By now the stats have been beaten into the ground, that teams coming of the newly mandated bye week are like 3-948-3, and naturally the Hawks fell victim to it themselves, and in doing so snapped a 5 game winning streak, all of which came on the road. But while they lost another winnable game on home ice as their chances for the division rapidly evaporate, the main fear was that they would look disinterested or lethargic, and that was anything but the case.
Recent Posts
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Come In From The Cold, We Come Down From The Wire: Oilers at Hawks Preview/Bocce Ball Tournament
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RECORDS: Oilers 31-18-9 Hawks 37-15-5
PUCK DROP: 6pm Central
TV: WGN in the 606, NHLN below the 49th, Sportsnet above it
YOU WILL KNOW THAT I AM AN OIL MAN: Oilers Nation, Copper And Blue
PROJECTED LINEUPS
TEAM ADJUSTED CORSI %: Oilers – 50.8 (13th) Hawks – 50.5 (15th)
TEAM ADJUSTED xGF%: Oilers – 49.8 (17th) Hawks – 48.1 (20th)
POWER PLAY %: Oilers – 20.4 (11th) Hawks – 19.6 (16th)
PENALTY KILL %: Oilers – 81.4 (15th) Hawks – 76.8 (27th)
The somehow-controversial (only the NHL could fuck up the concept of a bye week and have it become A THING like this) bye week comes to an end for the Hawks tonight, and they’ll try and buck the trend of teams with a tan getting tolchocked when they go back to work. But the Hawks have usually avoided such pitfalls under Joel Quenneville.
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Oilers Spotlight: Cam And Magic Talbot
You could draw a lot of similarities between the search for a goalie and the search for a quarterback. One aspect that looks an awful lot alike is when a team splurges on what had been a backup to be their starter. You might see it here in town with the Lakeshore 11 and giving up the goods for Jimmy Garoppolo (god help us). In hockey, last year we saw Martin Jones, Cam Talbot, Thomas Greiss, Robin Lehner, and one or two others move from backup roles to starter roles, with varying success. This season Chad Johnson, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and one or two others have seized jobs. Heading into this offseason, Scott Darling could be given starter’s money and responsibilities, and one wonders if someone might not be coaxed to try with Antti Raanta after he walked the same gilded platform that Talbot did, following Henrik Lundqvist.
While Jones did get his team to a Final last year, there’s a serious argument that Talbot has been the biggest success of all of these.
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We’re Never Anywhere, We’re Either Coming Or Going
If you are reading this post, then you have found us at was is now our third different outpost along the information superhighway. Welcome, at long last, to Faxes From Uncle Dale (dot com). (more…)
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The Frayed Ends Of Senility
If I could pinpoint where it all went wrong for me, I’d probably blame that weird kid on my bus who got me into metal at an early age. Early 90s kids on the brink of puberty didn’t have a lot of places to turn to for metal so we traded cassettes. We would steal petty cash from our parents and bike down to the record store or tape stuff off the radio. I still remember finding out that Chicago had a pirate metal station that broadcast on Saturday nights that introduced me to all kinds of music I would never have heard. Kids today have no idea how hard we had it.
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Fireside Chat – Zombie Edition
It’s my turn to get in on the fun of discussing anything but hockey. Frequent readers to the blog will be familiar with my…obsession is probably too strong of a word so let’s say, preference for the zombie genre. Nothing gets my juices going quite like being thrust into an apocalyptic world overrun by rotting flesh, no rules, various tribes fighting for survival and creatures looking to munch on your BRAAAAAINS.
Why I don’t I live in St. Louis is perhaps the better question. But that’s not why I called.
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Bye Week Foofaraw: Since When Do We Give A Flying Fornication About The Grammys?
Maybe it’s simply because I have access to the opinions of so many more people now through Twitter and Facebook. It’s not just my circle of friends. So maybe it was always this way. That doesn’t mean I understand it any better.
I think the last time I watched the Grammys was when I was 11. That was the year that Nevermind didn’t win. It was also the year that Van Hagar beat out both AIC and Use Your Illusion I. That was all I need to know that this was utter bullshit, and I haven’t watched any of the… well, let’s not give away how old I am but it’s a lot of Grammys that I haven’t paid on iota of attention to.
I know everything in our society has become a sporting event, and people are either winning or losing (and you thought Charlie Sheen was a loon). That you’re on one side or the other. It’s all tribal.
But to me, anything that is decided on the opinions of others is not a sporting event. That includes figure skating and gymnastics. That doesn’t mean those who partake in those aren’t athletes, because they most certainly are. But when we’re deciding winners and losers on opinions, then I don’t really care.
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Bye Week Foofaraw: How Friends Ruined Society (Or At Least Nearly Caused Me To Flunk A College Class)
We’ve decided that with the bye week upon us, this would be a perfect time to vomit up whatever has been rolling around in our heads, no matter what the subject matter is. Not like anyone gives a shit about our hockey thoughts anyway. So all week, we’ll be writing about anything under the sun that strikes our fancy.
By the time “Friends” polluted our TV screens in 1993, I was already heavily addicted to sitcoms and had a general feeling that I wanted to do something around that area when I grew up (if being the drummer for GNR would never present itself). I had watched Cheers, Night Court, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld pretty religiously, especially Cheers and The Simpsons.
Clearly, Seinfeld was the genesis for something like Friends. Four people living in New York, living a something of a life we all knew. Except none of them were especially pretty, and certainly they were all heavily flawed. Seinfeld himself was petty and insecure, George a neurotic loser (which we could all relate too), Elaine falling just short in any category, and the unmitigated weirdo (before we found out he was basically a despicable human being).
And then someone thought, “What if we made Seinfeld, but stripped it of all nuance and uncleanliness and really dumbed it down?” That’s how we ended up with the yuppie trash that was Friends.
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High On The Hog: Carrick Steps Up
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.
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It’s Not What You’re Selling, It’s What You’re Bye-ing: Hawks at Oilers Preview/Dog Psychiatry
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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!