Game #46 Preview
With school back in session for everyone we can bring these back. Lots of daytime pucks today too so we’ll get it done early:
First Screen Viewing
Jets vs. Flames – 2pm
The Jets grip on the Central has started to weaken, as the Preds have passed them with games in hand and the injuries are starting to become just a touch much for the Blues. The Flames are one of the hottest teams in the league and have zoomed by the Ducks and Kings and are right on the Sharks’ ass for second in the Pacific and the embarrassment of finishing behind and expansion team (which is the whole league’s embarrassment, to be fair). Amazing how the Flames took off after Jaromir Jagr left. How could they possibly succeed without such a dominating and influential player is just beyond me. It truly is a mystery. Anyway, plenty of talent on display for this one.
Second Screen Viewing
Penguins vs. Sharks – 7pm
Here are some other teams playing well. I’m not quite sure how, or why, the Sharks are second in the Pacific given the roster, but there they are. They’ve won three of their last four after losing three in a row, though two of those were over the Coyotes in extra time and the other was over the charred remains of whatever it is the Kings were or are these days. It could be the Pacific just sucks and someone has to be in second, and it’s the Sharks’ turn. The Penguins are definitely putting things together, winning six of eight to get back in the mess in the Metro. They’re scoring tons, as you tend to do with that kind of forward talent, with 30 in their last eight games and one of those they got shut out in.
Other Games
Stars vs. Sabres – noon
Devils vs. Flyers – noon
Rangers vs. Avalanche – 2pm
Bruins vs. Canadiens – 6pm (do these two only play each other now?)
Leafs vs. Senators – 6pm
Hurricanes vs. Red Wings – 6pm
Coyotes vs. Blues – 7pm
Panthers vs. Predators – 7pm
Lightning vs. Wild – 8pm
Canucks vs. Oilers – 9pm
Took a few days off myself during the bye and let the proletariat handle it. So clearly there’s some stuff to get through since if you give the Hawks enough time without any games they probably will trip over their own dicks.
-I can’t add too much to what Pullega and Rose have put up over the past couple days about Corey Crawford. It’s once again proof that trying to shroud yourself in secrecy just isn’t going to work.
Some people want to claim that the Hawks and really most NHL teams’ sprint to the stronghold of information blackouts springs from the NFL’s. NFL coaches are a poisonous combination of paranoid to the point of tin foil chapeaus, while also convinced of their own genius that their systems and gameplans should be studied at Wharton if not The Louvre for generations (though a fun game might be getting NFL coaches to define The Louvre, if not spell it). This is what happens when you give guys a full week of nothing to do but convince themselves of threats as they work 19-hour days and can’t remember the names of their daughters.
I don’t think hockey’s comes from that. It’s part that, sure, but hockey coaches and execs have always been too dismissive/stupid/mealy-mouthed to actually share information. The fear has always been that if you announce a player has an ankle problem, every player on your next opponent is basically going to do everything up to and including chair-shots on said ankle. Hockey being hockey, this isn’t totally far-fetched.
But with the Hawks, they should have learned long ago that if you have a period of silence, anything and everything is eventually going to fill up that void with all sorts of noise and you’re going to end up speaking about it anyway. And that’s where the Hawks find themselves.
I don’t know what they hoped to gain by plugging their fingers in their ears and shouting the chorus to “Caravan” as a team policy. This was always going to happen. Maybe they feared exposure of once again not handling a head injury correctly. Here’s an idea, and I know this is totally out there but maybe next time just handle the head injury correctly?
-This Crawford stuff has buried another nugget from Hawks fans’ favorite radio host Dan Bernstein on 670 The Score. While discussing the Crow weirdness he also let it be known that behind closed doors Joel Quenneville is still seething about the trade of Niklas Hjalmarsson. I couldn’t help but joke in my head that when the discussion on the afternoon show turned to whether or not Hawks fans watched other teams that maybe they should ask if the coach does as well.
