Hockey

Game #20 – See Now All My Flavors Are Guaranteed to Satisfy – Sabres 1, Hawks 4

By John Pullega 2338 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Evolving Hockey

The Hawks continue to ride the shooting percentage snake. Tonight was also about as well rounded a game as they’ve played. Let’s clean it up to put a nice feather in a good weekend’s cap.

– Kirby Dach, you are our huckleberry. Dach’s been aces over the last few games, and tonight was the exclamation point on his current hot streak. We all knew that Dach had slick hands before he even got here, but the big question mark was how he would look skating at NHL speed. Tonight provided an emphatic answer. Just look at how badly he fooled Jack Eichel on his first goal.

Eichel’s caught flat-footed as Dach explodes through the neutral zone, then redirects Dach’s backhander right past Hutton. Credit A Little Bit of the Kubbly for threading that pass right past the forlorn Henri Jokiharju, but it’s Dach’s effortless stride that’s the star of the show.

On Dach’s second goal, it was almost the exact same play, just going in the opposite direction. Zack “You Actually CAN Spell Party Without Arty” Smith weaved himself into the offensive zone, swept himself into the slot, then dinked a pass to Dach, who once again outskated Eichel for a backhander. The speed-and-hands combo is going to be a nightmare for opponents if he can do that consistently, and it’s looking like he can. He ate Jack Eichel alive all night.

Kirby Dach is extremely good. He may be the cornerstone of the future for the Hawks’s forwards.

– Another game, another brilliant performance from Corey Crawford. Outside of a bad turnover behind the net that nearly led to a Sabres goal in the first, Crawford was about as flawless as could be. For once, the Hawks weren’t vastly outshot by an opponent (34–27 this time around), and they kept most of the Sabres’s attempts to the outside. There’s little more to say about how important Crawford (and Lehner) has been to this team so far.

– Patrick Kane has a nine-game scoring streak with his PP-scramble goal. That creep can roll.

– Dominik Kubalik had a quietly good game tonight, which makes the fact that had just above 12 minutes of ice time in ALL situations a bit puzzling. Yeah, I get not changing shit when it’s working. But I can’t get away from the idea of Saad–Toews–Kubalik and the damage that line could do on both sides of the puck. That line’s missing a finisher, and Kubalik has the shot to be that guy.

– Speaking of Saad, he led all Hawks forwards in ice time tonight, and rightfully so. He and Nylander had three or four 2-on-1s that they just couldn’t make work, whether because of a rogue Nylander pass or Saad’s lack of finish. Those two were so close to making their possession chemistry click that I get keeping them together with Toews, but it might be worth pushing Nylander down in the lines. He’s had success when the stakes aren’t as high. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Back to Saad, his highlight tonight came on Toews’s goal. After a bad Ristolainen turnover on the near boards, Saad crashed the net and, per usual, got stuffed. But he stuck with the puck and found a wide-open Toews in the slot. A quick flick of the wrist and it’s 4–0 Hawks.

– Connor Murphy looked good tonight with several key breakups. His sweep check on Lazar in the first prevented an odd-man rush. He had a strong block after a Crawford save on the PK in the third that prevented an open chance. When he’s healthy, he’s everything that everyone wants Olli Maatta and Calvin de Haan to be.

– De Haan was entirely at fault for the Sabres’s only goal, with an unforced giveaway to Jack “My Father Is Younger Than Me” Eichel. His entire third period was piss, but that goal was the only mistake that cost him. Something to keep an eye on, because it was out-of-character bad for him in the third.

– I’m done with Andrew Shaw, friends. Yes, he got an assist on Dach’s goal, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he can’t stickhandle for shit and his skating fucking sucks. The best example of this was at the end of the Hawks’s PP in the second. He had an unforced turnover in the offensive zone that he parlayed into a totally unnecessary neutral zone hooking penalty that put Buffalo on the PP. The Hawks killed it off and all, but this kind of shit would get most guys scratched. Shaw did end up toward the bottom end of the TOI mix, so maybe Coach Kelvin Gemstone’s brand is on the rise.

Taking nine of their last 10 points available is fun. The way they’re doing it is fun. Let’s enjoy this fun for as long as it lasts.

Onward.

Beer du Jour: High Life

Line of the Night: “He’s trying to get off really hard.” Konroyd on Dach

Hockey

Game #18 – I Got a Molotov Cocktail With a Match to Go, I Smoke My Cigarette With Style – Hawks 5, Knights 3

By John Pullega 1960 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Evolving Hockey

Holy shit, that was fun. I would like every game to be like this going forward. Air raid, motherfuckers. Let’s clean it up.

– Corey Crawford is a goddamn treasure and he should have his number retired. Nights like tonight remind you just how important he’s been to this team for the last nine years. Per usual, the Hawks got mauled in shots on goal, but Corey Crawford could not give less of a fuck about that if he took a vow of celibacy. He made 39 saves on 42 shots, including about 10 high-danger saves. Not one of the goals he gave up was on him. He kept the Hawks ahead in the second, when the Knights pressed the hardest. He even got called for a bullshit “throwing object” penalty and withstood a Marchessault penalty shot.

We say this just about every game, but without the goaltending, this is a route. Corey Crawford was the star of this shootout.

– The 12–17–88 line was furious tonight. DeBrincat and Strome were nails with their passing, and Garbage Dick scored a much-needed answer goal in the first. On that goal, DeBrincat shrugged off pressure from Karlsson and left a soft pass for Strome along the far boards. Then, Strome fired a cross-ice pass to a streaking Kane, who was left all alone for a quick one timer.

Then, for the coup de grace in the third, Strome took a backhand saucer pass from DeBrincat up the middle and potted the Hawks’s fifth goal high glove side. The Hawks scored three of their five high glove.

