Everything Else

Meaning

By 2099

Such a weird league. We have spent most of the past two years, if not longer, complaining that the salary cap has essentially made the differences between teams smaller and smaller, to the point where they’re hardly noticeable at times. How the shootout and stupid overtime system and the even dumber points system makes the standings somewhat fake a lot of years, and keeps teams bunched together while also making it nearly impossible for anyone to pass anyone.

And yet we sit here, with three teams having won eight of the past nine championships. And the one outlier in that group, the Bruins, played for another and lost to one of the three. So four teams have taken up 11 of the possible 18 Final slots. Stretch it back a round, and those four teams have taken 16 of 36 conference final spots, with the Kings, Hawks, and Penguins each losing one or two in that frame.

Everything Else

So… I Wrote A Book?

By 1804

A lot of you have been asking what I’ve been up to, why the program wasn’t around this season. Here’s your answer.

I won’t shroud it in any way, this is my Fever Pitch. No, not the terrible Jimmy Fallon movie (which is redundant). Or even the barely passable one with Colin Firth. No, this is off the Nick Hornby book, which was about his life as an Arsenal supporter. This is mine about being a Hawks fan, and one that somehow got involved with it professionally (somewhat).

But I don’t feel like this is just my story. I feel like it is the story of a lot of Hawks fans, or hockey fans, or sports fans in general. How we come to it, how it helps build an identity in our childhood, and how it fits and doesn’t fit as our lives change and we grow (or don’t). It’s family, it’s friends, it’s relationships, it’s trying to find adulthood when you just want to be a kid and finding your childhood when you absolutely need it most.

So yeah, it’s all of that. It’s funny, sad, glorious, confusing, and everything else. From my first entrance into Chicago Stadium, to becoming the writer of a gameday program that I was bleeding on with toner in my scalp. through three Cups and everything that came with them to now.

Hope you like it.

Couple notes: The paperback version will be ready in the next couple days, and I’ll let you know when that is. For now, just Kindle:

Buy Sam’s Book on Amazon

Everything Else

Watch The Weather Change

By 1476

If you’re a fan of watching storylines change on a nightly basis and watching teams try and counter one another, this is a series for you. And yet it feels like when each of these teams plays its best, or the best it has in this series, they lose.

The Penguins probably played their best game of the Final last night. They figured out something that the Hawks only figured out far too late, the Blues simply aren’t capable of, and the Ducks are too stupid. They didn’t have any forwards fleeing the zone, coming deeper in the defensive zone on breakouts to try and relieve the pressure, and break up the ice as a five-man unit. It’s really the only way to deal with the Preds’ pressure. You have to be an outlet for the defense under their ridiculous forecheck and then you need options coming through the neutral zone with the Nashville d-men standing up at their line and the forwards closing in from behind.

The Penguins did it, caused the Preds more problems than they’d seen, and got the equalizer from Crosby after forcing the Preds into a shoddy line-change after sustained pressure.

But there’s a problem with that…

Everything Else

Everyone Knows This Is Somewhere

By 1448

The Stanley Cup Final’s first visit to Music City resulted in the largest explosion of think pieces from national hockey writers expressing amazement that anywhere below the 49th could show such passion for the sport. It was rather hilarious in its naivety and its patronization. But that’s kind of what the hockey media specializes in these days.

This blog followed the Hawks down to Nashville in 2012. Neither of those versions of those teams were all that impressive. The Hawks got smoked by the Preds that night, as Corey Crawford delved into his one and only case of the yips in his career. And we all had a blast down there. It didn’t matter. It’s amazing what happens when you put an arena right in the middle of everything, especially in a place like Nashville which never needs an excuse for a drink and a time.

There’s a reason so many Hawks fans flocked there that they had to try and put in rules to stem the tide. And it’s not because Nashville is all that close. It’s because it’s been that much fun for a really long time now.

Everything Else

Friday Foofaraw: I Heard It In The Wind, I Saw It In The Sky

By 1962

It’s been a couple weeks now since I woke up to the awful news. And while there have been more than a few notable deaths of musicians that I love, I can’t say any has affected me more than the passing of Chris Cornell. Even Bowie and Prince from a year ago or so, two of my favorites, didn’t ring in the same way. It’s probably because I didn’t really start to delve into their catalogs and appreciate them until my 20s. But Cornell and Soundgarden… they played a major role in who I became as a kid and who I am now from that.

Like most people my age, “The Olds,” I found Soundgarden staying up far too late when I was 11 or 12 and on 120 Minutes on MTV. My musical tastes, basically all derived from my brother, had begun to take shape. I had already begun purchasing my own albums with whatever allowance money I had (the first three being Use Your Illusion II, Metallica, and Living Colour’s “Biscuits”). But it was time to fashion my own way at this point, with my brother out of the house and city.