By any measure, Hjalmarsson has been bad on a really bad Coyotes team this year. And if you were paying attention you saw a precipitous decline in the second half of last year. While his shot-blocking certainly got the most slobber treatment from Eddie O and apparently Q himself (and this is something that really needs to stop because you shouldn’t aim to be blocking shots as a go-to), that was far from Hammer’s most important attribute. While he was a stay-at-home d-man, he had greater mobility than most who fit that role. Which meant much like Keith and Oduya and even Seabrook back in the day, he could step up at his line and squeeze the space for opponents while not having to fear being beat to the outside. In addition, there may not have been a better Hawk d-man at making that 5-10 foot pass under duress, often blind, from the corner or below the goal line to the front of the net to a waiting Hawks center to release all the pressure and get the Hawks out of the zone.
Well, Hammer lost the step that allowed him to step up at his line. He lost the half-step to make that and other breakout passes as often as he could. And that’s not going to get better.
But it certainly explains the Connor Murphy scratchings at the slightest misstep #5 makes. It would hardly be the first time that Q has tried to either make a point to his GM, or simply stick it to him. Brad Richards starting behind Andrew Shaw on the center depth chart to start a season comes to mind, as does Steve Montador starting a season on the wing or Antoine Vermette playing a wing after arrival. There are others. Murphy is being held to an at-times unfair scale simply because his coach cries on a framed picture of a certain Swede before going to bed at night. Even with that, he’s been the Hawks best d-man by some distance this season.
This is where you wish the Hawks though they could be as transparently operated as both baseball teams in town are at the moment. Because if Stan truly envisioned this as a “transitional” season, and his quotes suggest he very well might have, he’d finally have a cudgel over his coach. If this is about getting the Schmaltzes and DeBrincats and Forslings of the world grounded, as well as getting Murphy into the Hawks’ “Martz-ian” system, Stan would have evidence to take to his bosses/fans about how his coach is getting in the way. And it would keep Q in line or maybe Stan would finally get to hire his own coach that he actually has a relationship with.
Instead, we get more of the same push and pull between coach and GM, and at this point it’s tiresome for all.
-I don’t know there’s much more I can add to the hysterical-if-it-wasn’t-sad choice of Kid Rock to perform at the All-Star game. The best case scenario for the NHL is that they’re just wildly ignorant, which isn’t encouraging. The simplistic explanation is that someone simply saw a google photo of him in a Red Wings jersey at a game and thought that was enough. Does he still do that now that they suck? Or is he more in the CM Punk fashion where he’s only around if it helps his brand?
Once again hockey has quivered in fear of a portion of the fanbase it would actually probably rather do without, and that’s the old angry white guy. And yes, if you listen to Kid Rock you’re old now. Sorry. You also suck, and I would gladly trade my life to bring Warren Zevon back to his only long enough so he could impale Kid on a flaming spear for stealing his song.
It’s that fanbase that keeps hockey from banning fighting which it would really like to, or enforcing the rules even harder to open up the game, or heavily suspending players for hits to the head/dirty play. But no, the NHL is terrified that the angry white dude who measures his own dick by how “tough” he perceives the sport he watches to be we’ll up and leave if they ever did any of this. You and I both know he won’t, because he has nowhere else to go (unless they did all this and Vince McMahon was convinced he could start an XHL and oh god this is going to happen isn’t it?), but the NHL has always operated out of fear and ignorance. Which is why they won’t backtrack on this either, although they’ll continue to celebrate Will O’Ree and Hockey Is For Everyone and You Can Play right along with it. Good stuff there.
Which is why it will always be a joke to most everyone else.
With most vacations, the vacation itself is a thousand times more stressful and frustrating than whatever it was you were trying to get away from. This bye week is no different.
As Rose covered yesterday, the Hawks announced that Corey Crawford had vertigo-like symptoms. Then, later on yesterday, Scotty Bowman went on (BIG VOICE GUY) BOB MCCOWN’S PRIME TIME SPORTS hullabaloo and said, with nary a quiver in his voice, that Crawford was really suffering from post-concussion symptoms (2:02:30 in the clip). Later that day, Lazerus reported that Scotty was “guessing” and not sharing insider information.
This, of course, is Grade A fucking NARRATIVE horseshit (on the organ-I-zaton, not Lazerus).
The Blackhawks have a long and infamous history with deflecting and mismanaging concussions.
Recall that legit 17-seconds legend and meatball superhero Dave Bolland faced schoolyard giggles, and pointing and laughing at how long it took him to recover from his concussion back in 2011, all the while dealing with depression, that common ghoul that tends to walk hand in hand with brain injuries.