– Kirby Dach is going to be a special player. I bitched and moaned when they took him over Byram, but I’m happy to be entirely fucking wrong about that. Can you believe that his goal was probably the second most impressive play he made tonight? And boy, what a goal it was. Zack Smith (more on him shortly) made Ryan Reaves look like, well, Ryan Reaves, along the near boards, angling a pass toward Ryan Carpenter. Carpenter pushed the puck up to Dach, who stuffed home his own rebound after Flower’s initial denial. That would have been impressive enough. But check this fucking shit out:

Seabrook makes a pass up the boards to a well-covered Dach. Despite getting imprisoned along the boards by Nick “The” Hague, Dach managed to shovel a one-handed pass to Zack Smith (there’s that name again), who then fed a pass to de Haan for the Hawks’s second goal. The strength and poise to make a play like that is exceptional, and Dach made it look easy. Just imagine what he’s going to do with 30 extra pounds. Plus, he led all Hawks in possession and was one of just four Hawks to finish above water (Maatta, Carpenter, DeBrincat). Holy shit, what fun.

– Calvin de Haan put on a “Fuck Your Analytics” clinic. He and Seabrook may have gotten pasted in possession to the tune of a 29+ and 34+ CF%, respectively, but it didn’t matter. De Haan’s goal was a masterful high-glove shot. Though we usually scoff at blocks, each of de Haan’s three was purposeful. His defense after the first period was essential.

Yeah, his piss coverage on the PK—wherein he floated toward the near boards to cover a low-risk Marchessault, giving Karlsson a parting-of-the-Red-Sea-sized lane to drive down—led to a goal. And his questionable coverage of Patches earlier in the first period—covering Patches, who was skating behind the net, by flying in front of Crawford—nearly led to another goal. But he tightened up in the second and third and was the good kind of noticeable the rest of the way. Fuck Corsi, indeed.

– I would like to officially take back any bad things I’ve ever said about Zack Smith. A penalty shot, two outstanding assists, embarrassing Ryan Reaves more so than Ryan Reaves does naturally, and a 100 GF% is quite a night. He was one of the most fun guys to watch out there tonight.

– Nylander had a couple of nice passes again, sandwiched between a few bad turnovers and a lot of invisibility. Conversely, Kubalik was quiet most of the night until the end of the second, when he had two prime chances stuffed. I get not wanting to change what’s working (for whatever reason it’s working), but I’d like to see those two flip spots. Just to see.

– With Connor Murphy coming back this weekend, this was likely the last we’ve seen of Boqvist for a while. It’s dumb, but I guess in context, it makes sense. He had a really strong first period (72+ CF%, 89+ xGF%), but he sort of tapered off as the game went on. We would have loved to see him on the PP1 instead of Keith, but Colliton is in this weird hockey libertarian phase right now. His interference penalty in the third wasn’t all bad though, as he showed that when he puts his ass into it, he can overpower NHL players. Small things.

– I’m only going to mention how bad Brent Seabrook looked because he is a seventh D-man whom the Hawks are too scared to scratch for Boqvist’s sake. He was overmatched by the Knights’s speed all night and didn’t really have a single positive contribution. It’s profoundly stupid that he gets to play over Boqvist, because Boqvist—for all his greenness—is still a bigger threat.

– Erik Gustafsson is coming back to life. He was uneven on the defensive side, which is good for him. His goal was a prime example of what he can do when he plays with talented players. Strome fed him a perfect pass from just above the goal line, giving Gus a chance to skate one way and shoot the other. Let’s hope that he continues to score so the Hawks can get more than a bag of pucks for him at the deadline.

– Brayden McNabb can eat all of the shit on Earth.

It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s fun. If the Hawks continue to commit to the air raid, they’re going to win more games than if they go back to whatever the fuck MAGIC TRAINING CAMP produced. It looks more like individual brilliance than anything systemic, but for now, who gives a shit? Just win, baby.

Also, fuck the Knights.

Beer du Jour: Jefferson’s Very Small Batch and Bell’s Best Brown

Line of the Night: “Almost touched it in the restricted area as that puck was coming hot and heavy.” –Eddie O.

Hockey

Game #3 – Jets 2, Hawks 2 (Jets win paper football): Crunchy In The Middle

By Sam Fels 1809 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Well, it’s a point? When you don’t have any, a point is like, better than nothing? I’m trying here.

The Hawks started well, then got blitzed in the middle, and then spent the third period playing awfully safe. Which didn’t work. Stop me if you’ve heard all this before. Well you can’t now, because I’ve said it all, but you get the idea. What the Hawks can do about it, I’m not sure. And I’m not even sure it’s a thing, but the Hawks seem to think it’s a thing.

Anyway, let’s clean it up.

The Two Obs

-Slo my colleague Matt McClure has said that this seven game homestand is an excellent time to really evaluate Jeremy Colliton. Because he’ll get seven games to pick his matchups and where he wants players and have the best chance to put his players in their best places to give the Hawks a chance to win. So far…ehhhhhh.

The Hawks definitely were matching up their D against certain lines of the Jets last night. Murphy and Keith drew the Scheifele line assignment. Seabrook and Maatta drew the Andrew Copp line. But the forwards didn’t really have any pattern like that, which is strange. Which means Scheifele got some shifts against David Kampf’s line, which didn’t work out all that well for the Jets. But then they got some shifts against the Dylan Strome line, which very much did. You can’t have Strome out there against top centers. It’s just not going to work right now.

