In the aftermath of last night’s entertaining tilt with the equally fast and dinged up Penguins, the Hawks held practice today in anticipation of tomorrow night’s home tilt against the Islanders and then Saturday night in Nashville. And while it was for the most part an ordinary late-season practice, the organization showed its hand a bit in the process.
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Weather Changes Moods – Blackhawks 4, Penguins 1
With the Penguins coming off a tough loss in Dallas last night, it should not have been a surprise that the Hawks were going to see their very best. Even if they were dressing Kjell and Ulf Samuelsson on defense because of injuries tonight. You can see why the Penguins are the class of the league and cause matchup headaches for coaches everywhere.
Three lines that can all go 0-60 in under five seconds and a fourth line that isn’t too far behind. Did I mention that all three lines each feature the best (or second best, in PHIL’s case) scorer Canada, Russia and the US have to offer? Yes, this is the dream Final for the NHL of the past decade which almost assuredly means we will never experience it.
And it’s really a shame because this was about as much fun as one can have watching a NHL regular season game in March. Both teams traded high quality chances and both teams traded pinning the opposition in their end for long periods of time.
In the end, the game really came down to two moments. The first one was when Richard Panik postered Evgeni Malkin at the end of the second period by running the puck through his legs and kicking it to himself. This opened a wide gaping slot for Panik as Malkin could clearly not be bothered and allowed him time to pick a corner on Marc-Andre Fleury. Panik certainly didn’t miss.
The second was Scott Darling’s point blank save on the ageless Matt Cullen near the beginning of the third period. How the puck didn’t go in will stump scientists for the next 34 years. With the Hawks running around in their end, the Penguins cycled the puck from behind the net to a wide open Matt Cullen standing five feet away from an open cage. The puck found him and he blistered a one-timer to the net. Scott Darling somehow snagged it with his glove. The Hawks were able to keep their one goal lead and then add on to it later in the period.
Other stuff and things…
–Nick Schmaltz probably didn’t have the fanboy crush of Teuvo but he might be just as offensively gifted as Finnish baby Jesus. After Anisimov missed the majority of the game with an injury, Schmaltz moved to second line center and didn’t miss a beat. He set up the Hawks first goal with a nifty back check/lift of the stick, swiping the puck from Jake Guentzel and feeding a wide open Patrick Kane on the left wing wall.
Kane receiving the puck in that spot of the ice is akin to Lebron James barreling down the lane with one defender in his way. The ball is going in the hoop and there’s really nothing anyone can do about it.
On the Hawks third goal, Schmaltz turned Ian Cole inside out with a toe drag that opened a passing lane for Kane to re-enact his game-winning goal from the 2013 Western Conference Final.
The biggest difference with Schmaltz now versus the beginning of the season is there is a lot less indecisiveness to his game. Schmaltz knows where he’s going with the puck before he makes a play; he’s seeing moves in advance as opposed to reacting after he’s already in position. There are still moments where he gets caught overthinking but they are far fewer than before his trip to Rockford.
–It’s finally nice to be on the other side of a Fels motherfuck. Barring an unforeseen collapse, Richard Panik should eclipse 20 goals. And even if he doesn’t reach that milestone, this has been a wildly successful year for a guy who couldn’t hold a regular NHL roster spot on Tampa and Toronto for the first four years of his career.
The play he made to score his goal is only made by someone who’s oozing with confidence. I highly doubt Panik would have had the stones to try that move at this point last year.
–Speaking of…Tomas Jurco tried a similar gutsy play in the third when he was barreling down the right wing. He tried flipping the puck to himself and fire the puck to the net in one motion. Unfortunately, he got tangled up and couldn’t get a shot off. That was about the only time Jurco was noticeable.
–How the Hawks (the home team) got caught with Michal Rozsival on the ice at the same time as Sidney Crosby on back-to-back shifts will have to be explained to me sometime.
–That’s about that. The Hawks climbed slightly closer to the Wild as they now trail by 3 points with two more games played. The Islanders come in on Friday. Hopefully they’ll get one of Hjalmarsson, Oduya or Anisimov back though I don’t know if they necessarily need them with the way things are going. Until then.
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Dr. Livingston, I Presume: Penguins at Hawks Preview/PFT Test
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RECORDS: Penguins 38-15-8 Hawks 39-18-5
PUCK DROP: 7pm Central
TV: NBCSN (because hoo boy is this a “rivalry”!!!!)
IRON CITY BEER SUCKS: The Pensblog
PROJECTED LINEUPS
ADJUSTED TEAM CORSI %: Penguins – 51.8 (9th) Hawks – 51.2 (10th)
ADJUSTED TEAM xGF%: Penguins – 54.0 (3rd) Hawks – 49.1 (16th)
POWER PLAY %: Penguins – 21.6 (9th) Hawks – 18.9 (16th)
PENALTY KILL%: Penguins – 80.3 (20th) Hawks – 76.4 (28th)
You don’t get many marquee matchups in the league anymore. No one cares about the Wild yet, despite their bleeding, so the only teams from the West that anyone in the East is the least bit interested in seeing are San Jose and the Hawks (sit down, Kings, no one gives a shit about you either). And really in the East, there aren’t too many more teams you’d make time out for. So over the NHL season, there’s really only six to eight games that would get the dreaded and overused “Final preview” tag. This happens to be one of them, and you better believe it’s what everyone in the NHL offices is absolutely dying to see. Not that it matters, because if any league could completely biff any momentum from the Gone-Plaid-Speed of a possible Pens-Hawks Final, it’s this home for wayward children.