Most people will remember the first time they saw it to. The video for “Jesus Christ Pose.” It didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. 

Everything Else

Fascinating And Meaningless, All At The Same Time

By 1396

Once you get past the Predators’, or more to the point their fans’, constant bed-wetting over the refs (and really a lot of people’s), or the heavier amounts of bullshit we saw last night when the game got out of reach, there is something of a fascinating clash of styles going on here. And also an excellent example of how in hockey there really is only so much you can control, and it’s rarely enough to ensure things swing your way.

I guess you could call it that… except it’s probably not the Penguins plan to get throttled for huge swaths of the game and then pray that Matt Murray can bail them out of it. If it is… well bully for them.

Everything Else

Diamonds… And Dust

By 1813

Well, the Hawks news creature briefly woke up from its springtime slumber to give us this little nugget today. Apparently the Hawks are trying to goad/threaten/beg, I’m really not sure which, the Vegas Golden Gods (I never said I was a golden god) into taking Trevor van Riemdsdyk off their hands. And they’ll do it by getting them to take Marcus Kruger along with him. Somehow, if the Knights don’t promise to take Kruger in a trade, the Hawks will then trade TVR to someone else who will… protect him? The nuts and bolts of this are a little fuzzy.

This is the NHL, and you can always find a dumbass GM who thinks your player is a hell of a lot better than he actually is, especially when you’re not that far removed from championship glow as the Hawks still just barely are. But this one is hard to figure.

Everything Else

Well That’s One Way To Do It

By 1580

When I said I couldn’t quite get a handle on this series, I wasn’t saying I expected to see the weirdest Final game of my lifetime (and feel free to correct me on this one). We may never see a team that has won three rounds to get here go 37 minutes(!) without a shot again. And we’re even less likely to see any team come close to that and still win. That was an all-timer. But I suppose in a building where less than a week ago an entire crowd was going apeshit over a puck that went on top of the net and not in it, anything is possible.

I actually had some flashbacks to the 2010 series against the Predators watching last night, and even some of the one in ’15. You’ll recall seven years ago in the first three games the Preds simply sat on the boards at the points in the Hawks’ zone, essentially trapping there instead of in the neutral zone. They dared the Hawks to go up the middle or try and find the time for flips out to center, and it took Brian Campbell’s return and a wake-up from Quenneville (and a small, boneheaded play from Martin Erat that I certainly don’t think about every single day) for the Hawks to crack it.

It was some of the same stuff last night.

Everything Else

So We Sailed Up To The Sun

By 1401

Since the matchup was set, I’ve had a hard time getting a hold on this series. Which probably means we’re in for a good one, which the NHL could use. It’s been a while since there was a classic Final. Hawks-Bruins is probably the last one, and even that lost some of its luster when all of Patrice Bergeron’s organs fell into his feet. Rangers-Kings was awful, Hawks-Lightning was tightly contested but the games theselves weren’t really much for the neutral (the last three games were all 2-1 or 2-0). I honestly don’t remember any of the Sharks-Penguins games from last year except for maybe Donskoi’s OT winner. Hopefully, we get a little better here.

It’s also hard to fully judge these two teams as banged up as they are. While the Penguins are basically only a Letang short of a full lineup, there are so many guys who look like they are carrying something or have missed time that you don’t know exactly what you’re getting. The Preds don’t have Johansen and Fiala, which is a real problem.

Everything Else

Quite Rightly

By 1634

Of what was on offer, Penguins-Predators is by far the most palatable matchup, and will probably provide the best hockey. And it will look really odd on high definition televisions, which I’m here for. And it also probably provides the most talking points. I’ll try and get through them all, if I can remember them.

-This postseason has seen the most discussion of “styles” that I can remember, whether it was how boring the Senators were to whether or not the Penguins have somehow cracked a “counter-attacking” style against the Caps and a few other things. I suppose the one downside–there are assuredly others that I want to ignore–of a lot of hockey writers being soccer fans was making connections between a team like Leiceister City winning the Premier League and a hockey team trying to do the same thing.

The problem with this thinking is it’s a lot easier to sag back in soccer and still be a good defensive team than it is in hockey. If you’re causing all the shots to come from 25-30 yards in soccer, that’s fine and if someone crashes one in that’s more just bad luck. In hockey goals from points shots that are screened or deflected are far more common, so it’s best to just not give them up at all.

Both Ottawa and Pittsburgh are in the bottom half of playoff teams when it comes to scoring chances against per game, so both have needed strong goalie performances to get where they are. Same with high-danger chances. They’ve been ok, but hardly great. Meanwhile, the Predators have been highly effective in limiting the types of chances teams get, which is probably the big advantage in this upcoming Final.