Recall that one of the reasons Jeremy Morin got shipped out the first time was because he took too long for everyone’s liking coming back from a concussion in 2012. And before he got shipped out, he fought everything in sight to show Q the MORE that the Hawks’s brass always complained wasn’t there. If there’s a better way to proactively protect a player with a history of brain injuries than having him get punched in the face over and over to prove that he’s willing and able to flex nuts, I’d like to hear it.
Recall that in 2014, after Toews got splattered on the boards by Dennis Seidenberg—subsequently grabbing his head and skating with the grace of a drunk with puke in his shoes—neither Quenneville nor the Hawks’s training staff had the foresight to take him off the ice immediately, instead opting to let him finish off a power play. This came after 2012, when Toews played several games with a concussion before getting shut down.
Recall that Steve Montador’s family still has a lawsuit pending against the league that alleges, among other things, that Montador received four concussions over three months with the Blackhawks.
The vagueness and silence always evolves in the same way, from “upper body injury” to “dealing with some soreness” to “we’ll see.” Then, when it becomes more apparent that someone’s going to be out for an extended time, upper body turns into dizziness or, in Crow’s case, vertigo. That way, when the diagnosis the brain trust refused to admit all along becomes the diagnosis they’re forced to admit, they can throw up their hands and say, “Whoa, we just thought it was something less serious. Honest!” And when you’re named in a lawsuit that claims that your team put Montador in a position to have not just one, but FOUR concussions in just three months, contributing to his CTE and death, feigning ignorance is really all you have left.
And King Dickhead Gary Bettman—who gives mid 90s Hunter Hearst Helmsley a run for his weaselly heel money—plays a role in how teams handle concussions. Let’s not forget that the NHL is still embroiled in a lawsuit that alleges that the league failed to ensure the safety of players’ brains, letting them play through concussions and other head injuries with full knowledge of what that could lead to and without telling them.
As the face of ownership, Bettman ought to have to answer for the defense calling players participating in the lawsuit “mere puppets” on a “cash grab” (which, probably not coincidentally, echoes a common defense we heard surrounding Doughty and Garbage Dick in the past).
He should be able to offer at least some sort of explanation for why the NHL still refuses to acknowledge the link between CTE and head trauma.
If you want to go to John Galtian levels of selfishness, Bettman should have to answer for why the owners he represents are so willing to mishandle their assets to the league’s detriment, letting star players on popular teams that line the league’s coffers suffer long-term injuries, vicariously damaging the league’s bottom line in the process.
Instead, we get radio silence, and status quo reigns.
But back here, given the Blackhawks’s experience with concussions, at what point do Quenneville and Bowman say enough? It may not be their job to diagnose brain injuries, but it IS their job to, in the most heartless terms, protect their assets. Is this middling season of what-ifs and maybes really worth the long-term health of the best goaltender the Hawks have had since Belfour? Apparently, because they brought him back off a concussion awfully fast, yet again.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that any athlete in Chicago sports history ever got Dangerfielded more often than Crow, from fans and franchise alike. He doesn’t deserve any of this, as both a player and a person.
So here we sit, having to wonder what the fuck is going on with the Hawks’s best player amid innuendo from the team and silence from the league. And because we can only guess at what happened, that’s what I’m going to do.
Since Evgeni “My Face Looks How My Name Sounds” Malkin railroaded Crawford in November, Crawford’s been dealing with a concussion. Because the front office and coaching staff are either too stupid to know or too callous to care, they sent Crawford back out too early in an attempt to salvage points they desperately needed for the deep playoff run they envisioned to wash the taste of two quick exits out of their mouths.
When Crawford’s performances betrayed his health against Dallas and New Jersey in December, the Hawks took advantage, using them as cover to justify taking him out for undisclosed reasons. The undisclosed reason, of course, was a concussion that Crawford should not have been playing through.
With vocal skepticism mounting, the organ-I-zation dripped rumors about vertigo, which is close enough to a concussion to feign ignorance, be believable, and take some of the liability off the team’s latest botch. Then, when people expressed outrage at the possibility that the Hawks knowingly trotted Crawford out too soon, Stan Bowman called his father to take the bullet and indirectly admit that Crawford indeed did have a concussion (or post-concussion symptoms), because he knew it would bounce off the venerable and untouchable Scotty much more easily than it would Stan, given his office’s egregiously bad history with concussions.
