Game #8 Preview Suite
That’s the first of the roughly 40 more Corey Crawford wins the Hawks will need to actually make the playoffs, give or take. Ok, maybe that’s pushing it. Let’s say 35.
The analysis doesn’t have to be too deep on this one. The Hawks weren’t very good. Their goalie was, and he was better than the Jackets could muster, which was a lot. We saw this game a lot last year in the first three months. The Hawks make a ton of mistakes at either blue line, and then they’re scrambling defensively. When they weren’t, they were getting pinned in their own end even if they were set up. And Crawford bailed them out every time, save Kane falling asleep on a 4-on-4 to let Zach Werenski sashay right down the slot. Any other chance, Crawford was the danger.
Let’s get to it.
The Two Obs
-As I said before Thursday’s game, I wasn’t that worried about Crow’s first couple, or even few, games. I figured the adrenaline would take over, or the excitement of being back after 10 months out. We’ll see what the fifth game, or 10th game, 0r 20th game is when that juice isn’t quite there and the rust is still to be worked out.
But these first two have been awfully exciting. He’s looked sharp. He’s making the saves that only he and a handful of other goalies make consistently. He’s giving his flawed and learning team a chance. He’s anticipating. There was one odd-man rush, out of the gaggle that the Jackets had, where Panarin slid it to Werenski, but Crow was already there. He was in control, didn’t overcommit, and simply let the puck nestle into his waiting chest. The instincts clearly haven’t dulled.
-Right, moving beyond the Crow-gushing, no matter how fun it is. The Hawks were woeful with the puck tonight, and it was a glaring example of why they’re going to struggle so much at times this year.
Any hint of scouting will tell you the Hawks will not dump the puck in. And that’s fair, they don’t really have enough wingers to go and get it back consistently. They want to have control when they enter the zone, as at least their top six is far better that way. But teams are just going to stand up at their line every time, and cause turnovers there. And there’s a huge gap between the forwards and defense, because the Hawks defense is slow. You can beat at least four of them to the outside whenever you want, and Gustafsson’s awareness can be such you’ll have no idea where he’s going to be at any given time.
So that leads to odd-man after odd-man the other way in games. Also, the Hawks forwards aren’t that fast, and given where they lose the puck, they can’t get back to even things out. Maybe, and boy is this a large maybe, when Murphy and Forsling are healthy the defense can be a little more aggressive and get up there and cut plays off at the source. But that seems awfully wishful.
-That wasn’t the Hawks only problem. They weren’t very good with the puck in their own end either. They still try and play their way out of the zone far too often, instead of just getting it out and at least attempting to let the forwards skate onto it. They don’t have the skill to pull that off most times. So they end up jammed up in their own zone a lot.
-It didn’t help that there were three new lines, none of which really made any sense. But we’re tired of singing this song, and you’re tired of hearing it.
-On the plus side, I thought David Kampf had a very effective game. It’s easy to notice him because he’s so quick, but he was forcing things in the right way tonight and using that speed to cause problems for the Columbus d-men. I’m fairly sure he’s a useful bottom-six piece.
-The third goal was art, and the product of two players–Seabrook and Kane–who have been together so long they just know where each other will be without looking.
-Your only Hawk above water in possession was Brandon Saad.
-For most of the 3rd, Joel Quenneville was double-shifting Kane. This is why and others have called for the Hawks and many other teams to dress 11 forwards and seven d-men. Why give the eight minutes or whatever to creatures of the trash like Andrea Martinsen or John Hayden when you can give your best players like Kane, Toews, DeBrincat, Schmaltz, even Kahun an extra few shifts. If it results in an extra goal here and there you never know how much difference that can make. You’re already doing it basically, so why even pretend?
