Game #70 Preview Suite
Notes: Perlini’s insertion onto Strome’s and Cat’s line has really lifted their metrics. And they’re also smart enough sometimes to just throw a fly pattern with his speed. D-men get awfully puckered with a bouncing puck at their feet and him streaking at or outside them. He almost had four goals that way on Monday…Likewise Sikura with Toews and Saad, though Toews and Saad just kind of do that. They’ll have their hands full tonight though…If Forsling and Seabrook start one shift in their own zone, Colliton should have his glasses broken in front of him…The fourth line has been really good since Kampf’s return. It’s almost as if he’s good?
Notes: Muzzin’s use as a strictly dungeon-master doesn’t really jibe with what he did in LA with Doughty, but then again they don’t have anyone else. It hasn’t been smooth, and they need Gardiner back…Marleau has one goal in his last 12, and playing on a checking line wouldn’t seem to suit him at this stage of his career…Nylander’s SH% has dropped to 6% even though everything else is in line. We’re sure the ever patient Toronto fans and media are giving him every break though after signing that huge deal after a holdout…You can get at this defense. The Leafs have had a sub-45% share in five of their last six games…If you’re looking for Kasperi Kapanen, you won’t find him as he’s out with a concussion.
Game #70 Preview Suite
I wouldn’t tell you I know what the rest of this season is worth or going to be. The one thing I can say for sure is that it’s a study, not a referendum, of Jeremy Colliton. Unless the Hawks go 0-12-1 and Duncan Keith and Jonathan Toews attempt to give him a Shatter Machine in his office, he’s going to be the coach going forward. So what we want to see is that his methods and tactics are having an effect, and the team and players are getting better. There needs to be a base camp for next year, let’s say.
So let’s revisit where the Hawks are under Colliton from various points. We did this just about a month ago, and what we found was that though the Hawks record was much improved, the process was still rotten. Is the process getting any better? Um…maybe?
Ok, so we’ll try and do this from three points on the calendar. The first is since Colliton took over on November 8th:
Corsi-percentage: 48.3 (23rd)
Scoring Chance Percentage: 46.0 (30th)
High Danger Chance Percentage: 42.8 (Dead Ass Last)
The last time we tried this, we looked from December 17th, which is when the Hawks started their first run of 12-6-4 to get back into it all. So from December 17th, after Colliton had been on the job for a month, until now:
Corsi Percentage: 47.6 (26th)
Scoring Chance Percentage: 45.0 (30th)
High Danger Chance Percentage: 41.6 (Dead Ass Last)
Not great, Bob! Ok, so today, let’s also add just the last month:
Corsi Percentage: 50.9 (13th)
Scoring Chance Percentage: 46.5 (30th)
High Danger Chance Percentage: 45.0 (27th)
We’re not last! We’re not last!
If you want to believe, and you shouldn’t be blamed if you do because it’s better, healthier, and happier to think your coach knows what he’s doing, then the last month has seen an uptick in the Hawks percentages, even if they’re not on the positive side of the ledger in the types of chances they get. They are in overall attempts, which is at least something of a foothold.
Now clearly, this isn’t very scientific, and when you’re looking at a snippet of the schedule, the quality of that snippet plays a major role. In that span of the last month, the only “real” teams the Hawks have played are the Bruins, Sharks, the Jackets debatably, maybe the Avs, maybe the Stars. They were clocked by the Bruins and Sharks, while played the Avs and Stars basically even. And really, even with the Stars and Avs is probably where they “should” be, and may yet end up. Still, at this point we’ll take any uptick we can find, and hope that it continues through the last three weeks of the season here.
That said, after the Leafs tomorrow night, the rest of the Hawks schedule is filled with teams on the fringes of the playoff race, where they probably “should” be, aside from one date with the Sharks again. That is until the season closes with three games against actually good teams, and you can easily see a scenario where they spend the next two weeks playing themselves right onto the cusp of the last spot, and then get flambeed by the Jets, Blues, and Preds.
But that’s neither here nor there. Another factor we can look at with Colliton, seeing as how he’ll be given more and more young players as we go forward, is to see improvement from anyone. The obvious candidate is Erik Gustafsson, who is 9th in scoring among d-men which is something we’re just never going to get used to. Unlike Q, you could argue that Colliton has simply forgiven Gus for his various and numerous defensive drownings, and taken the points and fireworks. I’ll let you have it if you want.