Finally, Scotty’s walk back was the little injection of controlled confusion the organ-I-zation needed to have everyone following the drama throw up their hands and say “Oh, who knows?!” Lather, rinse, repeat.
The excuses for Crawford’s absence smell an awful lot like organ-I-zational horseshit. But when the guys running the team and the league have shown time and again that they can be gigantic asses about handling head injuries, should we expect anything else?
As the last few weeks have limped by with a Crawford-less Blackhawks team, the questions and murmurs about what the hell is really going on with him have grown in volume and intensity. But now we’ve gotten word from nebulous sources via a Sun-Times piece by Mark Lazerus that Crawford has “vertigo-like symptoms” and may be out the rest of the season.
Cue this:
OK, hysteria aside, what now?
- Fake News? We’ve made it no secret here that the NHL’s convention of not telling anyone shit about what’s happening with players pisses us off to no end. The league as a whole practices this nonsense, and the Hawks in particular are offenders in this regard. And when I say “what’s happening with players” that extends beyond injuries, which of course are always categorized in the non-helpful, binary world of “upper-body” or “lower-body,” as if there weren’t myriad variations among the parts of those halves. I also mean personnel decisions (this is where the Hawks are most problematic). Whether it’s something like moving Top Cat to his off side, marooning Keith with Cody Franson for a quarter of a season, throwing Kempny in the Sarlaac pit, what have you (and these are just some recent examples), the Hawks’ decisions about who plays when and where are given the air of secret priestly knowledge by the club, which cannot be shared with the illiterate peasants. And this Crawford situation has been shadier than most injury or personnel non-announcements. Was he rushed back from a lower-body injury earlier in the season? Their “upper-body” designation when he went back on IR would say no, but I’ll tell you honestly I wasn’t really convinced at the time. Taking them at their word, one would think concussion, but then with no timetable for his return and zero information from the team, speculation grew that it was something more sinister, which wasn’t helped by some cryptic quotes from Toews last weekend about how “He’ll do what he can to get himself better….” Is it really a concussion? Probably. It’s probably some brain-related issue just by virtue of him being a goalie who gets hit in the head with discs of hard rubber flying at enormous rates of speed. But admittedly, “vertigo-like” symptoms is a diagnosis just specific enough to make fans think, oh, OK, it’s a head issue, yet vague enough that it could be something really serious, like say, keeping him in net for a while when he already had a concussion. With this club’s history of obfuscation, I’ve got no reason to believe this is actually vertigo and not a more serious concussion issue, short of an official announcement with some actual medical information.
- The Trade Deadline. Given the Hawks, uhhh, issues this season, there has rightly been speculation about whether they should trade for a top-tier player who could get them into the playoffs, or if they’re in some rebuilding-on-the-fly mode (again, that whole non-communication thing). Crawford’s Vezina-quality season up to the holidays made a stronger case for landing an Erik Karlsson or Oliver Ekman-Larsson (or someone else, there have to be a couple other d-men out there, these are just the two most tossed-around names). The problem with any of these moves is of course the harsh reality of the salary cap, which would likely mean needing to move Anisimov and his banged-up ass, but they managed to swap Panik for a younger, faster Duclair, which gave me some optimism that Bowman can still sell magic beans to the other dipshit GMs in this league. However, now you have to ask if putting Crawford on LTIR and the resulting freed-up cap space would allow them to get a comparable goalie and/or any other top-tier guys. The former seems unlikely (who’s out there that could play at the level Crawford was?), and with another trade the risk of having to sweeten any deal by including some of the young guys goes up. Is it worth it to trade Schmaltz, Kampf, Hinostroza, or, god forbid, Top Cat? If the Hawks were going to be able to capitalize on what was likely Crawford’s last excellent season (now “likely” seems to be “definitely”), before Toews declines more precipitously, Keith gets slower, and Kane eventually joins them, then a case could be made that trading away our future would be worth it for the present glory. The same goes for a situation where they land a dark horse Vezina candidate to replace Crawford plus another defenseman. But that looks to be a pipe dream now. As much as I dislike rebuilding-on-the-fly with seemingly little direction, I’d rather see the Hawks pause for a moment and figure out what the fuck they’re going to do with these guys, unless there is some perfect maneuver out there that only Stan knows about. I may be an illiterate peasant, but I’ve got my doubts about that.
