Connor Murphy is not and will never be a generational talent, so saying, “How he plays will be the difference between expected Hawks hockey and hog piss,” is frightening. But here we are, hoping that a 24-year-old Scut Farkus lookalike with no real accomplishments—aside from surviving any of the one-man shows Mike Smith undoubtedly forced his teammates to sit through—can fill the oversized hole left by Niklas Hjalmarsson.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. There was a massive brawl here at the Lab over who got to do the Detroit Red Wings preview. After all the shit we had to eat for a decade or more from this Packers fanbase-gone-wrong, and even with all the depression daily life brings these days, the fact that the Wings have cast themselves into hockey oblivion/purgatory will keep the blood pumping through my veins for much longer than logic would suggest. It’s not just that they’re bad. They can’t even be bad correctly. This is a team that desperately needs to bottom out, after all they don’t even have a doddering old owner to placate anymore, and yet is chasing one of its few promising young players off to Russia. Sometimes I still wake up giggling that all the players that every pundit like Pierre McGuire promised us were the “next generation” simply because they were Wings basically amounted to two shooting-percentage spike seasons from Gustav Nyquist. Now everyone is seeing that Ken Holland might just have gotten lucky with a couple late round picks and a completely open checkbook from Mike Illitch when there was no cap. And people, it’s replacing oxygen as my life force. Let’s do this:
Detroit Red Wings
2016-2017 Record: 33-36-13 70 points 7th in the Flortheast which meant…
THEIR BULLSHIT PLAYOFF STREAK THEY HAD TO FLEE TO THE EAST TO KEEP GOING IS DEAD AND EVERY ANALYST IN THE NHL HAD TO CUT THEMSELVES LIVE ON AIR! JUST HOOK IT TO MY FUCKING VEINS!
Team Stats 5v5: 48.2 CF% (24th) 48.3 SF% (24th) 48.9 SCF% (20th) 7.8 SH% (12th) 91.7 SV% (24th) 15.0 PP% (27th) 80.8 PK% (16th)
When McClure kicked off this little escapade on Tuesday by previewing Corey Crawford, he called Crow the Blackhawks’ most important player. I am not here to argue with that sentiment. But when it comes to the 18 gentleman playing in front of our favorite Rise Against fan, defenseman Duncan Keith is and has been the straw that stirs the drink.
2016-17 Stats
80 GP – 6 G – 47 A
50.7 CF% – 52.8 oSZ%
25:37 Avg. TOI
Not that anyone asked for it, but our league-wide tour makes its next stop in Buffalo as this train chugs alphabetically by division and east to west.
Career Stats
10 GP – 9W-1L-0OT
.879S% – 4.02GAA
.881EV – .857PP –.875SH
27.3 SA/G
I know I’m still asking myself how I got here, but this isn’t about me; it’s about our presumptive backup goalie, Anton Forsberg. He may be asking himself that same question, but since he’s been bouncing around the greater Midwest in various AHL uniforms it kind of makes sense that eventually he’d end up here. By all indications he’s Crow’s backup, although it seems the Hawks have signed a guy who hasn’t actually proven he can play reliably at the NHL level.
With Labor Day behind us and something of a crispness in the air, and the incompetence of the Bears about to be on display, it’s time to look forward to what will go on inside the heavily sponsored walls of various arenas around the continent. We’ll go team by team over the next month, so let’s kick this pig…
Boston Bruins
2016-2017: 44-31-7 95 Points 3rd in the Atlantic Lost in 1st Round (Ottawa 4-2)
Team Stats: 54.3 CF% 55.2 SF% 55.7 SCF% 6.6 SH% 91.3 SV% 21.7 PP% 85.7 PK%
It only seems like 16 years ago or so that the Boston Bruins were an Eastern power, racking up a Cup and another Final appearance. But it all decomposed so quickly, much like Zdeno Chara’s mobility. Hey, think those things might be linked? Toss is some hilariously bad roster and cap managing, with a focus on just about all of the wrong things, and you get a tired, old roster with not enough kids that are going to be able to make up for it. This Bruins teams looks like it’ll happen in a vacuum, as they’ll play the 82 games their allotted and you won’t remember any of them.
Now that it’s after Labor Day, it’s time to put away the whites and get mentally prepared for yet another six month slog that will be an NHL regular season. To help with that, starting today and continuing throughout the month, we will be previewing a player off the Hawks’ 17-18 roster as well as a team elsewhere in the league. During this time it will also give everyone a chance to meet some new contributors to the Faxes From Uncle Dale Cinematic Universe. We hope you enjoy.
Even though seemingly no one wants to hear it, in part due to the faulty notion that the Blackhawks have obviated the goalie position with their success over this era, as well as the fact that there may be no incongruously unappreciated athlete in all of professional sports at the moment, this series will kick off with arguably the most important Hawk on the ice on a nightly basis- Corey Crawford.