Brendan Perlini is going to have to have more than a good week before we chalk that up as a success story. Dylan Strome is a name some would bring up, but that could be a result of just getting to play with better talent than he ever did in Arizona (there is no Alex DeBrincat in Glendale). Henri Jokiharju is in Rockford. Slater Koekkoek and Gustav Forsling have proven to be very much Slater Koekkoek and Gustav Forsling, and will go down as a “miss.” Dominik Kahun and Drake Caggiula haven’t proven to be much more than “guys.” They get an incomplete at best.
So the jury is anything but in no matter the category. This is a big three weeks for the Hawks, and it’s a bigger three weeks for their coach. He’s clearly still got some veterans to convince, and he can do that by watching the Hawks improve through this last stretch when the games are most tense. To be fair to him, the Hawks had two big games at the end of last month, and they weren’t….horrible. But they lost. If they streak their way into another chance at games like that somewhere along here, they’re going to have to be better.
Otherwise, he and the Hawks will basically be starting all back over in September.
Still doing it. Let’s get through it.
The Dizzying Highs
Brendan Perlini – Four goals in three games will get you here. Sure, his charge and stretch for a hat trick last night with three seconds left was downright comedic, but hat tricks are special and he’s hardly the first or last (and how many tantrums have we seen Christiano Ronaldo throw when a player doesn’t serve him up his hat trick? It’ll look the same when he goes to prison). Bring Perlini up to 11 for the year, which seems a decent total for what should be a third-liner. Which is what he almost certainly is going forward on a team that’s intent on doing something that matters. The one game he didn’t score his coach called his best, and a 62% share backs that up.
Is he more? These last 13 games might say more than you’d think. Of course we’ve seen plenty of players pile the goals in when the games stopped mattering, and then the next season they returned to a faceless part of the rabble. We’ve also seen players like Patrick Sharp drive hard in the season’s last throes to achieve some benchmark–with Sharp it was 20 goals in 2007–and then use that as a platform to become A THING. Perlini is only 22, which is easy to forget. He’s getting a chance to play with real talent in Top Cat and Strome, and in their few games together he’s lifted their peripherals to heights they weren’t getting to with Dominik Kahun.
I don’t know if Perlini will ever be a real piece. He might be Jack Skille with assignments (Skille never really got a look on a top six, nor did he deserve to) What I do know is he has the type of speed that the Hawks need more of, and put him in position he does seem to have a sense on how to get the puck in the net. There are worse uses for these last stretch of games than to audition Perlini.
The Terrifying Lows
Draft Position – There’s not really much else to put here when you’ve won all three games this week, and this matters to a lot of people. The way things are going, the Hawks could draft anywhere from 7th-12th, and maybe even lower. The schedule remains pretty damn soft until the last week, so who knows how silly this will get? Are you likely to get an immediate difference-maker drafting 9th? You are not. Can you package the 9th pick with say, Jokiharju or Beaudin or Boqvist to get you one? Yes, yes you can. Which is what the Hawks should be thinking about. But in reality, losing every game from here on out and drafting 4th would be better. long-term. But they’re not going to do that, so we need to deal with what is.
The Creamy Middles
Jonathan Toews – It’s hard to believe that Captain Marvel could easily reach career-highs in goals and points this year (though it’s important to note that in the season-in-a-can of 2013 Toews played at a 40-43-83 pace). Don’t fool yourself, it’s come at a sacrifice of some of his all-around game. But the game now is about offense, and if he had a better blue line behind him you wouldn’t mind as much. Another four points this week, and though things are reversed now where teams are throwing their best at Kane and Toews can clean up against lesser now, you still have to do that. The way we talk about him makes him out to be 35 or 42 years old. He’s only 30. There’s still some planning to be done around him.
The 69th game, a DLR, a hat trick by Brendan Perlini…are you not entertained?! Nothing makes any sense but it certainly was fun. Hell, the Hawks are at .500, if you can believe that. And this weird on-again-off-again playoff race is, well, on again. To the bullets!