- The Jeff Glass Experience. So in the short term, meaning like next week when they come off the bye, Q needs to get over whatever allergic reaction he’s having to Anton Forsberg, or conversely get over whatever infatuation he has with Jeff Glass, and let Forsberg play consistently. Forsberg hasn’t been lights-out, don’t get me wrong, but we can’t have Glass flopping all over the crease against the Lightning or the Leafs next week (or the Islanders, for that matter). Whether playoff hopes are dashed or not with the Crawford news, there is still no reason to shatter Forsberg’s confidence any further by playing a quadruple-A level goalie instead of him (also where the fuck is J-F Berube? Does he have vertigo too?). I’m quite confident that Glass will get way more playing time than he should, and an already desperate and confusing goaltender situation will only get worse. But it’s just a few weeks until pitchers and catchers, right?
It’s back. This week we discuss the stomach acid puke of an effort against Detroit, the polar opposite against Winnipeg, the Duclair trade, and what if this team was as transparent as others in town. Enjoy.
Well, we’ve passed the halfway point of the season, and as the Hawks go into the bye week we can all take a breath following the recent win-loss-win-loss whiplash we’ve been subjected to. The organ-I-zation made a seemingly smart trade (waaat?), and with the deadline approaching and the Hawks very much a team on the cusp, one has to wonder if there is more to come. (On the cusp…I’m being generous. This team just got their ass handed to them by the fucking Red Wings yesterday.) So where are we at before the trade deadline arrives? I’m sure the Hawks brass is eagerly looking to us for the evaluation.
The Dizzying Highs
Nick Schmaltz: I’ve been waiting all season for Schmaltz to earn a spot here in the Highs and the time has come. How many times has one of us here said he was the best player on the ice in a given game? Well, I don’t have an exact count but I assure you it’s happened multiple times. More recently, in the seven games in 2018 he’s had 8 points, including two power play goals against the (admittedly shitty) Senators last week. Yes, Ottawa sucks, but power play goals have become rarer than double-digit temperatures in this frozen hellscape. In fact Schmaltz is second in points on this team, with only Kane above him and duh that’s his linemate so Schmaltz rightly gets some credit there too. In Anisimov’s absence he’s been a very capable center for what has ostensibly become our top line.
Beyond just points, his CF% at evens is 54.5. At times he, Kane and Hartman struggle in their defensive zone, don’t get me wrong. But as a whole their possession at evens is 51.5 CF%. Add to that Schmaltz’s speed, and his current muscular shooting percentage of 18.8, and he’s basically made himself the most valuable youngling along with Top Cat.
The Terrifying Lows
Jan Rutta and the Gustav Foreskin Experience: OK, we’ve been bitching about these two all season but they’re really, really not good. Maybe individually that’s an exaggeration, but as a pair it definitely is not. Their CF% as a duo is 48.2 at evens. Despite having slightly more offensive zone starts than defensive ones (both have a dSZ% at 48 and change), it isn’t nearly enough because they are positively lost in their own zone (kind of a problem when your job description is defense). Larkin’s goal yesterday for the Red Wings was a classic example: both Rutta and Forsling got mesmerized by Nyquist and he was able to calmly drop the puck behind him to to Mantha (not excusing the shitty backcheck, but still, c’mon guys). Yeah, Rutta scored against the Jets the other night, but again, their job description is defense. Every time they’re on the ice it’s nerve-wracking at best and disastrous at worst.
The Creamy Middles
The Penalty Kill: A strong case could be made for putting the PK in the Dizzying Highs. To again reference the games played in this young calendar year, the Hawks have only given up one power play goal in 2018 (seven games). And that goal came against the Rangers right after New Year’s, so it’s been six games and 23 opportunities in which they’ve prevented opponents from capitalizing on special teams. This tells me two things: 1. We are taking way too many penalties, I mean really, 23?? Wtf? and 2. This half of our special teams is one of the only threads we have to cling to in the quickly unraveling sweater that is our playoff hopes. It’s become the mirror image of the shit-stained power play.