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Penguins Spotlight: Casa De Murray
You’d think a guy who won a Cup in his first toe-dip into the NHL would get a little more pub than Matt Murray does. But when you play behind the best player on the planet, perhaps the most gifted player in the league, the one who is always connected to hot dogs, and the blinding good looks of Kris Letang, you’re going to be behind the eight-ball when it comes to attention. We’re guessing Matt Murray is probably fine with that.
In some ways that’s a shame, because Murray has been one of the league’s best goalies, even though he’s not played as much as others due to injuries. He’s also had the constant buzz about whether Marc-Andre Fleury would get dealt or not, and you wonder if the Stars or Jets aren’t kicking themselves about that one now. Still, that hasn’t stopped Murray much.
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Johnny Kick A Hole In The Sky
Yes, that is a Chili Peppers reference and yes, there was a time when the Chili Peppers were good. It’s far off in the distance now, most of you were probably not born or forgot there was a time when you were young. I know I have. But I swear to you, there was a time. And it was more than the time Anthony Kiedis shot himself in the foot in Point Break, which is assuredly the first joke McClure will make and I’m going to beat him to the punch.
BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED.
The Hawks did address defensive depth tonight, something that had been rumored they were thinking about which confused us all, just a bit. They acquired Johnny Oduya from the Dallas Stars for the gimp they’ve been keeping in the cellar known as Mark McNeill, a 4th round pick that can become a 3rd depending on how the spring goes for the Hawks, and the Stars will retain 50% of O.D’s salary. Make your joke about Jim Nill’s water retention here…
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Cleaning Up The House
Not much going on today. Crawford isn’t as sick but won’t play tomorrow against the Penguins. Niklas Hjalmarsson won’t play the rest of the week, and that’s worth keeping an eye on, or at least his return is. A non-healthy Hammer when things start to matter would be worrisome indeed.
Other than that, the Hawks extended Jordin Tootoo and Michal Rozsival for a year, and some of this is for expansion draft purposes. In fact, it’s all about expansion draft purposes. The Hawks didn’t have what was required to expose in the draft in June, or at least not in a way that could prevent them from having to expose both Ryan Hartman and Marcus Kruger.
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Live From The Five Hole – Jack Of All Trades
As we were recording, there were actual trades going on in the NHL, and Cieslak was somewhere over the Atlantic, as he is being extradited to The Hague for his various war crimes. Sam has escaped from the maw of the Internet Monster to actually be able to engage in the conversation. Of course, by the time this posts, half of what we discussed could be irrelevant, but isn’t that always the case anyway? And the title is interpreted at the reader’s discretion. Audio after the jump.
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High On The Hog: Tyler Motte Is Just Fine…Really
Tyler Motte of the Rockford IceHogs was active for the bulk of the team’s four-game road trip this past week. For all but about five minutes, Motte was either on the Rockford bench or on the ice. Those missing minutes did create
a little activitywidespread panic on my twitter account, however. -
Doused In Mud, Soaked In Bleach: Blues 2 – Hawks 4
I know that NBCSN wanted to position this game as some important late-season clash, with a lot on the line. We know there wasn’t. And really, tonight was an excellent example of how the Blues have no idea what it is they want to be, and how they want to go being about whatever it is they think they are. The Hawks simply kicked them to shits in the first period. and if it wasn’t for Jay Gallon and Trevor van Riemsdyk, the Hawks could have been up a touchdown. Like we’ve seen a lot of over the past couple years, they spent the second period playing with their food, and gave up a tying goal. And then when they wanted to be serious again, they smothered the Blues and eventually got their deserved winner. This was as elementary as it gets, and just about a pure demonstration of what the Hawks and Blues “rivalry” has been for nine years now when the Hawks have given even the slightest fuck and had a roster even close to matching.
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Meet The New Boss – Blues vs Hawks Preview, Rough Draft
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Game Time: 6:30PM CST
TV/Radio: NBCSN, WGN-AM 720
Dexter Fowler’s Biggest Fans: SLGT
Now that the Mike Yeo era began a little quicker in West East St. Louis than most outside of this outlet anticipated, the Blues still find themselves at a crossroads organizationally. This is still basically the same group that Ken Hitchcock couldn’t do anything with, and now that the Blues have fired their fourth of the four winningest coaches of all time, they’re left wondering if it’s at all worth going through another one-and done playoff visit, being essentially locked into their current playoff position. And of course that mean bringing their usual brand of bullshit into the UC tonight.
