with him is ensuring he’s healthy for the playoffs after missing the majority of the last two postseasons due to knee injuries.
What’s up with Timo Meier‘s breakout?
Meier has always put up an insane shot rate going back to junior hockey and has taken that strategy to a new level this season. He’s currently third in the league in unblocked shots per minute at even strength, and with those shots going in at nearly twice the rate that they did last season it’s not surprising that he’s on pace for 50 goals. I don’t expect him to maintain that shooting percentage but based on the shot rate alone, and more importantly the types of chances he’s getting, Meier is going to blow away his previous career high of 21 goals and should easily clear the 35-goal mark as well. The biggest key is probably that his line with Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl has the size and cycling ability to get Meier those chances in front of the net that are his bread and butter but they also have the speed and passing to create chances off the rush that Meier really didn’t generate much of last season.
Game #35 Preview Suite
It’s bad enough that we all know that Evander Kane is a piece of shit. He’s been sued/investigated/charged for all sorts of actions against women, whether it’s assault or being grabby or suits over supposed agreements to pay for abortions that he didn’t fulfill. There are enough of them around, however they’ve ended up, to make it pretty clear that he’s someone we could all do without.
But there are enough of them around in the league, and there hasn’t been anything yet that would be grounds to throw him out of hockey, no matter how good it might feel. What there also isn’t are grounds to actively use him to do NHL promotion.
Kane appears in an ad for NHL Network, though you’ll only find it on the NHL Center Ice package when they don’t show local ads. Still, the NHL has no business being anywhere near Kane, and yet they can’t help themselves. This seems to be a hockey thing, where not only does the NHL duck and hide when it comes to dealing with these sort of issues, but they’re in a huge rush to try and rehabilitate any player’s image if they’re in any way a star. Whether Kane is would be debatable, but we know they did this with the other Kane as well. They’re more concerned with either ignoring these things totally or jump-starting a rehabilitation of one’s image. But never of their personality.
It’s not asking much of a league that when a player has a cloud as big and stormy over him for years, that Evander Kane does, he’s merely an employee and not a poster boy. That would seem to be the bare minimum any fan who cares about this stuff would ask of the NHL. It sends a horrific message to a huge portion of hockey fandom. And yet the NHL constant fails this easy, step-over-able hurdle every goddamn time.
Maybe Kane’s next crime/indiscretion/mistake will get the NHL to finally do something about it. But they’ll have a hand in why he hasn’t learned anything from all the previous ones, whatever they may be.
Game #35 Preview Suite