-Whatever, that’s kind of nitpicking. Maybe Colliton is still figuring out who does what. What his team does though is still have massive defensive breakdowns in their own zone. And I don’t know if that’s mistakes or by design. Frequently, you’ll catch the Hawks with both d-men on the same side of the ice, and sometimes even in the same corner. Which just can’t be right. One of Lehner’s big saves on Scheifele came when Murphy tailed Wheeler behind the net all the way to the other circle, and Keith was on his post as he’s supposed to be. So who covers the other side? Is it Strome? Because no one did much of anything here:

For the tying goal, where are de Haan and Toews going exactly here?

These are obviously cherry-picked, but you see these things all the time. It still feels like guys are guessing where to be, or simply don’t care. This shouldn’t be happening this early in the season after MAGIC TRAINING CAMP.

-The Hawks made a big deal of struggling in the second period, as they did against San Jose. I’m not really sure this is a thing, but they seem to think it is. It could just be that San Jose and Winnipeg are that much better and just needed a period to wake up for a game on the road. Obviously, the only difference in the second is the long change, where the Hawks possession problems become exacerbated. It’s even harder for them to escape their zone, guys get stuck out longer, etc. I’m not sure it’s got that much to do with the second period itself.

-On the plus side, I’ve been surprised by Ryan Carpenter in the first three games, and he was excellent last night. The 4th line was actually the best for the Hawks in terms of attempts-share and second best in expected-goals. Carpenter is quick and just gets up the ice, which is how he created the shorthanded goal (the Jets defense being just about as slow as the Hawks’ didn’t hurt either). I think you could make an excellent checking unit out of him and Kampf to make room for Dach. Just sayin’.

-Rough night for Kampf’s line, as they get clocked in possession and chances. But it’s still unclear what they’re being set out to do. Yet, they’re still the only line that plays fast, i.e. just gets the puck and goes. That might be because Saad is the only winger other than Kane comfortable carrying the puck a long way (sometimes to his detriment), but the top two lines don’t play that way. Yet. They need to.

-Seen some people wondering if the Hawks are actually intentionally not clogging shooting lanes on the penalty kill. Ehlers goal was a touch strange:

Again, I can’t tell you if this is systematic or human error. Maatta is there, he knows where Ehlers is, I think, he seems to anticipate the pass to him, but he takes a weird angle, either wrongly trying to cut off the pass he’ll never get to or he thinks Ehlers is somewhere else. He’s certainly available to get in the lane for the shot. He just didn’t.

-Don’t look now but the power play is clown shoes again.

-Ok, so my first trip into the UC this season. That scoreboard is…let’s say garish? It’s not this weird screens on top of screens thing, so from certain angles, including mine, there are ads and graphics that get cut off by other screens. It kind of looks like he Pritzker Pavillon, but made of video screens. It’ll take some getting used to.

Onwards…

Hockey

Waiting On Dach, Homestand Charge, And Whatever Else I Can Think Of

By Sam Fels 1690 0

It’s been one of the stranger starts to the season, in its lack of action. The Hawks have played one game, while some teams have played four, and we’re just sitting around basically still waiting for the season to get started. We can’t draw any conclusions after one game (we’re not Toronto), so we don’t know anything more or less than we did before. So we’ll try and clear whatever’s going on, which is a whole lot of not much.

-Perhaps the biggest story to watch over this homestand is when Kirby Dach will get into the lineup, and how he will do when he gets there. Given that the nine-game “trial” only covers the games he dresses for, this could go on all month. Which probably wouldn’t make Saskatoon all that happy, but no one has ever given a fuck what Saskatoon thinks and no one ever will. The Hawks are being awfully cautious, though at this point it doesn’t seem to have that much to do with his injured brain.

It’s looking like the Hawks won’t dress him for the home opener, given that he’ll only have a handful of “real” practices under his belt. We all wish to have seen him in preseason, but in preseason he would have been beating up on AHL-level talent for the most part and we’re already pretty sure he can do that.

The other part, as it always is with the Hawks, is the worry about his defensive game. It feels like a lot of the time the Hawks always see what a player can’t be instead of what he can, and the one time they saw what a player could be they ended up with Alex DeBrincat never having to step foot back in junior or in the minors at all. They certainly see what a player could be when they trade for him, i.e. Strome and Nylander (jury’s out there) or Koekkoek (jury’s definitely in there) and we could go on. But when it’s from their own system, they’re awfully harsh.

To me, we already know this team is going to blow defensively. There’s like, no hope that they’ll ever be good. So really, they need to try and outscore all of their problems. Installing Dach right between Saad and Kubalik would help you achieve that. Or the truly ballsy move, which would never ever happen, is to put Toews there to give you a hybrid checking/scoring line and let Dach play with Kane and Mystery Doofus on the left wing and let them only play offense. Teams would be tempted to play their top lines against that one, and probably do very well doing so, but would also run the risk of a Saad-Toews-Kubalik unit running roughshod over their second and third lines. But this will only happen in my mind.

The thing is, Dach is not going to learn that much about defense playing against children he’s putting up 120 points against. We pretty much know he’s physically dominant in that league. It is possible to drip-feed him responsibility at the top level, with some rough nights assuredly in there. With DeBrincat’s extension, we know the Hawks are merely focused on the next three to four years before a hard reset for just about everything. There actually isn’t that much time to waste.

-It’s a little silly to say in October, and things can change down the line, but the Hawks kind of do need to crush this season opening homestand. For one, the only world-beater on the docket is the Knights, who have spent three games looking like the West’s best, which makes me feel made of vomit. There’s also the little nugget that the Hawks have never beaten them. There’s a couple actually bad teams on here, a couple middling (though the Hawks just got their ass kicked by one of them). And whatever the Jets are right now, which is probably all of these things in one. Except without a defense.