Onwards…
First Screen Viewing
Blues vs. Maple Leafs – 6pm
It’s kind of a weak schedule tonight in the National Hockey League (sky point Bill Pidto…wait, he’s not dead), so we’ll go with the Leafs skating circles around a bewildered Blues team. The news today has that St. Louis finally discovered that Jay Bouwmeester has been a cadaver fit for only medical school usage for about three years and have healthy scratched him. That won’t make the Blues blue line mobile enough to deal with the unholy hell that the Leafs top six has been so far this year, but it’s always good when science and critical thought make an appearance in Missouri. The Leafs are coming off getting humbled by the Penguins, whom their fans think are washed up. So that was hilarious. There’s nothing wrong with a little schadenfreude, friends.
Second Screen Viewing
Lightning vs. Wild – 7pm
Again, it’s slim pickens on offer tonight, so we’ll go with the Hawks’ opponents tomorrow as they invade Minnesota. Somehow the Wild have won three games, we’re not sure how, because they’ve been exposed most nights. Devan Dubnyk is dong the heavy lifting, which is usually the case. The Bolts only blemish is to the Canucks, you figure that one out, and they’ve basically destroyed the three other teams they’ve played, including putting eight on the Jackets. The Wild fancy themselves fast. The Lightning actually are.
Other Games
Canadiens vs. Senators – 6pm
Red Wings vs. Panthers – 6pm
Bruins vs. Canucks – 9pm
Ducks vs. Knights – 9pm
Predators vs. Oilers – 9pm
Islanders vs. Sharks – 9:30
@ 
Game Time: 6:00PM CDT
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, NHLN US, TVA-S, WGN-AM 720
Street Fight Radio: The Cannon
After basically the entire work week off in an unofficial early season bye, the Hawks venture to Ohio for the second and only road game of another thee-in-four-nights stretch that sees them facing down a Columbus team that still isn’t quite sure what the hell it actually is at this point.
At 4-2-0 to this point in the seaoson, the Jackets are at least making a fist of it while unholy terror Seth Jones remains absent from the blue line. To this point, they’ve beaten Detroit, Florida, Philadelphia, and Colorado, with only the latter of which actually playing well to start the season, as their other three victories have been over teams that are presently total messes. Their losses came to a speedy and spiky Hurricanes team, and the Bolts who dropped an 8-burger on them. So for right now, it’s fair to call them the middling team that they are with Jones out.
That’s not to say they’re bereft of any kind of punch. Erstwhile Style Boy Artemi Panarin has put up 9 points in 6 games so far to pace the Jackets, and is in full on “Fuck you, pay me” mode with his bridge deal coming to a close at the end of this year and lacking the mega-paper he’s seeking, which the Jackets seem slightly hesitant to give him. He flanks former first rounder P-L Dubois with Cam Atkinson on the other side, and this line has shown plenty of speed and creativity in the early going. The Jackets’ middle six has been getting plowed over on the possession ledger however, with the de facto second line of Duclair (remember him?), Wennberg, and SANDPAPER Captain Nick Foligno and the third line of Boone Jenner, Riley “Not A Purported Wiener Tucker” Nash, and Josh Anderson contributing intermittent offense, but certainly not enough to balance out the top line and force opposing coaches to pause when trying to get matchups. The fourth line of Sonny Milano (OHHHH!), Lukas Sedlak, and Dane Oliver Bjorkstrand has at least tilted the ice to spell the other three units.
With Jones out on the blue line, Zach Werenski has been partnered with David Savard, and they’ve been getting their skulls kicked it at a 41% clip, and if Werenski isn’t pushing the play on offense, he’s not a world beater in his own end, particularly when he is basically covering for Quebecois Wisniewski as a partner. Markus Nutivaara, a seventh round pick and a 24 year old and not a Finnish candy bar, however, has been the beneficiary of the top line taking a pounding, and flipped the ice at 60% clip with the will-he-ever-get-his-shit-together Ryan Murray. Adam Clendening (remember him too?) has landed here because he’s a right handed defenseman with the vague threat of offense in his game, and he and Scott Harrington have been turned into paste in the 20 even strength minutes they’ve played together on the third pairing.