Vinnie Hinostroza. I think our boy Vinnie deserves an honorable mention here in the Middles. In the past six games he’s had five points, including a three-point night against the maddeningly successful Golden Knights. His performance in that game was one of the few bright spots of that fuck up. He’s managed to become comfortable on the top line that was searching for someone ever since Richard Panik turned back into Richard Panik, well before the trade happened. He’s only played 14 games with the top club so I can’t really make any sweeping generalizations or bold statements (sample size and all), but the Saad-Toews-Hinostroza combo has a 63.8 CF% at evens, and hey, he’s a local boy who done good! (For the record, I was going to put Jordan Oesterle here, but then he fell into Keith á la the Three Stooges yesterday which allowed the third goal, so no dice.)
All stats from Hockey Reference and the Natural Stat Trick Line Tool.
The Rockford IceHogs found success in the first half of a six-game road trip, taking five of six points on their California jaunt this past week. With some new faces in the mix, Rockford remained in the playoff hunt in the AHL’s Central Division.
The Hogs sit third in the division standings as of this past weekend’s action, thanks in part to improved play in the crease and a red-hot Tyler Sikura.
Sikura, who has been a solid bottom-six contributor for Rockford all season, has exploded for eight goals and an asssist in his last ten contests. In California, Sikura stretched his current goal streak to five games.
Sikura is in his third season of pro hockey after a college career at Dartmouth. Before joining the IceHogs this summer, he had shown to be a good point producer at the ECHL level. However, Sikura had yet to register a point in 22 AHL games with three different clubs.
Sikura’s success follows a pretty simple formula; hustle to loose pucks and get to the front of the net. He’s shown a real knack for the redirect the last few weeks and has gotten his shot through in leading odd-man rushes up the ice.
Sikura leads the IceHogs with a 19.6 shot percentage. Its hard to see him hitting at that rate throughout the season, but I’m guessing the hard work Sikura displays on a nightly basis will continue.
Hogs rookie goalie Colin Delia is a California native and gave the hometown fans reason to cheer. His 33-save Wednesday night in Ontario was easily his finest performance to date in a Rockford sweater. Delia followed up that 5-2 victory over the Reign with a 4-2 win in San Jose Friday night.
Matt Tomkins suffered an overtime loss to Bakersfield on Saturday, but turned in a 32-save effort in a 3-2 defeat. With no change on the organization’s goalie situation, it is great to see the youngsters stepping up.
Iacopelli Shoots, He Scores…And Sometimes Sits
Another Hogs skater hitting twine with frequency is rookie Matheson Iacopelli. The former Western Michigan forward is showcasing his lethal shot to the tune of nine goals and seven assists for Rockford. Iacopelli just doesn’t get to showcase that shot as often as other piglets.
Chicago’s third-round selection in the 2014 NHL Draft has been a frequent healthy scratch for the Hogs this season. Iacopelli is definitely the low man on the totem pole despite his offensive acumen; he’s dressed in 30 of Rockford’s 40 games.
This is not to be unexpected; this year’s roster is loaded with prospects and someone has to sit most nights. On a team built around speed, Iacopelli’s skating ability is in need of improvement. He does have a bit of trouble creating space for himself in AHL action. On the other hand, he has a shot that generates scoring chances and is a plus-seven on the campaign so far.
Iacopelli has sat for an extra defenseman a couple of times this season. On Saturday, Hogs coach Jeremy Colliton elected to skate D Robin Norell as a forward in lieu of Iacopelli. This, after he had swiped a puck and scored in the win over San Jose the previous evening.
On a team with fewer prospects in the lineup, Iacopelli might be getting a ton of power play minutes and a spot on a scoring line. Right now, he’ll have to continue to make do with the ice time he’s getting.
Roster Movement
The week started with Tomas Jurco and John Hayden flipping places in the organization; Hayden was sent to Rockford, with Jurco moving up to the Blackhawks. Rockford sent D Robin Press to the Indy Fuel and recalled AHL contract F Alex Wideman.