But more importantly, if the Hawks don’t gain some kind of energy from even a 4-3 or hopefully 5-2 or better, you’d have to think there would be even more questions about the stewardship of this team or what it’s meant to do. You can’t really ask for more at the start of a season than seven straight home games. Everything the “Magic Training Camp” was supposed to do can be most easily instilled with this many home games. Everything you want to do, you’re supposed to be able to do at home. Especially when the opposition isn’t all that daunting for the most part.

If the Hawks still look disjointed and ill-equipped, there won’t be the excuses of “having to change systems on the fly” like there was last year. Or getting used to a new voice. Or figuring out what team they have. They’re supposed to know, and these seven games should show one way or the other.

The schedule, if you can judge it only a week in on who you think is good and isn’t, doesn’t really get daunting until the end of November. But we’ve seen what happens when this team has to chase later in the year. Here’s a chance to start to carve out a trench.

-Anyone else think it’s weird that training camp started with worries over Calvin de Haan’s shoulder and now it’s his groin that’s keeping him questionable?

-One thing we haven’t discussed a lot, and probably should have, is how Jeremy Colliton will handle a goalie controversy. We can expect Lehner and Crawford to split starts just about to begin. But what if on these seven games Lehner severely outplays Crow? If it’s the other way, that’s easy. Crow is the pedigreed veteran everyone loves. But if Lehner starts to earn the lion’s share of time, is this something a young coach in his first full season is ready to handle? Can he actually sit a vet with far more accomplishments than he has? And if he does, why does it have to stop there?

At least it’s interesting.

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Connor Murphy

By John Pullega 1762 0

Since that fateful day when Stan Bowman pulled Quenneville’s heart of out his ass and made him sniff it with the Hjalmarsson trade, Connor Murphy’s performance has been a consistent curiosity. He’s often looked like the best Hawks D-man on the ice when he’s healthy. But when you pan out for a longer view of the defense, it’s always felt like being the best of this bunch is like beating a two-legged dog at a digging contest. This year, Murphy will likely need to shoulder the burden of being the only passable defensive defenseman on the Hawks, at least until de Haan gets back.

2018–19 Stats

52 GP – 5 G, 8 A, 13 P

48.63 CF% (-0.4 CF% Rel), 38.8 oZS%

54.67 GF% (1.29 Rel GF%), 44.44 xGF% (-1.08 Rel xGF%)

Avg. TOI 19:29

A Brief History: We’ve always liked Connor Murphy around here, and we all thought we were getting a younger, cheaper Hjalmarsson in him. In some ways, that’s been true. Over the last two years, each has missed extended time due to injury (Murphy last year, Hjalmarsson in 18). They’ve been fairly comparable in those two years, though Hjalmarsson has had an overall edge in defensive play.

But last year wasn’t particularly kind to our Large Irish Son. He missed 30 games due to a back injury, which is never good for a 6’4” skater. We saw him skating up at the blue line at times as Colliton’s man defense went through what we can only pray is growing pains. His possession metrics, both vanilla (48.63%) and high-danger varieties (39.34%), were underwater on the year, though you might expect that given his zone starts.

And yet, Murphy was relatively fine next to Carl Dahlstrom. They were the “shutdown pair” for a time, and compared to everyone else on the Hawks’s blue line, the ice was least dangerous when Murphy was out there. Maybe the most interesting stat about Murphy last year is that despite starting in his own zone about 62% of the time, his GF% was second among Hawks D-men who played at least 41 games, second only to Duncan Keith (58 oZS%).

It Was the Best of Times: Murphy stays healthy and jumps into the top-pairing role with Gustafsson. Hell, you can play them both on their off sides and see what happens. Gus scored 60 on his off side, and Murphy never looked too out of place on his, so whatever. Fuck it. Putting Murphy and Gus together hedges Gus’s awfulness in his own zone. Might as well try it, since the only other true shutdown guy on this team, Calvin de Haan, won’t be around for a month or so.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Murphy’s back keeps him off the ice for 40% of the year. For all the bitching we’ve done about Murphy’s use since his arrival, Colliton has upped the time we see Murphy on the ice consistently. It’s unlikely we’ll see him with any less than second-pairing minutes. So, aside from injury—which is still a distinct possibility for a man of his significant vertical carriage—the worst scenario is that Murphy can’t adapt to whatever it is that Colliton’s defensive scheme wants him to do, which, based on last year, seems to ask defensemen to skate around the blue line in their own zone.

Prediction: Murphy continues to toil in the dungeon shifts. When de Haan comes back healthy, he finally gets to play with a worthwhile partner, and the Hawks have a true shutdown pairing. He and de Haan also round out the PK1 unit, which is a vast improvement over Keith–Seabrook. The PK still finishes toward the top of the bottom half of the league (say, 18th), but not because of anything Murphy does. Murphy continues to go underappreciated for the cardinal sin of not being Niklas Hjalmarsson.

Murphy’s never going to give you sexy numbers, unless, like, a 69 dZS% tickles you. He’s about as representative a defenseman as you’ll find. But with the offensive threats the Hawks have, that’s really all they need.

Stats from hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Previous Previews

Robin Lehner

Corey Crawford

Adam Boqvist

Carl Dahlstrom

Calvin de Haan

Erik Gustafsson

Duncan Keith

Slater Koekkoek

Olli Maatta

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Calvin de Haan

By John Pullega 1826 0

After last year’s personal affront of a blue line made it easier than ever to forget that just three years ago the Blackhawks were having a parade, Stan Bowman knew he had to answer for his backend farce. The answer he came up with was Calvin de Haan, a defensive defenseman who will probably miss the first month or two while rehabbing a major shoulder surgery. But the Hawks got him for a song, and when he’s healthy he’s effective, so there’s something to look forward to.

