Everything Else

Love Is A Long Road: Hawks Win Stanley Cup

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I’m going to eschew the normal wrap here. Because who the fuck would want to read it anyway? If you’re lucky, you get one game per season where the minutiae doesn’t matter at all, only the ending. Around these parts, we’ve gotten three of them. It’s still hard to get my arms around typing that.

In fact, all of last night is hard to get your arms around. Just a surreal day, with the weather playing a huge part in it. I’ve been doing this seven full seasons now, and never in all the games I’ve sold programs before had it rained like that. Sure, it rained hard for 20 minutes at times, or a steady drizzle for an hour. But this was relentless. I was trapped in my car for 15-20 minutes, and when I could finally get out the water in the street was over my ankles. I think my socks still weigh four to five pounds.

Everything Else

You’re Jammin’ Me: Lightning 1 – Hawks 2 (Series Tied 2-2)

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Box Score

Event Summary

War On Ice

Natural Stat Trick

That was something of a departure.

We saw last year against the Wild that the Hawks can struggle against a team that changes its style from a previous game (or in Minny’s case, the previous period). The Hawks probably expected the Lightning to once again come out flying as they had basically done in the first three opening frames of this series. Instead, the Bolts in trying to protect their rookie goalie being dropped into a near impossible situation tweaked their system a bit. Instead of those pinches along the wall being meant to keep offensive zone time going and force openings, the Lightning basically used them as time to get their forwards back to clog the neutral zone. If chances came they took them, but they certainly weren’t going to force anything that might leave them exposed at the back. Constantly, whenever the Hawks did actually manage to break cleanly out of their zone ( I think it was twice), they saw three or four Bolts simply lined across the red line.

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Angry At Numbers 6/5

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Time to just go through some numbers popping out from Game 1 and beyond. You love it when we get nerdy. Nerds are in, you know it, I know it. If only I paid this much attention to math in high school (I think I got a 590 on the Math section on the SAT while rocking the verbal, and my Rain Main-like father never forgave me for it, despite the fact that he was a writer. It was a strange family).

38.2%

That was Jonathan Toews’s Corsi number for Game 1, and that’s with the score adjusted. It’s the third lowest number he has produced in the past two playoffs, as Kopitar kicked him down to a 37% in Game 6 last year in L.A. (while Kane dragged them out of the pits like little Miho got Clive Owen), and earlier last spring Mikko Koivu held him to a 25% in Game 4 against Minnesota. But that’s it, and I guess it says a lot that the Hawks went 2-1 in those games. It’s not a formula the Hawks would have any intention on repeating, though. And just how likely is it the Lightning can keep Toews down… down on the ground…

Everything Else

Stanley Cup Finals Morning Links 6.5.2015

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All quiet on the chomping front:ESPN CHICAGO

TVR? Let’s Go Hawks

Yes but only for Vermette:BU

**Listen to Spiegs & Goff, for Sam’s spots & Jason Goff has the best nickname for #80**

Literally…Sweet Jesus! PD

Probably not:NBC

Well its hard to get warm in a skybox:TS

Yes if he isn’t cute:SCH

Sour Grapes…Draft Better:NJ.com

I figured this was fitting:Chicago Tribune

Dolla Dolla Bills Y’all:USA TODAY

For the foodies:NY Times

This is going to keep happening:Montreal Gazette

I heard a lot about most of it, but what I did hear, I did not hear any of that:TSN

Non-Hockey but Wow:Globe and Mail