After clearing waivers, D Cody Franson was assigned to the IceHogs Tuesday, with Erik Gustafsson moving up the ladder to the Hawks. The next day, Chicago’s trade with Arizona resulted in Laurent Dauphin returning to the Coyotes organization and D Adam Clendening rejoining the team he skated for from 2012 to 2015.
Clendening’s best Rockford season was 2013-14, when he notched a 59-point (12 G, 47 A) campaign. He has spent parts of four seasons with NHL clubs, including 31 games with the Rangers last year. He was with the Coyotes for five games this fall but had spent most of 2017-18 in AHL Tuscon, where Clendening had a goal and four assists.
California Recaps
Gonna be a bit sparse, as time and other commitments results in a line-less look this week:
- William Pelletier highlighted Rockford’s 5-2 win in Ontario Wednesday with his first pro hat-trick. Delia was awesome (33 saves) and Viktor Svedberg potted the game-winner. Tyler Sikura won a race for a loose puck and got himself a shorty for the effort.
- The Hogs fired 42 shots at the San Jose Barracuda, winning 4-2. Rockford was paced by two goals by Tanner Kero, including a power play strike late in the contest assisted by recent acquisition Adam Clendening. Sikura and Matheson Iacopelli also scored for the Hogs.
- Second period goals by Sikura and Carl Dahlstrom had Rockford in position to sweep the week. Bakersfield’s Ty Rattie, a former Chicago Wolves thorn in the Hogs side, tied the game midway through the third. Rattie then won it for the Condors in the closing minute of Gus Macker Time after Rockford just missed on several attempts.
Three games, two wins, five points. Couldn’t ask for much more than that. If Rockford can wind up in the postseason this spring, you can point to this week’s performance as a reason.
This Week
The IceHogs are camping out in Cleveland this week, with games at Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday and Friday night. Saturday, Rockford closes out the road trip in Grand Rapids.
The Monsters and Rockford have split four meetings this season, including a pair in Rockford two weeks ago. Former IceHogs Alex and Terry Broadhurst each have a pair of goals against Rockford in the prior match ups.
Rockford is 6-1 vs the Griffins in 2017-18, though the Hogs dropped the last meeting between the two teams January 5 at Van Andel Arena.
Follow me @JonFromi on twitter for thoughts on the IceHogs all season long.
The Blackhawks and Red Wings played a hockey game at 11:30am on a gosh darn Sunday morning. On the same weekend as an NFL Playoff Game. That decision by the NHL alone was stupid, but it was not the stupidest part of this game. Just let me get through this:
– The Red Wings got started early with a goal less than five minutes in. This goal was comical on the Blackhawks part because Anthony Anthony-see-you (or something like that) took the puck wide below the goal line and then somehow put it through three Blackhawks to a waiting Dylan Larkin. He had a wide open net, and even if he didn’t Jeff Glass was in goal, so he scored. The three Hawks that allowed the pass through them were Keith, Oesterle, and Schmaltz. So.
– The second goal came from Mike Green, who slammed a one-timer home after a not-very-intimidating rush by the Wings was answered by a completely uninspired and careless back check by the Blackhawks. There were 3 Hawks going back with the play to try and stop 4 Wings, and right after Green scored the other two Hawks came into the picture – they were Brandon Saad and Vinostroza. First banner moment for this line of the day, more to come!
– The second period was basically nothing worth noting, though one moment that did stick out was an actually good save that Jeff Glass made! Except it was only a necessary save because he completely overcommitted as Ant-man came up the wing wide below the net (funny, he kept doing that and kept getting away with it), then basically froze up and looked around like “well shit, I’m fucked” before realizing the puck was still behind the net and he reacted like a lame duck, flopping across the crease and and barely stopping the puck. So good job cleaning up your own mess, Jeff! Please go away now.
-Goal number three. Oh, goal number three. A two on two rush toward the home team’s net, as both teams change, in the third period probably *should* bode well for the home team, because their bench is closer to the net. However, as Ray Ferraro emphasized for us, Anthony Mantha left his bench and skated 100 feet to take a pass and score a goal before a Blackhawks forward even got into the camera shot. That forward was Jonthan Toews. Hooray.
– I don’t even care about what happened on the fourth goal. It was a mess and the game was already over when it happened. The game was probably already over when Larkin scored.