– The Coyotes are ostensibly the better team out of these two. Not by a huge margin, if you go by their records, but nonetheless that’s what the numbers say. But that didn’t happen tonight. Even after they went down a goal early, the Hawks were the better team. Brendan Perlini tied it shortly after old fan favorite Weiner Anxiety scored, and they never looked back after that. Brandon Saad had an effortless-looking tap in from a beautiful backhand pass from Toews (which is not actually anything close to effortless but he made it look that easy). The give-and-go passing that resulted in Kane’s goal in the second was textbook, and from the third line no less. Perlini nearly had a hat trick about 15 times, an then with literally three seconds left he finally made it happen. Chris fucking Kunitz scored, I mean really, what the fuck was going on with the Coyotes?
– Part of that answer is that Darcy Kuemper sucked out loud. It was probably just an off night, maybe the Hawks got lucky, I don’t know. I should credit their skill, I know, but I’m jaded and just think they rattled him early and it allowed the Hawks to jump out to the lead, which they amazingly didn’t surrender.
– And that really is the story here. This makes two games in a row with a downright solid defensive effort by one of the the worst blue lines in the league (will I have to stop calling them that?). The Hawks only gave up 25 shots, and that follows Saturday’s 27 shots given up…it’s nearly competent. In the third the Coyotes dominated possession but otherwise it was the Hawks (63 CF% in the first, 70 CF% in the second), and only two defensemen—Gustav Forsling and Nachos, no surprise—were underwater in possession all night. For the record Foreskin had a 46 CF% and Seabrook a 48; the rest were over 60.
— The corollary to that is how bad the Coyotes defense was…and they were bad. Even Hjalmarsson and OEL had a 38 and 31 CF%, respectively. I don’t have a real explanation for it, just like I can’t explain why Kuemper shat the bed. This sounds like a perfect time for them to bounce back strong tomorrow and kick the shit out of the Blues because why not.
— Patrick Kane isn’t a third liner, this goes without saying. But at this point who gives a shit? If CCYP needs to spread out the scoring and it results in six goals, so be it. I think it was actually a nice gesture to put Dylan Sikura on the top line with Toews and Saad because jesus that guy just needs to score already (who hasn’t heard that before amirite?), and Kane can produce anywhere and with any jamokes. Again, it makes no sense to screw with the lineup this way but I can’t argue with the results.
— Good for Brendan Perlini! Fuck the Coyotes and this guy’s been on a hot streak so if anyone deserved a hat trick, it’s him.
— Also good to note is that Crawford had another solid game. Yes the defense in front of him was on tonight, which of course shouldn’t be such a notable thing, but either way he was well positioned most of the night and looked solid. He ended with a .960 SV%, which they’ll certainly need if they’re going to do anything with this supposed playoff push.
And now, without further ado, your DLR…
vs. 
RECORDS: Coyotes 34-29-5 Hawks 29-30-9
PUCK DROP: 7:30
TV: NBCSN Chicago
THEY CALL THEM THE DESERT DOGS: Five For Howling
The Hawks are going to tell you they’re not done yet. They are, but we’ll excuse them if it makes doing their jobs easier if they believe it’s for something. So with the Yotes on the schedule twice, the Avs on the schedule twice, and the Canucks on their once in the next two weeks, the Hawks can at least make things passably interesting by winning all of those games, as well as finding a way to steal two points out of either Montreal or Toronto. Then we’ll just where they are, but that’s that kind of run it’s going to take. And no overtime bullshit, in the words of Cuervo Jones.
It starts tonight with the second visit of the Arizona Coyotes, who are sitting right on the shoulder of the Minnesota Wild in the last playoff spot, one point with one game in hand. If results go their way tonight they will wake up in the morning in the playoffs. It’s certainly not what you were expecting.
So how did they get here, with this beautiful house and beautiful wife? The headline is Darcy Kuemper, who is the latest goalie to find himself in the desert. Since the turn of the calendar he’s been unconscious, with a .925 SV% and having won nine of his last 10 starts. When you’re getting that goaltending, you don’t have to do too much else. Which is good, because the Coyotes don’t really.
They’re a middling possession team, and still have been since Kuemper went supernova. Even in the last month their in the bottom half of the league in Corsi and scoring chances and shooting-percentage. It’s Kuemper pulling an Atlas act for the most part. What they do have is just enough pieces to get just enough goals and just enough speed to make things uncomfortable for teams, especially ones as slow as the Hawks are. There’s Keller on the first line, Crouse and Archibald on the second, Galchenyuk on the third, and Vinnie Bag O’ Donuts on the 4th. All have 10 goals or more, along with Brad Richardson‘s 16, and though none are stars (there’s still hope for Keller) there’s competence everywhere. No black holes, as it were.
