Moving onto the forwards, Artemi Panarin is the biggest wild card of the recent influx of Russians to the Hawks, who have not had a Russian forward in nearly 8 years after Sergei Samsonov (remember him?) was dealt to Carolina. Panarin will undoubtedly be labeled an highly skilled, an enigma, a malcontent, lazy, or all of the above because that’s just the way it works with Russians in the NHL. But with Patrick Sharp and Brandon Saad now gone, there’s a real opportunity for Panarin to make some noise on the left side.
And won’t it be a blast?
If you’re new to our little commune of drunkeness and wayward thoughts, we’re more than just a blog. And I don’t mean just spiritually. Every Blackhawks home game, we produce a game program that we sell outside the United Center. But hey, Hawks tickets are expensive and you probably can’t make a lot of games. We get it. So we provide them digitally as well! It arrives every afternoon of a home game in your inbox like a bag of earlobes in PDF form. It’s just $95 for the whole season. That’s 41 issues plus however many playoff games there are.
So jump on in! It starts with our training camp preview issue which you get when you sign up. Just hit this button right here! And this year, $5 from every subscription will go to the RVA Chicago.
“Sorry and I’ll be absolved of wrong doing”:ESPN
Effing Clown Shoes:DeadSpin
Disaster:SI
A deserving guy to wear the “A” SCH
Biscuit for Life:CSN
Saad Speaks:PuckDaddy
Except at the end of the year:WSB
Leafs get more speed:TSN
Alfie to the front office:SportsNet
Also read David Haugh its awesome and I wish I could link it.
Well, that was a whole thing, huh?
Let’s state at the top, in the interest of fairness I guess, that there was no way that presser or the Hawks could come out of it looking good. Even if they showed up to announce they flew Kane in simply to punt his ass back to Buffalo in person, it was going to be uncomfortable for everyone. We all knew going in there were things that simply can’t be answered because of the legal process, but reporters are going to ask those questions anyway just to get them out there with any slim chance someone slips.
That doesn’t mean, however, that just because you’re going to look bad you have to look as terrible as possible.
After the first five d-men we’ve previewed, the Hawks have a mishmash of humanity that’s hard to make sense of. So we’ll just group them all together and see what we have. That might not be fair to David Rundblad, but I don’t think he’s going to come and plead his case, and I also doubt he’s going to be a mainstay in the lineup anyway. But we’ll start with him.
David Rundblad – We know Stan is going to force feed him into the lineup and give himself every chance to justify giving up a second round pick for him for… reasons. That doesn’t mean Rundblad is going to have the inside track on the #6 spot, because Q will eat his entire cigar collection if that were to happen.
When I look real hard, I think I can see what Stan sees in Rundblad. He does have a big shot. He does get it through. He does make a nice pass when he gets time. But that’s the caveat. “When he gets time.” Runds needs about five minutes to make that pass. Or get that shot off. And while he does have instincts on how to get into open ice and free himself up, he doesn’t have the feet to get him there in time.
It’s like Rundblad’s skills and skates are mismatched. He wants to play a puck-moving, aggressive game, but he’s got free safety feet. I can’t think of an offensive d-men who couldn’t skate really well. I thought it was Anton Stralman, but after watching him for six games in June he’s a far better skater than Rundblad. Combine that with Rundblad’s defensive allergies, his lack of physical stability when engaged along the boards, and it’s really hard to say what it is, in fact, that Rundblad gives you.
Do we make enough Queen references here? I’m not convinced we do. Put that down as something we need to work on this season.
The Hawks released their training camp roster today, and even if it didn’t have a certain something on it there would be enough to talk about and some intriguing names on there. And we’ll get to those.
But let’s get the main thing out of the way.
Patrick Kane is listed on the roster, which he was always going to be, and both Powers at ESPN Chicago and Lazerus have the Hawks basically saying he’s expected to be there. While it’s at best uncomfortable for everyone, the options were limited. That’s not to say there weren’t options.
I assumed there would be a statement first:CB
Back for Camp:NBC Via TSN
Crystal Ball:Blackhawk UP
Camp Questions:Grantland
Ads on Sweaters ??? Sportsnet.CA
Simon Gagne retires:TSN
I would expect a few offer sheets:PuckDaddy
TVR, as I think we’re now legally bound to call him, won last year’s race to be the player Q falls in love with during training camp, sometimes just to prove how much smarter he is than anyone else. He joined such luminaries as Michael Kostka, Aaron Johnson, Nick Boynton, Jordan Hendry, Sean O’Donnell, John Scott, and probably one or two others I’ve forgotten to preserve my own sanity. And then TVR got hurt before he could prove whether he was just like those or the others, and during his injury layoff watched basically a clown car try and fill the role he had for all of 18 games so that a large section of the fans and media turned those 15 games into something Larry Robinson would be jealous of or something.
So we head into this season, and anyone who says they know exactly what van Riemsdyk is going to provide is either lying to you or to themselves or both.
