There’s a lot of weirdness about this Hitchcock farewell tour and the planned succession to Mike Yeo. It’s all very Blues, and it’ll be even more Blues in the various ways it could go totally balls-up.
First off, we know Hitch grudgingly lets his team get up and down the ice, and would rather be coaching the All-Blacks and play that version of hockey. But look at this roster. Where exactly is his beloved jam? Backes and Brouwer headed for the exit, and in came in only David Perron and the only grinding with him is the one that produces smoke coming out of his ears when trying to do any sort of math problem. Lehtera, Tarasenko, now Yakupov, Schwartz (for the five minutes he’s in one piece), Stastny, Jaskin, Robbi Fabbry or Robby Fabbri, this team has much, much more skill than GRITSANDPAPERHEARTFAAAAARRT. Is Hitch going to open up the throttle on this? Doesn’t he have to to maximize what he’s got?
With the NHL starting in mere days, remember that hockey is also gearing up for the Blackhawks affiliate in the American Hockey League, the Rockford IceHogs. I’m excited to begin my third season reporting on the IceHogs for TCI. I look forward to checking in weekly to fill you in on all Rockford shenanigans.
As would be expected, roster turnover is rampant in the Forest City. Depending on how Hawks brass decide to deal with the last few names on the depth chart, there could be more faces of both new and vintage variety skating at the BMO Harris Bank Center this season.
Unlike the NHL, there are no roster limits in the AHL. Still, the IceHogs usually don’t carry more than 24-25 players during the season. Some of the late moves by the Hawks may alter the makeup of the Hogs roster.
The situation at goalie and defense seem fairly stable for the time being. The most chaotic area roster wise is shaping up to be at forward, so let’s use that as our jumping off point.
Wednesday will kick off our ninth season doing this, and in that time it feels like we’ve gone from one side of the statistical debate to the other. I know we were one of the first to start using Corsi and zone starts and whatever else to try and get to the truth of what we were seeing. And now it feels like we spend a lot of time trying to convince people that yes, Mark Arcobello does indeed suck and stop trying to get us to believe otherwise.
When trying to explain this to my non-hockey inclined friends, I used to try and tell them that hockey was anywhere from five to ten years behind baseball in its statistical revolution. That seems pretty silly now, and there’s a big reason why. If only it were that close.
Usually I do this myself, but this year the whole crew is chiming in so you can hang us all out to dry in April. Let’s kick this pig…
Hawks Point Total and finish in the division
Cieslak – 104 points, 2nd
McClure – 102 points, 2nd (lose on ROW)
Feather – 110 points, 1st
Fearless Leader – 108 points, 1st
Leading Scorer
Cieslak – Kane, 91pts
McClure – Garbage Dick, 90 points
Feather – Kane, EIGHTY-THREE
Fearless Leader – Kane, 89 pts
The last stop on the TCI 2016-2017 World Tour is the Metro (no, not nearly this cool). The Metropolitan Division was home to both last year’s Cup champions and President’s Trophy winners, who are always the truer champions because an 82 game sample size is so much larger than four discrete seven game series. Here is a chart with proprietary, arbitrary, and made-up stats to prove that point by your own logic.
The mythical Flortheast, not quite a winged beast from Lord of the Rings, but an oddly cobbled together division that begins in the swamps of Florida and travels all the way up the ass crack of the continent to Ottawa, which I’m reliably informed is one giant IKEA that a couple hundred thousand people have never quite been able to escape from. Let’s barely learn about some hockey teams.
And so now we move west, young men and women to the hellhole that is known as the Pacific Division. Once the place where Vancouver collected 100 points by merely having a pulse, the division has seen a bit of a makeover since realignment. The Kings, Ducks and Sharks have all taken turns setting the coast on fire while Canada weeps. Where does this year leave us? Follow the jump, suckas.
Holy shit, this actually got done two weeks in a row. And what a riveting 40ish minutes this is, wherein the training camp roster battles and Artemi Panerin’s contract issue are discussed. Find new and exciting ways to fill your ear holes with us after the jump.
With the Hawks’ issues and trajectory pretty clearly mapped out now that the exhibition season two-thirds over, this week the focus will turn external to see what in the hell the rest of the league is doing. And today starts with the Hawks’ most direct competition, the Central Division.