The only true star is on the back end in Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who has combined wonderfully with Niklas Hjalmarsson. They take the hardest shifts in terms of place and opponent, and they still turn the ice over. It’s infuriating. Alex Goligoski has apparently gotten over just a rotten start to his Yotes career the past two years, with the help of possible-stalwart Jakob Chychrun and his missing vowels. Having Jason Demers on your third-pairing is a real treat, and this is the understated strength of the team. They’re not the Hurricanes or anything, but they’re a hell of a way ahead of the Hawks in that category.
For the Hawks, they’ll basically aim to keep things as they’ve been. Corey Crawford will get a chance to build on what was his easiest start of the year, as will the Hawks on that defensive effort. The only other change you might see is Slater Koekkoek in for either Dahlstrom or Forsling, but even that isn’t all that likely.
As strange as it may sound, the Yotes are a tougher match up for the Hawks than the Stars. Whereas Dallas has really nothing below the top two lines, the Coyotes at least have more speed than that. Galchenyuk, Richardson, Hinostroza, Fischer are all lurking in the bottom six, and the thought of Michael Grabner bearing down on Seabrook’s side at any point is one that will start to bend the dimensions in your mind. While they’re not lethal, they have potential, and with the way Kuemper is going they don’t need a lot. Then again, the Yotes are in St. Louis tomorrow night and may save Kuemper for that, and the Hawks could benefit from getting a look at a backup (Calvin Pickard) for the second straight game. The Blues one is clearly the harder one. We’ll see later on.
If they’re going to insist on doing something silly, then it started on Thursday. It’s going to be near impossible, but why should anything else make sense this season?
Game #69 Preview Suite
Notes: Couple injuries the Yotes are dealing with. Derek Stepan is out from four-to-six weeks, which could be a real problem, and Schmaltz is done for the season after his knee exploded…Which has vaulted Christian Dvorak up from the minors and into the #1 center role. He’s also a LOCAL GUY, so he’s going to score tonight…Alex Galchenyuk, the American with the Russian name who used to be a Canadien, was on a real heater but only has two points in his last six…Kuemper has a .925 in the calendar year of 2019 and won nine of his last 10 starts…oh Vinnie Bag O’ Donuts, how we miss you…Nick Cousins is a rapist…
Notes: After two wins in a row wouldn’t expect too many changes. Sikura had a turnover that led to a goal against in Dallas but looked more in place with 19 and 20 than Hayden did…Forsling returned with Seabrook and nothing turned into a gas leak so expect that to remain, though Koekkoek could slot in for Dahlstrom for no reason…Perlini had six shots against the Sabres but one against the Stars. Yes, Dallas is a far better defensive team but it’s that kind of inconsistency that drives his teams nuts…YARRRRR
Game #69 Preview Suite
De-Fense! De-Fense!
Anything that happens with this Hawks team has to be qualified in some way. The Stars are a relatively easy to team to smother if you’re locked in. They have one line, and then one guy in Jamie Benn who’s wasting his time with Jason Dickinson and Blake Comeau. So if you can keep Seguin and Radulov from producing more than one goal, you have a good chance to look as the Hawks did tonight. They didn’t do that a couple Sundays ago, and there’s your difference. The Stars just don’t have a lot of inspiration through the lineup.
Still, that’s as good a road game as the Hawks have played in…all season? Maybe the game in Pittsburgh, which was the first week of January? Either way, it’s been an awful long time since the Hawks were able to hold a team at arm’s length for 60 minutes. And they did that tonight.
I don’t know if the Hawks can ever do it again. I don’t know that it would even benefit them, given the way they’re built sets up better for 5-4 games than 2-1. Still, if they can carry out this kind of defensive effort through the last portion of the season here, no matter where it lands them in the standings, we’ll have tangible proof that Jeremy Colliton is establishing something and just maybe there’s something to build off. But long way to go until that.
To the bluffs!
The Two Obs
-The Hawks put forth that defensive effort with Gustav Forsling in the lineup. Let’s all think about that for a second.
