Everything Else

Now I Get Up Around Whenever, I Used To Get Up On Time: Hawks 3 – Kings 4 (Kings lead 2-1)

By 1640 0

Box Score

Event Summary

Extra Skater

You know what’s weird? This is the first game this series where the Hawks have had the upper hand in possession, in terms of Corsi. You could make an argument that for most of this, they were pretty much where they needed to be. But that was the story when the PK was a sure thing. It most certainly isn’t now. That was the story when the Hawks didn’t make boneheaded mistakes or get bad bounces. They did tonight for sure. It’s why they find themselves trailing this series. It’s also probably why they don’t have any reason to panic. Hockey can be weird. It get weirder when you can’t kill the penalties you take, for whatever reason.

Let’s do it:

Everything Else

Victory Monday

By 1456 0

Looks like we’re going to have a few days to kill and clean up whatever’s lying around after Sunday’s snuffing of River Scum. So just some points I wanted to get through in the wake.

-I didn’t really have any numbers to back up just how good Duncan Keith was yesterday. I checked them out today. Thanks to Ryan Lambert’s “What We Learned” on Puck Daddy as well for pointing this out. Keith had a 60.6% Corsi-percentage in a game where his team didn’t come close to winning that battle. Even Toews got his head kicked in in terms of possession. Keith’s Relative Corsi Percentage was +27.3%.

Interestingly enough, Keith saw most of his time with Saad, Kruger, and Shaw, and it’s no coincidence that that line had its best game of the series, culminating in the last two goals. Perhaps this was a ploy by Q to get the bottom of the roster going. Or maybe that’s just how it worked out.

Keith also was deployed against Tarasenko and Schwartz. It says they combined for five shots. I certainly don’t remember any of them so I’m guessing they all came on the PP. And look, that line didn’t score, and the Blues are done playing hockey for the season. Easy how that works, no?

Everything Else

Standing In The Middle Of Nowhere, Wondering How To Begin: Blues 3 – Hawks 4 (OT)

By 1476 0

Box Score

Event Summary

Extra Skater

It’s about 10 hours later and I’m still not sure how to sum up what went on last night on Madison. It was about three games in one, much like Game 2 was. The swings in this series are about as violent as I can remember, not from game-to-game but within the games. It’s not just one team controlling play and then the other, but each team is taking turns absolutely throttling the other. Maybe that’s what you get when you have two fragile teams? And I can’t believe I’ve described the Hawks that way, but it certainly feels like that with the way they’re finishing periods.

So many strange things, topped with this felt like doom even though the first 38 minutes of this one were probably the best the Hawks have put together this series. It certainly was possession wise. The Hawks after one had a team Corsi % of 81%. Before things went stupid at the end of the second, the even-strength scoring chances were 7-1 for the Hawks. At 2-0 and rolling, they had this in their pocket (very strangely, they were doing this while getting crushed at the dot. And then when the Blues turned all this around in the 3rd, they were getting crushed at the dot).