2018–19 Stats

74 GP – 1 G, 13 A, 14 P

55.64 CF%, 56.41 oZS%

47.06 GF% (-5.88 Rel GF%), 55.12 xGF% (-1.62 xGF% Rel)

Avg. TOI 18:31

Canes Country Review of Calvin de Haan

A Brief History: The most important thing to remember about Calvin de Haan is that he’s very unlikely to start the season on the ice. He had off-season surgery on his right shoulder in May and had a 4–6-month recovery timetable. It’s looking more likely that he’ll fall closer to the end of that recovery projection, meaning that he probably won’t be back until November. On top of that, de Haan has had surgery on his left shoulder a few times in the past. But Bowman got de Haan for Anton Forsberg and Gustav Forsling. So, de Haan could miss the entire 2019–20 season and the Hawks still likely win the trade.

History of shoulder problems aside, de Haan had a pretty good year last year for a defensive defenseman. His possession numbers were excellent in Carolina, even when you account for how much time he spent in the offensive zone. That 47.06 goals-for percentage (GF%) doesn’t inspire confidence on its face, but it could be a function of the fact that Carolina is more of a possession juggernaut than a pure offensive power. Expect that to rise if the Hawks’s offense is still clicking, and there’s no reason to think it won’t.

In addition to his strong possession numbers, de Haan played second-pairing minutes for the eighth-ranked Hurricanes PK. He played about 147 minutes on the PK last year and was on the ice for 20 goals, which is generally fine. It’s definitely better than what Keith (166 minutes, 31 GA) and Seabrook (166 minutes, 29 GA) did last year.

In short, de Haan is a stay-at-home defenseman who, when healthy, can make the Hawks blue line a bit stouter than it was last year. He also played over 300 minutes with TvR last year, a primer for what playing with the Hawks will be like.

It Was the Best of Times: de Haan comes back in early November and pairs with a waiting Adam Boqvist. That’s the role de Haan typically played in Carolina, where he spent most of his time paired with Justin Faulk, another offensively minded, defensively stunted defenseman. Given his stay-at-home tendencies and Boqvist’s NHL-ready offense, these two seem destined to come together at some point. Might as well be as soon as possible.

On the PK, de Haan and Murphy take over the first-pairing duties, sparing us the horror of watching that Keith–Seabrook snuff film, at least until the second unit comes out.

It Was the BLURST of Times: de Haan comes back to pair with Erik Gustafsson on the top pairing, because this is the reality the Brain Trust wants. Gustafsson gets exposed as little more than a third-pairing bum slayer, and de Haan floats between covering for Gus, Seabrook, and Maatta, sometimes all in the same game. Then, de Haan ends up on a PK unit BEHIND Keith–Seabrook.

Alternatively, de Haan’s shoulders are in worse shape than anticipated, and he misses most of the 19–20 season. Any “The Hawks have an outside shot at the playoffs” talk turns to ash in our mouths as we watch Keith and Seabrook get mutilated all year again.

Prediction: de Haan is the consummate babysitter and as close as the Hawks will ever again get to having Hjalmarsson on the team. The problem is that the Hawks have three D-men who need to be babysat for each babysitter they have. Murphy and de Haan can’t cover for all of Keith, Gus, Seabrook, Dahlstrom, Maatta, and Boqvist (if he makes it here) at the same time.

So, we’ll see de Haan pair with Murphy on the third pair, because fuck you. They’ll serve as a shutdown pairing, and things will be generally fine when they’re on the ice. But that’ll expose the Keith–Gus and Maatta–Seabrook pairings as the bloated, slow, irresponsible messes that they are, and the Hawks will once again rely on the goaltending to constantly pull their asses out of the sling and the offense to outscore their defensive problems. Colliton will do the right thing and put de Haan on the first PK unit, but it will be with Keith, who couldn’t be bothered to give a shit last year.

On his own, de Haan is a good shutdown D-man at a good price (three more years at $4.55 million per). And he’ll be perfect for when Boqvist makes the jump. But de Haan isn’t a savior. He’s a nice second-pairing D-man on a team that needs a top-pairing guy and has nothing close to one. The problems on the blue line this year are bigger than he can solve alone.

So yeah, he technically makes the blue line “log jam” better, sort of like a plumber who empties a toilet with his bare hands, throws the remains in a garbage can, and doesn’t have the equipment to actually fix the clog.

“Keep on going and fuck everything. Pile misery upon misery, heap it up on a spoon, and dissolve it with a drop of bile.”

Stats from hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Previous Previews

Robin Lehner

Corey Crawford

Adam Boqvist (oh please fucking god let it be so)

Carl Dahlstrom

Hockey

Summer Doldrums – Projecting How the Blackhawks Will Do This Year

By John Pullega 2316 0

An active first two days of the week with the Dach signing on Monday and the curious-at-best Jokiharju trade Tuesday. The Hawks still haven’t traded Artem Anisimov, and I guess that that’s not horribly urgent, but it would make more sense if they did than if they didn’t. It might be hard for the Hawks to find a trading partner for a plodding third-line center with a $4.55 million per cap hit for the next two years who’s wide dicked his way into 20 goals three times in the past four years. But then again, Brandon Motherfucking Manning DID get a two-year deal for seven figures only to be traded and demoted last year, so I guess anything is possible. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED.

Because summer is categorically the worst season of the year, we’re left thinking about all the ways Chicago hockey can either surprise us or go entirely ass up this fall. We’ve done a lot of looking at the ass-up side of things, so maybe we can try to look at potential positives for your 2019–20 Chicago Blackhawks.

