Everything Else

High On The Hog: Carrick Steps Up

By Jon Fromi 1867

 

The Rockford IceHogs won three of four games this past week, winning three in a row for just the third time this season. The Hogs also got the overtime monkey off their backs.

Rockford won in overtime for the first time this year in Milwaukee Friday night, then prevailed in a shootout the next evening over San Antonio at the BMO. In all, the IceHogs played five straight games that went past regulation before Sunday’s win over the Admirals.

A couple of Hogs have been stepping up as the team snapped an eight-game losing streak this weekend. Let’s take a look at some of the players who made an impact.

Everything Else

It’s Not What You’re Selling, It’s What You’re Bye-ing: Hawks at Oilers Preview/Dog Psychiatry

By 1162

  vs. 

RECORDS: Hawks 34-17-5    Oilers 29-18-8

PUCK DROP: 9pm Central

TV: WGN Down here, CBC up there

GIZMO WILLIAMS FAN CLUB: Oilers Nation, Copper And Blue

Projected Lineups

ADJUSTED TEAM CORSI %: Hawks – 50.6 (15th)  Oilers 50.8 (13th)

ADJUSTED TEAM xGF%: Hawks – 48.2 (21st)  Oilers – 48.4 (19th)

The Hawks will be the first team the Oilers see after their bye week. And the Oilers will be the first team the Hawks see after theirs, which starts after this game with the Oilers. SYMMETRY!

Everything Else

Eh, No Peg: Hawks 5 – Jets 2

By 1404

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Wow, wins over the Wild and Jets in the span of three days. You’ll tell your children about it someday. If you talk to your children. Which you probably shouldn’t, because really, what do your children have to say? Nothing, that’s what.

The first period was about as well as the Hawks have played all season, and they were completely all over the Jets and easily could have had four or five goals if it wasn’t for Connor Hellebuyck spasming competence for the first time since… well, the last time he played the Hawks. Fucker.

The second was not so good, but at this point I think we’ve all given up the dream of the Hawks putting 60 minutes together. The swarm/mess that the Jets style is lends itself to swing wildly from one pole to the other in terms of possession and dominance, and once they get going they can be hard to turn around.

But the third saw the Hawks shut it down fairly well. They didn’t generate as much as you’d like but Crawford wasn’t required to perform the same miracles as the 2nd, even though the Jets had twice as many shots. She’s a funny old game.

Let’s clean it up.

Everything Else

Potemkin City Limits – Hawks at Jets Preview, Customs Detainment

By 1307

 at 

Game Time: 7:00PM CST
TV/Radio: CSN, TVA, WGN-AM 720
A New Name For Everything: Arctic Ice Hockey, Illegal Curve, Jets Nation

As the Hawks stay in the snow blasted prairies of the Midwest, they take their road show to the MTS Center in downtown Winnipeg, where they hope to actually win a game against the Jets this season in their last head-to-head meeting of the regular season.

Everything Else

The Problem With Replay

By 1724

I suppose the only way last night’s offsides debacle really matters is if the Wild win the division by a single point, and that somehow matters in the playoffs whether the Hawks lose in the first round to an opponent whom they wouldn’t have played or if they lose to the Wild in Game 7 in Minnesota (because that’s oh so likely to a Boudreau team). But I’ve hated the challenge system in every sport since they instituted it, and it’s important to see why.

Both MLB and the NHL went to the “challenge” system to essentially mimic the NFL’s system. But that in itself is ridiculous, because the NFL system was basically adopted so the NFL could abdicate responsibility. It was either terrified of slowing down the game or that it couldn’t make the right decisions, or at least to restrict when they would go to video review. Sure, no one wanted a game where there was a delay of 30 seconds while a video review took place.

But that wouldn’t happen. What takes longer? A video review official taking one look at a controversial play and deciding it needs to be reviewed, or a team employee doing it, radioing down to the coach, who throws a flag, who then has to explain to the ref why he’s hurling laundry onto the field (and from now on they should throw a dildo), only for the ref to then go and review the thing with the aforementioned replay official?

