Game #21 Preview Suite
It took a really long time, but after about 46 minutes the Hawks and Kings realized they were playing a game in front of spectators and cameras, and they stopped skating around with their dicks in their hands and attempted to play something resembling hockey. Unfortunately for the Hawks it was a lot of the type of hockey they’ve been playing lately, and they could barely squeeze out a point against some bottom-feeders and their fourth-string goalie. Are you sure you want to know more? OK then, we’ll get to the bullets, but don’t say I didn’t warn you…
– It’s almost hard to express how painfully dull and stupid the first two periods were. The Kings are not a good team, and we know this to be true, and yet they outplayed the Hawks and just looked, and WERE, better. Notice I didn’t say they were good, they were just better (all the more frustrating). They beat the Hawks in shots and possession (ended the first with a 60.6 CF% and the second with a 58%), and thanks to a fortunate bounce, they also had the lead after two. Tyler Toffoli banked it off Keith’s skate and it ricocheted in, more luck than anything, but in terms of how it happened that’s irrelevant. The Hawks made their typical fuck-ups on defense, such as having three guys behind the goal line chasing the puck, which left Kempe wide open in front of Crawford (who stopped the shot because of course he did). Dumb turnovers, useless power plays, these two periods had everything you’ve come to expect.
–More on those power plays, for a minute: the Hawks had three in quick succession in the second and of course converted on none. Patrick Kane was out there for the entirety of at least two of them (maybe all three, admittedly it’s a blur). And by the third try they were at least getting shots on net, but in the first two it was still a lot of passing around the perimeter—more puck movement? That’s the best we got?—but nothing of substance. They kinda sorta got better by the third one, but nonetheless the clown shoes remain firmly ensconced.
– And they got goalie’d again by a fucking nobody. The amount of times this happens has reached downright farcical levels. Calvin Petersen (huh?), who apparently the Hawks tried to draft, made 34 saves on 35 shots for a save percentage of .971. I want to be angry about it, but I’m just worn down by this situation. And for the record, Crawford was nearly as damn good. He ended with a .969 SV% (NICE) which is funnier and cooler so Petersen can go fuck off. And both Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane should be embarrassed that they couldn’t score on this jamoke in the shootout.
– Guys, Brandon Saad may be good again! There’s a silver lining for ‘ya. He got moved to the top line midway through the game and scored the Hawks’ only goal off a gorgeous feed from Toews that hit his stick just at the top of the crease. In fact, the accompanying change of Schmaltz moving to a line with Anisimov and DeBrincat also worked. At first I was a little skeptical, given how slow Anisimov is, but the three of them had a CF% over 70 together, and Nick Schmaltz even shot the puck a couple times. I know I’m grabbing at any sliver of hope or positivity here, but it was sort of working, honest.
What else can one say about a game with idiotic defending, shitty power plays, and non-existent offense? Wait, I think I actually just summed it up right there…so no, there isn’t more one can say. This was their last “easy” game for a while, if you take the Wild or Capitals seriously and I can understand why you wouldn’t. But if they can’t even get an overtime or shootout win against the fucking Kings, there is every reason to dread those teams that may just be overrated, mediocre, or still hungover from last summer. Either way, it’s a long road ahead. Onward and upward.
Beer: Drumroll by Odell Brewing
Line of the Night: “They’re a very fragile team right now.” —Eddie O, but which team was he referring to?
vs. 
RECORDS: Kings 5-11-1 Hawks 7-8-4
PUCK DROP: 7:30
TV: NBCSN Chicago
NO MORE CALIFORNIA SONGS: Jewels From The Crown
It’s ok if you mourn the end of the Hawks Era. It can be a tough watch at times, especially when the memories of what a fine, oiled machine it was still so fresh. No team ever exits the spotlight gracefully, or at least it’s pretty damn rare. The fall is always painful. Especially in the callous world of the salary capped NHL, the tumble comes quick and the tide always wins. Maybe it was an impossible task set ahead of the Hawks, even without the mistakes they’ve made.
Then again, they could be the Kings.