We like to lean on advanced stats to make points about why guys who seem underwhelming really aren’t (Brandon Saad) and to bitch about why guys who suck shouldn’t be getting the praise they do (Duncan Keith over the last two years). That’s what we’re going to do for this little exercise, because it’s only fair, and on the off chance that if Pierre McGuire ever reads this his stupid bald head might simply evaporate from his meek and mealy body.

Earlier this week, Sean Tierney (@ChartingHockey) posted a projection model, which you can play around with yourself (phrasing). The model uses WAR (wins above replacement) data from Evolving Wild (@EvolvingWild) and prospect data from Manny Perry (@mannyelk). In short, the model tries to predict a team’s full-season WAR based on different line, pairing, and goalie combinations. It also tries to predict how many points teams might get in the standings based on those lineups.

You bet your ass I played around with shit.

There are countless ways to guess at how the lineup for Beto O’Colliton will shake out. So I compared three potential lineups for the Hawks. I used Scott Powers’s most recent projections for the first one. I used my own projections for the second. And I used what I think would be an ideal lineup, based on the Hawks’s current roster, for the third. As you’ll see, this model gives a ton of room for hope, even if some restrictions apply. I used all the default TOI% projections for forwards and D-men, and adjusted the goalie splits to 50/50 instead of 70/30.

The Powers Projection

For this projection, I used Scott Powers’s most recent predictions for how the lines would shake out. He’s in the know, he’s trustworthy, so this is as good a place to start as any.

The first thing you might notice is that the Hawks project to end up with about 99 points in the standings with the Powers projection. That’s pretty good. In fact, that’s playoff good for last year. Colorado, Vegas, Dallas, and Columbus all made the playoffs with fewer points last year. Winnipeg, Carolina, and St. Louis all made it with 99 points.

There are a few caveats to this projection (and all of them, really).

The first is that we assume that the Bird Boys split time in net perfectly evenly. We’re doing this because that’s the feeling we get about what will happen based on the reports we read and on Crow’s injury history of late. With a perfectly even split, the model prefers Robin Lehner to Crow, likely based on Crow’s relatively poor overall stats over the past two years caused by various head injuries and historically bad defense. Interestingly, the model projects that if Lehner were to get up to 70% of the starts, his ProjFSW climbs all the way up to 8.2. This makes sense, since other than his one dry heave in Buffalo in 2017–18, Lehner’s looked as good or better than Crow statistically over the last four years. In fact, they both have a .918 SV% on their career. So if the end is nigh for Crow, Lehner is a solid—if not better—replacement for him on the ice, even if he is a shithead.

The second assumption is that Dominik Kabulik produces like Dominik Kahun did. Kabulik wasn’t available in this model, so I used Kahun as a stand-in, since Kahun’s 37 points and 0.8 WAR seem entirely conceivable for Kabulik to hit, based on how well the Hawks scout European players.

The Powers projection shows that the Lehner signing could be the difference maker for this team (if we get the version from last year at least) and that if the Hawks are truly committed to playing Seabrook on the third pairing, it will only be a disaster, rather than an unmitigated disaster. As constructed by Powers, this team could make the playoffs if everything goes perfectly.

The Pullega Projection

In this version of reality, we roll with what I think the Hawks will do, based solely on instinct and what I’ve read. Again, pretend Kabulik gives you Kahun numbers coming up. With the recent trade of my sweet boy Henri Jokiharju, it’s much more likely that Brent Seabrook plays more minutes than he should on the second pairing, because more grind something something. That’s also why I think we’ll see Shaw start out on the top line with Toews and Saad, even though Shaw is a better fit on the third line. I’d be surprised if Colliton throws Kabulik on the top line, but then again. With this projected lineup, if everything goes perfectly, the Hawks project to get 95 points, which makes them a bubble team.

 The Ideal Projection

So as I was writing this, Bowman traded Jokiharju, which is an incredibly stupid move given the context of the Hawks’s situation (i.e., the defense is an atrocity and Harju was decent at worst last year. Get red-assed with me here.) This definitely means that the Seabrook playings will continue until morale improves. But just for the hell of it, I plugged in Adam Boqvist. With this lineup, the Hawks project to be a 104-point team, which likely puts them in the playoffs pretty easily.

But as with all ideals, everything has to break perfectly. Kirby Dach has to stay and be good, and there’s no indication that he’ll stay regardless. Shit, Harju got traded for William Nylander’s younger, dumber, lazier younger brother—in what might be Stan’s most meta “getting the band back together” moment ever (Nylander’s father played for the Hawks for a few years in the late 90s–early aughts)—after being the best D-man on the team (small sample sizes be damned) just the other day. And having Boqvist play definitely shuts Seabrook out, which isn’t going to happen, maybe not even after Seabrook’s contract expires. Finally, this model really likes Olli Maatta, which may goose the projections a bit, but that might be confirmation bias on my part. If Maatta’s as good as the projections say, there’s hope with this ideal.

Projections can be fun, but they require a lot of things to go perfectly. And outside the de Haan trade, assuming his shoulder heals nicely and quickly, it’d be really hard to describe this offseason as anything even close to perfect. But we’re trying to be positive, for a change if nothing else.

In all, the forwards project to be good, just like last year. The goaltending projects to be better because of Lehner falling into their laps. And the defense has shown improvement, but we’re still skeptical about a lot of things, particularly de Haan and Maatta’s health, Maatta’s mobility, and the ever-present living eclipse that is Brent Seabrook.

The projections are kind. We can hope the reality reflects it.