Long the strength of this team, two time Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky has had a slow start to the season, with only an .888 at evens and an .875 overall. Clearly those are not up to his high standards of play, and if that continues, that type of goaltending will torpedo just about any team, let alone one that’s been as reliant as the Jackets have been on Bob. But for as much as he’s slumped, he’s still fully capable of power-windmill breakdancing in the crease all night long on any opponent, as Bobrovsky remains one of the best combinations of size, athleticism, and positional soundness in the sport.
As for the Men Of Four Feathers, while their first regulation loss was probably overdue, they certainly didn’t play terribly against the Yotes on Thursday, or at least the names that are supposed to matter didn’t. The ones everyone expects to be terrible gift wrapped all three goals for Glendale, and Corey Crawford’s return to the cage didn’t have the storybook finish that was hoped for despite looking as solid as can be asked of a goalie after having not played in over 300 days. He’ll get the nod again tonight with a sterner test, particularly from the top line with Panarin’s ability to pick corners as a “bad shot maker”. In front of Crawford will be the same defensive configuration as the past few games, which means it’s duck and cover time with Manning and Rutta on the ice, particularly unsheltered on the road.
Among the forwards, because the Hawks actually lost, Quenneville predictably used it as an excuse to do what he’s presumably been dying to do since the start of camp, and that’s move Anisimov back to the #2 center slot between Schmaltz and Garbage Dick. Schmaltz has been scuffling a little bit, but having Alexandre “2009 Troy Brouwer Redux” Fortin continually biff chances tilts the scoring sheet a little bit, and Wide Dick Artie isn’t the best answer to sparking Schmaltz long term. Fortin was platooning with Martinsen at last report this morning, which results in the splitting up of the speedy Saad-Kruger-Kampf line that could use some more time in a true shutdown role to see if it really could end up being a thing. Instead, Chris Kunitz will play with Saad and Kampf, and Kruger will get some combination from the Fortin/Hayden/Martinsen turd grab bag.
While John Tortorella is assuredly A Moron, he’s not so entrenched that he doesn’t know that at home he’ll have some advantageous matchups that can be found for his top line. The key will be to minimize that damage and hope that Crawford makes some of the saves that Cam Ward wasn’t or couldn’t make, and that at the other end each save that Bobrovsky makes isn’t the one that snaps him out of the funk he’s in. Let’s go Hawks.
Game #7 Preview Suite
It’s hard to think of a GM more in a jam than Jarmo Kekalainen. Sure, we’ve seen GMs and teams play chicken with a free agent to be in the past. But two? And the two best players on a team? That’s rare indeed. And the fortunes of the Blue Jackets for the next few years pretty much hang in the balance.
To review: both Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky are going to be unrestricted free agents when this season ends. Panarin has made it quite clear that he’s not coming back, as it seems his destiny to be an overpaid Ranger or Panther. Bobrovsky has at least talked to the Jackets about an extension, but those talks have gone nowhere.
We’ll take the case of Bobrovsky first. He’a two-time Vezina winner, and no goalie with that kind of track record has hit the open market in recent memory. As of right now, the highest paid goalie in the league is Carey Price at $10.5 million. Price only has one Vezina, and has only done slightly better than Bobrovsky in the playoffs. Price has appeared in one conference final, never a Stanley Cup Final, and the Habs have basically been early-round chum for anyone they’ve run across. Bobrovsky’s agent could look at that $10.5 figure and go from there, and we mean go up.
Complicating matters even more for the Jackets is while they will gain the space of Panarin’s $6 million salary on the cap, they also have to pay Zach Werenski and Ryan Murray. That’s certainly going to be more than $6 million. The Jackets only have $5 million in space now as it is. It’s hard to identify what they can jettison to create more space. Nick Foligno? He’s the captain. Cam Atkinson might be the only top line forward they have after Panarin’s saunter to the door.
Which makes you wonder if they can afford to lose Bobrovsky at all. Goalies are almost certainly criminally underpaid considering their worth, and the Jackets offense may need some serious propping up once Panarin has bid adieu.