It’s almost that time again, when our Sunday afternoons are turned over to the abyss of watching Bears football. Oh you can pretend you’re above it and you do something else. But this is Chicago, we know the truth. You cannot escape. The abyss also gazes into you . So we get together every fall and preview the Bears season in a way only those who don’t take it seriously and know how pointless it all is can. Enjoy.
So when training camp started we were wondering why we were even bothering. But after a few weeks, at least the front seven looks decent, there’s a couple fun running backs, and we have QB drama. If you do watch this season, why will you be tuning in?
McClure: Outside of my usual schadenfraude where I like to be acutely aware of just exactly why this entire city is pissed off and emasculated every Monday, there will be another layer of that with waiting to see just how bad Mike Glennon can manage to be while still keeping his job. Obviously once TRUBINSKY gets the starting job that will certainly gain my attention as well.
Cieslak: I still think there’s something in the defense if everyone stays 100% healthy but since that can’t and won’t happen they’ll struggle. Especially in the secondary, which looks awful on paper. I’ll be tuning into Red Zone and keeping one eye on the Bears doings, for the most part. It would be too much masochism for anyone to spend 3+ hours watching only the Bears this season.
Feather: Because BEEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRRR WEATHER. The opening week of NFL is always very exciting; every team is filled with optimism, the majority of the games are competitive and big time players make big time plays. Then a week later, everyone is hurt or dead, the Patriots are the only good team and life is meaningless. So yes, I will be tuning in to watch the Beloved for your aforementioned reasons. Their running backs will help them move the ball. Their defense seems to be building towards something, their offensive line is light years better than it was just a couple seasons ago. All of this should make them watchable until Floyd has a knee, Long has an elbow, Whitehair (BYCRACKY) has a head and Howard loses a limb.
Fels: Because I really don’t have much else to do, at least I won’t whenever the Cubs are done. In reality, I like how the front seven is shaping up though I don’t know that any of Goldman, Bullard, Floyd, whoever are going to end up stars or anything more than really good role players. All the running backs will be paste by November. Once Trubisky takes over, that’ll pretty much be the only reason to watch. Also to see how badly they can blow a coverage in the last minute against Rodgers this time.
We were asked to come and save the day for Puck Daddy’s Summer Series, “What if?” This is what we came up with. Enjoy
There are times when we don’t truly appreciate just how much the Eric Lindros saga shaped a good portion of the NHL. These days we look back on it and kind of just think of it as more hockey silliness, as the NHL is the only league where a team could somehow agree to trade one player to two teams and then have an arbitrator take nearly two weeks to figure out just what the hell happened. And yes, 25 years later it still sounds ridiculous.
But let’s consider what this was: what if Connor McDavid had pulled an Eli Manning and told the Oilers he wouldn’t play there before they even took him, which we all assumed he was going to do after THAT expression on lottery night decided his fate, and the Oilers took him anyway? And what if McDavid made good on his threat and never left Erie? And then the Oilers were forced to trade his rights the next year at the draft, setting off perhaps the greatest auction in NHL history?
Because that’s what Lindros was. He was the NEXT. He was Earl Campbell on skates. I saw him before the ’91 Canada Cup shrug off a hit from Chris Chelios in a warm-up game between Canada and the US. Chelios charged about half the width of the rink to get him, and Lindros brushed him off like his nose itched. Chelios went flying, and Lindros barely deviated from his path. He would go on to be one of the more dominating players in the league, and he was open for bidding! Has that happened since? Basically only when Jaromir Jagr bitched his way out of Pittsburgh as the league’s best player been on the trade block.
While the actual controversy took place between the Rangers and Flyers, most in the know had it that during the draft of ’92 Mike Keenan had engineered a deal before either of them that the Nordiques has accepted to send Lindros to the Blackhawks. Getting exact details on it is difficult, but most agreed it was centered around Ed Belfour, Steve Larmer, and Steve Smith. There were a few other names involved, and draft picks, and a ton of money going a couple ways; a $10 million check to Lindros himself and a bunch more to the Nordiques. Of course, when all this was presented to Bill Wirtz, assuming he was awake at the time, he would have turned… well, a different shade of purple than he normally was, spit up a bathtub of bourbon and probably try to hit Keenan with a phone.
But had Keenan caught Wirtz on a good day… or maybe just asleep, or maybe like Mr. Burns after a morphine binge, the shape the future of multiple NHL teams could have been greatly altered. So…what if the Blackhawks had traded for Eric Lindros?
Hey all. You may have noticed we have been dark for a little bit lately. That’s how it usually goes. The last two weeks of August are dead time anyway, and we kind of use it to recharge for what’s ahead. Friday we’ll have our award-winning, world-famous Bears roundtable, which we know you’re just dying for.
But after that, it’ll be time to kick the pig for the new season, and boy do we have plans for that.