Hockey

This Damn Compass Is Broken And We Don’t Know Where We’re Going

By Adam Hess 2812 0

Recently I have been reading The MVP Machine, a pretty interesting book about player development in baseball. The opening chapter delves into how the famous Moneyball story led to just about every team in baseball adopting a similar strategy in an effort to build their teams more intelligently. At one point they quote baseball analyst Phil Brinbaum, who once said, “You gain more by not being stupid than you do by being smart.” This quote stuck out to me as one that could apply far more to hockey than baseball, as there are far more GMs in hockey that work themselves into bad situations simply by being stupid rather than helping themselves out by being smart.

And lately Stan Bowman has been pretty fucking stupid.

Heading into this offseason, you would’ve been forgiven if you thought that Bowman’s shopping list was simultanesouly small and difficult to fulfill. Primarily, the Blackhawks were (read: still are) in need of at least two defensemen who could handle at least a top-4 assignment, or at least one or two who could play a much more competent third pair game than Slater Koekkoek and Gustav Forsling. They also could’ve used a more reliable backup/1A goalie, and maybe some forward depth or a top-six guy if they were lucky and the cost was right, but given that they were 8th in the NHL in goals scored but 30th in goals allowed last year, the defense clearly needed far more attention. So let’s call this shopping list: two defensemen, a goalie, and one or two versatile forwards.

On paper, you could easily say they’ve checked off this list. They traded for Calvin DeHann, Olli Maatta, and Andrew Shaw, and signed Robin Lehner and Ryan Carpenter in free agency. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that even though this group consists of two defensemen, a goalie, and two versatile (used loosely) forwards, the Hawks have done very little to actually move the needle. Maatta stinks, DeHaan could be fine but might only have one shoulder, and neither of them bring anything of value in the puck-moving department which this team also desperately needed and still needs. Lehner could be a great signing, but he’s also been streaky in his career and no one will blame you if you feel icky about him given his politics. Carpenter’s contract bring almost no risk, but he’s a nothing forward and is supposed to be the PK savior apparently even though he was Vegas’ worst penalty killer. We already know Shaw sucks ass, and if you don’t think his 2018-19 production was a fluke I have a bridge to sell you.

A lot of the justification for moves like the above were that Bowman and Coach Cool Youth Pastor apparently thought this team lacked #grit and #toughness. We had “anonymous scouts” telling us that Shaw’s brand of bullshit was fine because of his contract, which it isn’t, and his contract is too much for his role. Maybe it’s the same anonymous scout that thought Top Cat was a 20-goal-max player.

But among all of this, the Hawks passed on a widely-consiered sure thing future 1D in Bowen Byram in favor of skilled but flawed center Kirby Dach at #3 overall. And then there was Tuesday when they went and traded Henri Jokiharju for Alex Nylander. The justification for these moves, both from the Hawks and from some analysts evaluating the trade, was that the Hawks are a team that likes to bet on skill even when there are question marks. And look, in some ways that is true – they did it with guys like Saad, Top Cat, and Strome, and those have all worked out well enough. There are other examples that didn’t work, too, but overall betting on skill is the correct approach, especially in the modern age of hockey.

The problem is that passing on Byram for Dach and trading Jokiharju for Nylander both represent the same mistake – passing on/getting rid of promising defensemen in order to bet on those skilled but flawed forwards. And when you have a giant pile of the Mind Flayer’s melted flesh legions on your blue line, you’re hardly in a position to do that, regardless of how you feel about Boqvist, Mitchell, Beaudin, etc.

But the real issue is that the moves in the Maatta/DeHann/Shaw vein and the moves in the Dach/Nylander vein are contradictory. It makes very little sense to simultaneously load your team up with grinders while also betting on skilled young players, because the best way to help those young players is to surround them with other skilled players. Only a maximum of four players at a time can play with Kane and Toews, and other than those two there are very few skilled veterans on this roster that can truly elevate the talent around them. Dach might not be in the NHL this year, but the Hawks should at least plan for scenarios where he is. If Nylander isn’t, the trade looks even worse. And if both of those guys end up on the roster, you can’t really construct a lineup that maximizes their help without ending up with someone on a third line who should be much higher.

All of this is indicative of a very real and very large problem on Madison St. The Blackhawks have no clue what they are doing. They admitted it earlier this year and then again after they signed Lehner – they don’t have a plan, they’re just flying by the seat of their pants and hoping it works out. They can tell us until they’re blue in the face that they’ve like Maatta and Nylander for years. They can tell us they wanted De Haan last year (if that was the case why did you not sign him instead of Brandon Fucking Manning?). There is zero reason to believe any of it is true, or that it is anything more than lip service. They are a team without a direction, and they keep making it harder on themselves to find one.

Hockey

A Tale of Two Sh*tties – An All-Too-Early Offseason Assessment

By John Pullega 2697 0

Day 1 of UFA season is in the books. Stan Bowman has made some moves. The moves ranged from “shoring up the blue line” and “adding a top-six forward” to “depth signings” and “signing Robin Lehner.” The general attitude is that the Hawks are now better than they were last year. That’s probably true, but that’s a bar that’s so low you’d likely throw your back out stepping into the divot it makes. The ambitious attitude, such as the one taken by good writer Mark Lazerus, is that “Bowman quietly has retooled the Blackhawks into a playoff-caliber team since the Quenneville firing with his most impressive run as a GM.”

I would like to whole-heartedly disagree with the latter attitude.

Here’s what the Hawks lineup looks like currently, taking some guesses as to where guys will slot.

Saad–Toews–Shaw

DeBrincat–Strome–Kane

Kubalik–Carpenter–Sikura

Caggiula–Kampf–Wedin/Perlini

 

Keith–Gus

de Haan–Seabrook

Maatta–Murphy

 

Crow

Lehner

This is not a playoff team, finishing last season on a 100-point pace be damned.