The other problem is that Bobrovsky’s appearances in the playoffs haven’t exactly been gleaming. The Jackets have never seen the second round. Bob’s playoff record in Columbus is a .898 SV% and 3.37 GAA. Now, to be sure, in two of those series the Jackets were far overmatched by the Penguins. You could argue they were by the Capitals last year, but they took the first two games in DC. And then Bob spent the next four games chucking up a toad. But a goalie is a playoff dog until he isn’t, and then what?
You don’t find another Bobrovsky on the market or in the system. And you don’t go anywhere without a goalie. Yes, he’s 30, but the aging curve for goalies is longer than skaters. He’s probably got four or five good years left. If this is the Jackets’ window, aren’t you closing it by losing him?
Panarin’s case is different. He’s gone. There’s almost no indication he’ll ever consider staying in Ohio. So logic would dictate that you ship him out for what you can get at the deadline. But it’s not that simple. The Jackets aren’t rebuilding, and you never see player-for-player deals at the deadline. They’re at least quite rare. Things will change, but there are contending teams who could use a dynamic scoring winger. Maybe more will develop. But what do those teams have to give up off the roster? The Jackets are set at top pairing with Werenski and Seth Jones. They like Nutivaara and Ryan Murray beyond that. Could they find another goalie in return for Panarin? Nearly impossible you’d think.
Overriding both of these is that the Jackets have to win, and soon. This is a fanbase aching for success, and if it sees its two most accomplished players blast noogies for nothing and without so much as a playoff series win, you’d have a tough time convincing all of them the Jackets can build a long-term winner.
It may come down to how likely Jarmo thinks it is for the Jackets to get out of the division. The Penguins could be had if Matt Murray never finds the form of his first two years. The Capitals have gotten a touch older and are still the squad that needed just about everything to go right last spring. The Rangers and Islanders aren’t a concern. The Devils and Flyers really could be anything. The Metro is open.
Maybe you take your run at a conference final and reset in the summer. But the Jackets don’t have a ton of cap space to do so.
We don’t have any answers. Jarmo might not either.
Game #7 Preview Suite
Alison covers the Jackets for The Athletic. You can follow her on Twitter @AlisonL.
Let’s get the big one out of the way. There’s just no way the Jackets can win with this Panarin and Bobrovsky situation, right? Is the hope that a long playoff run might convince them to stay? Or is it something of a foregone conclusion they’re both headed for the exit and the Jackets are just going to take a run with them while they can?
These are the questions that will haunt the team all season until there is a resolution. Both players are potentially big losses but for different reasons so let me address each player in kind. First, Panarin has expressed a desire to be elsewhere. He hasn’t articulated anything he doesn’t like about Columbus or the organization but he prefers to be somewhere else. Some reports have that “somewhere else” to be a big city, possibly near water. So, if that’s the case, you have to balance seeing if the player changes his mind about wanting to be in Columbus long term with the need to move him to get any possible kind of return. This is tricky because the Jackets are just starting their window of “going for it” so getting just draft picks or futures in return wouldn’t be ideal – but it’s hard to get a “play now” guy in trade when Panarin is potentially just a rental. It’s also hard when teams know they may only need to wait to get him in July for nothing other than what the sign him to contractually.
As for Bobrovsky, it’s a slightly different scenario. The player and the organization have had contentious negotiations in the past, and this is a two-time Vezina winner who surely wants big-time money (and term of course). The organization doesn’t yet know for sure that Bobrovsky is as strong in post-season play (although that certainly isn’t only a Bobrovsky question), and the goaltender turned 30 this year, so how much of your overall salary do you invest for possibly eight years? Bobrovsky also has a no-trade clause in his current contract.
So to summarize, I think it’s more likely that Bobrovsky finishes out the season as a Blue Jacket. There’s a “chance’ one or both stay past this season, but from an asset management perspective, without a change of heart, I don’t know that you can lose both for nothing, so Panarin would likely be moved.
How big of a miss is Seth Jones?