Everything Else

What’s This Funk, That You Call Junk?: Hawks 3 – Wild 3 (Hawks win bocce ball)

By 1557

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

I guess it depends on what you wanted out of this game to define whether it matters or not. If it was a hope that the Hawks could get back in a race for the division, this probably wasn’t it. Gaining one point, leaving with a five-point gap and the Wild have three games in hand still makes your prospects awfully dark. Maybe if the Hawks take the two remaining games with the Wild in regulation we can talk, but a lot can happen between now and the season series being wrapped up.

If you’re looking for signs of improvement in the Hawks in a game they at least said they were taking more seriously than they normally would in the doldrums of February, well you could find things. Toews’s line looked spritely, Crawford had a performance out of earlier in the season, and the kids looked dangerous at times. So if you just look at that, you can feel pretty good.

And if you’re looking for moral victories because the Hawks won on a power play in gimmick overtime… well then you’re a lost soul who simply hasn’t been paying attention. Because there is no such thing.

Everything Else

Minimum Wage Is A Gateway Drug – Hawks at Wild Preview, Night Sweats

By 1511

 at 

Game Time: 7:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBCSN, TVA-S, SportsNet, WGN-AM 720
Makes No Sense At All: Hockey Wilderness

And so it is now here, the most important regular season game in the history of the sport…at least until the next one. The Wild are still playing .900 hockey and have three games in hand on the Hawks, and a regulation win tonight should effectively salt the division away for them, and there’s nothing more that Bruce Boudreau likes than the taste of salted divisions. And the entire hockey world, such as it is, will be watching, as this is the only game on the docket tonight.

Everything Else

Marty – Our Savior Who Art In Heaven

By 1503

That’s not just a stupid title. During our first year as a blog, intrepid reader Eric Rabbers made us t-shirts of Martin Havlat as Jesus and printed up prayer cards to him, that I believe we read out loud before Game 1 against Vancouver in 2009. That’s how deep the psychosis went.

If you’re a newish fan, and it’s no problem if you are, you might look at Havlat’s three years in Chicago and wonder why older fans like us still go weak in the knees whenever we see his name (or a picture of his face, because… well, I mean, c’mon). It’s hard to explain just how deep the malaise had set in when Marty arrived.

Live From The Five Hole

Live From The Five Hole – Slump

By 1602

Since not much has changed since the last time we convened and we can only beat so many topics to death, we cover what are apparently declining television ratings for the local squad, as well as how they stack up against another very much hated franchise in another sport. Eventually we get to some reader questions as well. Give it a listen after the jump.

Everything Else

Wild Q&A With Ben Remington And A Jim Rose Circus Escapee

By 1375

Ben Remington covers the Wild for ColdOmaha.com (I love that name). You can follow him on Twitter @BenRemington. Bryan Reynolds, on the other hand, is just some lunatic who won’t leave us alone so we toss him this bone every so often to make him go away. But it never works. Anyway, he’s on Twitter @BReynoldsMN.

We’ll get to the tough one first. The Wild are on pace for their best regular season ever. They should win the division for only the second time. Is it a mirage or is this for real?

Remington: From what I’ve seen, it’s hard to not say that it’s for real. As usual, some of the fancy stats point to regression, but others bear out that this team has been very, very good so far this season. Even the players that are ‘slumping’ are having decent seasons, and we’ve seen monumental steps up from young players that have been underachieving for most of their time here. Dubnyk is still the key, and him continuing to play well will be the difference between them winning the conference or not, but even with a noticeable regression to the mean recently, his January was just average, not bad, and he could catch fire again. 

Reynolds: I’m a Minnesota sports fan, and I’ve learned that nothing happens faster than a Minnesota sports team imploding. In this case, I’m calling them a mirage right up to the moment Mikko Koivu grabs the Cup from Commissioner Gru’s tiny Trump hands and gives Gary the steely eyed death glare and maybe mutters, “I can’t believe Pantera made a song for the Stars.” I have no idea what that last part even means, but no, I don’t trust this anymore than I trust the Oilers to select a defenseman in the draft.