Shitty Thing 1: The Blue Line Is Still Horrible

Credit StanBo for doing something to address the blue line if you must. But if you’re sitting around thinking that the Hawks’s blue line is even remotely close to acceptable, you might be Peter Chiarelli.

This defensive corps is simply terrible, and it’s going to prevent the Hawks from making the playoffs once again. There isn’t a single first pairing defenseman among them, let alone a #1 guy. And before you try to tell me that Duncan Keith can still be that guy, let me disabuse you of that notion. Let’s start with the nerd stats.

According to Manny Perry’s WAR model on Corsica, Duncan Keith has the absolute worst WAR (wins above replacement) among all qualified D-men over the past three years. He’s been worse than guys like Rasmus Ristolainen, Kevin Bieksa, Brooks Orpik, and Cody Ceci. Now, this does come with a caveat, as a huge chunk of that number comes from the utterly abysmal 2017–18 year, in which Keith had the 10,000-day goal-scoring drought and finished -29. But over each of the past three years, Keith has performed worse than a replacement-level player. Even looking at just Blackhawks from last year, only Gustav Forsling had a worse WAR rating, and he categorically sucks.

When you look at Micah Blake McCurdy’s models, we can see some pretty bad shit when Keith is stuck in his own end, which was par for the course for all Hawks last year.

That graph on the left shows shots-against distributions when Keith is on the ice. The one on the right shows without Keith on the ice. Both have huge red blobs right in the high-danger area regardless. One positive to take from this is that when Keith is on the ice, opponents tend to attack his partner (i.e., Seabrook and Gustafsson), as Keith typically lines up on the left, but not so much as to justify Keith’s performance.

The bigger issue is what it looks like with Keith on the PK.

The one on the left is with Keith; on the right, without. You can see what an unmitigated disaster it was with Keith–Seabrook out there.

And even if nerd stats aren’t your thing, when you watch Keith, the twitch speed just isn’t there anymore, and that’s when Keith can be bothered to give a shit out there. You may remember this turnover, and though one turnover does not a year make, this is the kind of shit we’re talking about when we wonder whether Keith is fully engaged.

Keith will get his statue, his number retired, and all the accolades he deserves. But he is simply not that guy anymore. The sooner everyone admits that, the better.

If Keith isn’t even a top-pairing guy, who is? Gus scored 60 points, but he’s a complete train wreck in his own zone. Murphy isn’t that guy despite being the steadiest of all Hawks D-men, especially as a 6’5” centerfielder with a back surgery under his belt. I’m done talking about Seabrook.

Maatta and de Haan are not top guys, either. Maatta is slow and consistently hurt, having only finished an entire 82-game season once. If you want to buy into the idea that he’s a shot blocker, he’s really not. He blocked 116 shots last year, which would have had him tied at 67th overall with Zach Bogosian, Adam Pelech, and Nick Seeler.

If you’re looking at de Haan as an answer, you better hope his shoulder holds up, because he might not even be available for the first month. Plus, de Haan likely tops out as a second-pairing guy. The de Haan move isn’t bad at all, but if de Haan is your best D-man (and he might be), your blue line fucking sucks.

And this doesn’t even touch the Harju fiasco, which is its own problem altogether.

Shitty Thing 2: The Forwards Aren’t Much Better Than Last Year

I get wanting to keep the powder dry for DeBrincat. You can’t let him get away. But after hardly doing the bare minimum on the blue line, what the Hawks did with their forward corps looks like a lot of standing still. You can live with that if you’re adding a Bowen Byram or Jacob Trouba or P.K. Subban on the blue line. But when the answer to a historically bad blue line is Maatta and an injured de Haan, you’ll pardon me for not being over the moon about Andrew Shaw.

Shaw might be fine, but he’s a glorified third liner. And that’s if he can stay on the ice. Both his health and discipline have been problems since he first left Chicago. If he’s taking the kinds of dumb penalties we’re accustomed to, then you better hope de Haan and Maatta are up to the PK task, and that’s not a bet I’m willing to make. I also don’t buy that Shaw’s 47 points in 63 games is the new norm for him. And it’s going to be a real gut punch if Kahun builds on last year even a little bit, because it’ll likely make the Shaw acquisition an unnecessarily expensive lateral move.

If the idea is to outscore defensive problems, what’s new on this team that makes anyone think they can do it? You’re going to need three 100+-point scorers to outscore the defensive woes, and the Hawks have maybe two in Kane and DeBrincat in their best years. Nothing’s indicated that Dach is going to be ready, and even if he is, it’s farcical to think he can contribute at an outscore-the-defensive-woes level this year. Although we liked what we saw, we aren’t sure what we have in Strome. Toews tops out at 80 points, and that’s if he neglects the defensive side. Brandon Saad will put up a respectable 50 points and good possession numbers, but he won’t ever be the game breaker the Hawks need.

Are you relying on Kubalik to make that scoring up? Or Sikura to find it? Or are you hoping that Carpenter and Kampf churn out Selke-contending seasons? The forwards are mostly fine, but I don’t see much of anything that makes me think it’ll be better (or even as good) as last year. And though the free agent pool wasn’t deep, you wonder what someone like Joonas Donskoi might have done here.

If the Hawks came out and said, “This is a transition year, be patient,” this offseason thus far would make sense. They’ve made a bunch of fringe moves to make the team a bit more watchable. But unless Stan’s got a monumental trade up his sleeve—one that doesn’t involve GRIND and DA FIRE AND DA PASHUN as Jeremy Colliton has reportedly said he wants more of (extreme jerking off motion)—it’s hard to determine what they’re doing here.

But that would imply a plan, dear reader. And we know StanBo has absolutely no fucking plan whatsoever.