There’s a reason Jones was an All-Star and in the Norris conversation last year (and should be this year, in my opinion). Jones is smart, athletic, and responsible in all areas of the ice. That means he is very missed and his absence has highlighted the growth that Zach Werenski has in front of him defensively. His absence also shows up as a strain on the remaining defensemen both in terms of big minutes and two-way play. The good news is that Jones is now three weeks into an estimated 4-6 week recovery period.
Markus Nutivaara is a name you don’t hear much outside of Ohio (and no one can spell without looking), but the Jackets seem pretty high on him. Why’s that?
“Nuti” as he’s called, is a hidden gem, in my opinion. This is a seventh-round pick who couldn’t even make the top teams in the leagues back in Finland but one who has proven to be a perfect fit for Tortorella’s offensive defenseman (or “rover”) style. He is confident and not afraid to jump into play in the offensive zone. Adding to that, Nuti has improved year over year and has found a highly complimentary partner in Ryan Murray. When Jones is healthy, with Nuti and Murray, you have two defensive pairings that are solid defensively and quite lethal offensively also.
Pierre-Luc Dubois and his extraneous first name put up 49 points in his rookie year last year. Should we expect a major leap this term?
I don’t expect a massive leap, but only because his rookie year was so strong. Also, PLD plays with Panarin so any change in the status of that player obviously impacts Dubois’ ability to produce. What I do expect to see is improvement in play in the corners and winning battles – these are things the centerman worked on this off-season. He remains the Jackets’ 1C right now.
The Metro Division isn’t as tough as it might seem on the surface, with the Caps and Pens aging, the Flyers unable to get out their own way, and the Rangers and Islanders rebuilding. Can the Jackets actually get out of it in the spring? Would that be enough?
This is a team that needs to start making an impact in the post-season. They will likely get there, but now, as the cliche goes, it’s really what happens there that matters.
Game #7 Preview Suite
Nick Foligno is a fine player. That’s just about it. He’s deified in Columbus as he’s the captain of the team. He had one great season of 31 goals and 73 points, conveniently signed an lucrative extension for $5.7M a year during that season, and hasn’t come close to those numbers since. Strange how that happens. But it happens a lot, and it’s not Foligno’s fault that the Blue Jackets thought he’d shoot 17% the rest of his career. Get it when you can, while you can, as Dennis Hope told us.
Foligno is that rugged winger that teams love to make captains, and it’s all the better if they’re the son of an NHL-er. If you’re the son of an NHL player you basically have to shit your pants for a month straight before the league gives up on you. If Brady Tkachuk’s last name was anything else he’s probably a third-round pick. That’s just how these things go.
The problem with Foligno, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with him personally, is that when Artemi Panarin toddles off to whatever East Coast port throws an oil tanker of money at him, there will be a rush from Columbus front office types and media to declare that Panarin isn’t the type you win with, Foligno is.
On paper, that’s not totally incorrect. No team with Panarin on it has won a playoff series. Panarin himself has floated between dominating playoff games and not even appearing to be in the building. You could make that argument and it would be hard to disprove.
But…the Jackets haven’t won a series with Foligno either. And for a long while he was taking up a top-line winger role that he couldn’t live up to but was expected to because he did once on a fluke and he puts his face first into things. These types are teflon in the league. If you’re Canadian and run face-first into the boards a lot, everyone in hockey assumes you’re a winner and not just a dumbass.
You’d think teams would get it now, as the last four Cup winners were based off the starring brilliance of Duncan Keith, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Evgeny Kuznetsov and not on the graft of a bunch of humps grunting and sweating the puck up the ice. It’s getting better, as teams realize that actual skill is the top priority. But there’s still a long way to go.
Foligno’s fine. He should be a passenger and not the driver.
Game #7 Preview Suite
So the Hawks have lost a game in regulation. They’ll probably lose many more. And in truth, last night wasn’t anywhere close to the worst game they’ve played. Couple posts, Antti Raanta being what Antti Raanta is now which is weird, and the bottom of the roster letting you down. It happens.
