The acquisition of Arty The One Man Party has provided the Hawks more depth down the middle to start a season than they’ve had since they went Toews-Sharp-Bolland-Madden at the beginning of 2010 (I actually had to remind myself that Bolland was a Hawk, which is weird. And remember Sharp as a center? We never, ever talked about that!) And he wasn’t just some name the Hawks came up with in desperation when they realized they couldn’t sign Brandon Saad. They had been after him before he was traded from New York to Columbus. This is a player the Hawks have eyed for a while. Hopefully, he’ll show us all why this season.
I think we’ll keep circling through the new forwards as Matt started that trend yesterday. It’s more interesting that way, as basically you know what you’re getting from the holdovers. So now we’ll get to the main prize in the Brandon Saad deal, or what the Hawks will hope becomes the main prize, Marko Dano.
Last Season: 35 games, 8 goals, 13 points, 21 points, +12, 14 PIM, 54.0% Corsi Percentage (+7.4% Relative), 48.9% Corsi Competition
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.
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.
Oh you’ve probably been waiting for this one.
If earlier today we previewed the Hawks player with the least amount of questions about his upcoming season, this would be the one that quite possibly would have the most. The d-man taking Johnny Oduya’s place, without having really any of Oduya’s game (though some people still seem to think he does, which I can only assume is because they’re both black). The biggest piece gotten in return for Patrick Sharp (unless you think CatButt can do a whole lot from the 4th line). But if the defense allergic Stars were so happy to include Daley in this deal, doesn’t that give one pause?
If the Norris Trophy were simply about defense and only defense, Niklas Hjalmarsson would have to be a contender every season. Hammer is in the bottom 20 of all NHL d-men in the amount of shifts he doesn’t get that start in the offensive zone. He takes on the toughest competition every night, and has done so for the past three years at least (allowing Duncan Keith to become Fireball Mario). Last year, he was on the ice for the third least amount of goals against per 60 minutes despite those obstacles. And having just turned 28, he should be right in the heart of his prime as a d-man (we can only hope). Hammer might enter the season as the player with the least amount of questions about him. He’d be manning 75% of the other teams’ top pairing.
But we still need to find a way to have a stick laying on the ice that he can swat away dismissively on the few occasions he scores.
Q’s projected lineup:ESPN
Which hangs on 88:Buffalo News
Seems like a Q guy:Blackhawk Up
I like this idea more and more:PD
This will be as awesome as watching a game ILWT
It’s funny on this blog, because there are certain players who we have spent as much time defending as we have criticizing. Brent Seabrook may top the list. After he signed his extension, it felt like once a week we had to explain to people why having two Canadian Olympic defensemen on the team for the long haul was a good idea. Then, when Seabrook was carrying around three pounds of nachos in his upper intestine, or at least sure skated like it, we kept having to point out just how sluggish he looked and how much Keith was bailing his overstuffed ass out (in particular to one certain Hawks blogger).
And then Seabrook had last season, where he looked better, skated better, played better, cemented himself as something of the heartbeat of the whole dressing room, and no one said anything. Which is preferable. Of course, with Biscuit heading into a free agent season and every Hawks fan having Cap Paranoia (Self-Destroyah’!…AND IT GOES LIKE THIS!), he’s probably headed in for a season of everyone looking at him quite intensely, trying to figure out if he’s worth paying what he very well might ask (which could be somewhere between $7-8 million per).
We did Corey Crawford last week, and then I opined that either he or Keith will be the most important Hawk this season. But Keith is pretty much the most important Hawk every season. When he’s good, the Hawks are one of the best teams in the league. When he’s bad, the Hawks suffer. When he’s other worldly, the Hawks can do things like win a Stanley Cup playing with four d-men, taking out offensively gifted teams like Anaheim and Tampa in a row.
Two Norrises, two gold medals, three Cups, and now a Conn Smythe, and yet it feels like when discussions in the national press come up of the best d-men in the league, I still see names like Weber, Suter, Subban, Karlsson more often than I see Keith’s. That’s ok, we know the truth here. And last spring’s utter dominance probably shifts that discussion. No one would argue that Keith is a surefire Hall of Famer now, and he might even be first ballot.
What does that leave in store for Keith this year? Let’s dig in…