– PLEASE LET THIS BE THE END OF JEFF GLASS. He isn’t a good story, no matter what every single fucking broadcast team on the Hawks games say. Pretty much every good moment he’s had has just been him cleaning up a mess of his own making, through bad rebound control or a bad read or both. 30 year old NHL rookies do not suddenly become actually good NHL goalies. Just end this pain before it consumes us all. And Corey Crawford please come back soon.
vs. 
RECORDS: Wings 17-18-7 HAWKS 22-16-6
PUCK DROP: 11:30 in the damn morning
TV: W-ENNN-BEE-CEEE!
PIZZA! PIZZA!: Winging It In Motown
Oh haven’t you missed these? NBC, clearly not paying attention to standings, feelings, or current trends, has scheduled what used to be one of the league’s leading rivalries for its Game Of The Week slot. Sadly, it’s not two teams who don’t play in the same conference, one of which is in a full rebuild (or should be) and the other is fighting just for a playoff spot. These days these games between the Hawks and Wings feel more like a family reunion between members that used to be in a real dispute but have gotten too old or too tired to care anymore. But the nation is getting it, and you’re getting morning hockey.
As you probably know by now, the Wings stink. Perhaps intentionally, or perhaps this is the best team Ken Holland can build. If they were in a full rebuild you’d wonder why Frans Nielsen and Trevor Daley are here, along with a few others. And Holland still has a chance to fix that by the deadline if he can.
In a sort of Red Wings way, this team isn’t even bad in an interesting way, depriving us of a good chuckle. Make no mistake, they’re not good. But they’re not really bottom-dwelling in anything, they’re just not good at anything. They get passable goaltending when Howard is in there and healthy, but Petr Mrazek has been Three Mile Island in net for the whole season. It was that was last season too, which makes you wonder if Holland doesn’t regret trading him when he had value two years ago. Whoops.
As has been the case with the Wings since Lidstrom retired honestly, this blue line blows. It did get rid of Brendan Smith last year, which you would think would have to make it better. But it’s not. Niklas Kronwall can’t get there anymore. No one’s ever been able to explain what it is Jonathan Ericsson does other than “be tall.” They signed Trevor Daley and then discovered that when Crosby and Malkin aren’t making up for his drunken cowboy style he actually just sucks, as the Hawks discovered. Danny DeKeyser allows you to say his name like “MacGuyver” in the episode where Sideshow Bob tries to kill Selma. Mike Green has had an effective season and should be one of the main prizes at the deadline because right-handed d-men, especially ones that can get up and go, are gold in today’s NHL. That is if Ken Holland has figured out that the Wings overblown playoff streak is actually over and he doesn’t still have to chase it, which is up for debate. God knows the Wings could use some more young pieces in return.
Up front, the hope mainly surrounds Andreas Athanasiou and Dylan Larkin, though they might lose Athanasiou (I can’t wait another day…) this summer due to Holland’s mangling of the cap. Along with Anthony Mantha they’re about the only reason to watch the Wings these days. Henrik Zetterberg can still play in both ends but should be a #2 or #3 center at this point in his career and he’s still taking top line shifts for Detroit. Todd Bertuzzi’s kid is on his line because you may not have seen that part of the latest CBA is that the Wings have to have a Bertuzzi in the lineup at all times. Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar are still here to score 30-45 goals no one gives a shit about per season, as they’ve done for a while now.
For the Hawks, the only change we should see is Anton Forsberg in for Glass Jeff. Maybe Kempny can slot in for Rutta or Seabrook, but with Rutta scoring the other night it’s unlikely. Basically, the Hawks have to keep the focus on the 60 here before decamping to whatever beach and casino they have planned for the bye week. This Wings team really should be brushed aside, but we’ve seen the Hawks spit it up against the Canucks and Avs in the past. There can be no such slips here, as the Wild won last night and the Hawks are once again on the outside looking in. They’re going to get passed in the next week obviously as they’ll be idle, so these two points are vital.
If you’re let off the gas Larkin can burn you, or Mantha on the power play down low, and Z is still capable of the odd moment of genius. So no bullshit here. Clean and efficient and then move on to a break that the Hawks will have to come out of firing.
Game #45 Preview