-I still don’t know how I feel about Patrick Kane leading the Hawks in total ice-time again. On the one hand he’s the main weapon and you might as well use it as much as you can. Still, you wonder if some of his shifts wouldn’t pack a little more punch if he was getting a few more off. It also keeps Sikura under 10 minutes, and as this season is actually about development, that seems a problem. Yes, his turnover led to Dallas’s only goal, but he looked spritely otherwise. Would like to see more of him with Toews and Saad.
-Dylan Strome with a 71% share tonight. Again, it helps when he gets to face whatever Jason Dickinson is all night, but seeing as how he’s spent most of the season getting brained possession-wise, let’s start here.
-It’s amazing how much better Corey Crawford looks when you’re only asking him to make 5-6 big saves per game instead of 96.
-If you’re allowing Chris Kunitz to get five shots off in a game, that’s probably cause for relegation.
-Connor Murphy and Carl Dahlstrom were the only pairing that wasn’t in the black, but then they were the only ones starting a majority of time in their own zone. I still don’t know quite what to make of Murphy, who was excellent in his own zone most of the game, set up the second goal with a good defensive play, and yet you can’t keep playing on the back foot. I guess we won’t know until he has a partner who can do that more effectively than anyone here right now.
-The Hawks seemed to figure out that teams are stopping their drop pass on entries on the power play, and tonight started to fake it and then just get in the zone off the initial rush. The Stars were springing their two forwards out at Kane and DeBrincat when the Hawks first made that drop pass. Faking or ignoring it got them up against two defenders with odd-mans. They’ll have to keep doing this. They’ll get more chances than they did tonight.
Wraps up a pretty tidy effort. Let’s hope for more, prepare for not. Onwards…
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 28-30-9 Stars 35-27-5
PUCK DROP: 7pm
TV: NBCSN Chicago
WE ARE STARDUST: Defending Big D
I used to think that the elimination of the Circus Trip and Ice Show, and not having a road trip longer than three or four games, would be a boon to the Hawks. But looking over the recent schedule, you can see why the players are not exactly pleased with how things shake out. They just came back from a West swing, one they’ll have to do again in another week or two, were home for one game before bouncing down to Texas, then back home for just one before a Canadian swing, and then back home for just two before bouncing out again. Of course, this would matter more if the games did…which they don’t.
Anyway, the schedule says the Hawks have to provide the opposition for the Stars tonight. There they’ll find a Stars team that is starting to bunker into the playoff spots. They’re four up on the Coyotes and are only three points behind the Blues for the last automatic spot in the Central. They’ve done that by winning six of their last eight, five of them in regulation, including being the only ones to remember it’s still the St. Louis Blues after all and beating them twice in that stretch. They’ve shut out the Rangers and Avalanche back-to-back at home, so this isn’t exactly the time to catch them.
It’s not like the Stars have cracked some code or radically changed how they play. They’ve just benefitted from Ben Bishop (THE BISHOP!) shooting lightning bolts out of his arse. THE BISHOP! threw a .936 at the world in February, and is at .989 in March so far, having conceded one goal in three games. The injury layoff has done him some good, obviously.
The Stars have mimicked what the Wild have done the past couple seasons. They’re not a good possession team when it comes to attempts, but as you move up the charts in terms of quality of attempts the Stars get better and better. They’re just about even in scoring-chance share, and then just a tick under 52% in high danger chance share. They’ll let you have it to the outside, but you can’t quite get to the middle on them.
The Stars have moved wunderkind Miro Heiskanen with John Klingberg and they take all the offensive responsibility while the bottom two pairings take turns manning the bunker. While they tried to use the acquisition of Mats Zuccarello to spread out some scoring, he lasted a period and a half before something went CRACK! on him. So even though Seguin and Benn are on separate lines now, they still do the heavy lifting here with assistance from Alex Radulov.
For the Hawks, the chance of a real clunker feel tangible. They weren’t very good against the Sabres but got away with it, and now you have this one game trip in a season that’s lost. You could see where weariness would combine with carelessness and against a team with it all still to play for, it’s not hard to envision where it gets ugly. Corey Crawford will do his best to keep it from doing so. Would guess the lines look pretty much the same as Thursday, which means they’ll be a mishmash because John Hayden sucks and won’t skate with Toews and Saad for more than five minutes. Maybe Sikura slots back in for Kunitz or Hayden, but…whatever.
Keep on keepin’ on…
Game #68 Preview Suite