So let’s barge through a couple notes before adjourning for the weekend.
-I’ve mentioned on the podcast, but there’s a school of thought in baseball when it comes to free agency that you either go top shelf or well on your choices, and you don’t mess with the in-between. Because those players have the greatest variance, and if they don’t work out you’ve committed far too much of your budget to them. Whereas if your well whiskey players don’t work out, you’ve still go payroll flexibility to make up for that.
In hockey, the only sport with no exceptions and the hardest of hard salary caps, this might be even more important. While a policy like this employed by every team would freeze out even more middle-six and middle-pairing veterans than it already does, when building a team it might just have to be that callous. Even just a couple of mistakes and your cap is tied up with nowhere to go, and as we all know it’s the players at the top of your roster who make all the difference despite hockey’s undying need to glorify the artisans instead of the artists.
This is what bothers me so much about Brandon Manning. He’s not a bargain-basement signing. While $2.2 million is not a ton of money, it’s significant. Or at least it’s enough to notice. The Hawks nearly doubled this goober’s salary from last year, and I can’t even fathom whom they were bidding against. I can’t sit here and tell you what the Hawks might have done with that extra million or million and a half, but I know it could have been better than this. And it might be the difference to whatever they want to do midseason.
Especially when you’re talking about a third-pairing player. That’s not a middle-pairing player, no matter what you’ve deluded yourself into seeing as the Hawks clearly did, that you think you might get a bargain on. When opting for third-pairing players, you should go cheap and mobile as often as you can. If Jordan Oesterle has been restricted to this last year, not nearly as many would have minded. And I’m sure Brandon Davidson is just another word for Oesterle, but he can’t be worse and he’s far cheaper and more mobile. Go around the top teams in the league and you won’t find too many spending this much on a third-pairing guy, aside from the Penguins and Jack Johnson because there are a lot of fumes in Western PA.
Let’s say instead of avoiding the middle of the market, which we’ll give a wide range of $2-$6 million per year, when you commit those contracts you have to get them right. Look at the Oilers, who have at least gotten four of them wrong and see how badly it can go.
Somewhat luckily for the Hawks, they can probably rectify this if they want. While the thought has been that Gustav Forsling will head to Rockford when healthy, seems to me they can put him in the third pairing role he’s been cut out for. Fuck, pair him with Davidson and at least make it a mobile pairing. I don’t really care what it produces as long as it could move, and I don’t really care what happens to Rutta or Manning.
This would have to cause a shift in usage, as Joel Quenneville has been loathe to start Henri Jokiharju anywhere but the offensive zone, but there seems to be little choice. Burying Jan Rutta and Brandon Manning there has gotten you…well, this. Q hasn’t helped matters by putting Manning and Rutta behind Anisimov and Kunitz the most, which is just aching to get killed. There is probably a shift there needed, too.
-This is probably not pointless thanks to this morning’s practice silliness, but whether he liked it or not Q did stumble upon what could have been a nifty third line. Though he hasn’t played them enough, Brandon Saad–Marcus Kruger–David Kampf have killed the competition in two games. And they’ve done that while starting almost all of the time in the defensive zone.
Look, a checking winger who scores a touch more than most checking wingers (if he does score again) is not what you envisioned for Brandon Saad. But what you did want was a line that could keep your top six away from the hardest competition. For now, you have that. And it was quick and was creating chances.
Sure, it leaves a hole on the top six on Schmaltz’s and Kane’s wing (which once again Q appears to want to fill with Schmaltz himself and give us monolith Anisimov in the middle and I’m so tired of crying), but that’s ideally where the kids they’ve talked up, Victor Ejdsell or Dylan Sikura, are supposed to go. And if neither of them are good, then none of this matters anyway.
Our worry with the Hawks all preseason was that they had two lines. They’re staring a third right in the face, at least temporarily. Don’t worry, Q might get back to it by the 2nd period in Ohio tomorrow.