It’s an interesting record. Since the Hawks last Cup win, they have three playoff wins. The Kings have one in the four seasons since their last win. They’ve missed the playoffs twice. And whereas the Hawks have tried to dance around their rebuild or collapse, the Kings have fallen face-first into theirs this year. Those days of Kobe and Kershaw wearing Kings’ jerseys are over, because this is a mess only identifiable by dental records. And given that it’s a hockey team, even that’s dicey.
They may provide a lesson in what happens when you cling too tightly to things that have past. The Kings for too long still tried to be a roving horde of barbarians that they thought won them two Cups, and watched as their team got slower and dumber while the league got faster and more skilled. Seriously, this outfit traded for Milan Lucic once. Firing the GM and coach is nice and all, but not if you’re not going to try anything new.
They also bought into fortune-stained results as reality far too much. Last year’s playoff berth was simply due to a magnificent Jonathan Quick season, which is not the norm or anything you should count on, and Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown shooting the lights out. No matter how much their fans bitched and whines that Kopitar should have been the MVP simply because no one stays up late enough to watch their dog-assed team, he was never likely to replicate that. And if he didn’t, he wasn’t taking Brown with him either. That’s what’s happened.
Jeff Carter is 33 now and looking it. Ilya Kovalchuk‘s style of impersonating waiting for a bus until a pass comes was never going to improve the team much, and it hasn’t. Beyond whatever this top-six is, and that’s clearly still very much a mystery, there’s simply nothing on the bottom-six. It’s more of the Kyle Clifford–Trevor Lewis Axis Of Yuck that it’s seemingly been forever.
The real treat is at the back of course, where Drew Doughty got his money and seemingly doesn’t care anymore. He’s playing with something called Derek Forbort, not that it matters. Alec Martinez and Jake Muzzin are starting to look like the remnants of that Big Mac you left on the coffee table at 3am last night and discovered this morning while guzzling gatorade. Dion Phaneuf is even more of a monolith than he was, which shouldn’t be possible but hey, L.A. is the land of fantasy and dreams!
Quick isn’t around to bail this out, which he’s only capable of once every four or five years. He’s out for a while. So is his backup Jack Campbell, which means they’ve brought Statler and Waldorf in to play goalie.
Robb Lake the GM seemingly has recognized all he’s built here is kindling (too soon?), and the sell-off might already be under way. This week he sent Tanner Pearson to Pittsburgh for Carl Hagelin, with Hagelin a free agent after the season. Whatever isn’t battened down should probably be sold at auction, so Muzzin, Martinez, Forbort, and Toffoli could and should be on notice. They’re the only ones whose contracts aren’t an atrocity.
For the Hawks, Marcus Kruger returns to the lineup after Brandon Davidson was informed that he’s hurt, replacing Dream Warrior on IR. SuckBag Johnson will sit. Alex Fortin remains out in favor of John Hayden. Sure. Corey Crawford will attempt to ride the momentum of Wednesday’s shutout, and against this decidedly broken squirt-gun of an offense you’d think that wouldn’t be too hard.
I don’t want to put too much on the Hawks, but there’s really no excuse to not get a regulation win tonight. The Kings are already getting the white flag out of the closet if not waving it already. They’re on their third-string goalie, maybe fourth. They’re slow and dumb, and the Hawks have done all right with the rare slow and dumb opponent you see in the NHL these days. As long as you don’t do anything too stupid, the Kings can’t really find a way to score enough to beat you. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.
Game #20 Preview Suite
It’s the first win of the Jeremy Colliton era! And the end of a wretched losing streak! And why did it happen? Because Corey Crawford is god. To the bullets:
–The first period was just plain old uneventful. Crawford had a big stop on Vladimir Tarasenko (more on him later), and David Kampf and Brandon Manning fell over one another in the defensive zone in a very accurate Three Stooges impression, but it’s the Blues and they weren’t able to capitalize. Aside from that, it wasn’t a poorly played period by any means, just not a flashy one.
–The second wasn’t much better, but the Hawks got their one and only goal and on the power play no less. It was actually more luck than skill, as Jay Bouwmeester kicked it in while Jay Gallon was flopping around. But whatever, we’ll take it. And honestly Allen wasn’t that bad tonight, it’s just that Crawford was better.
–And he had to be—the Hawks gave up 28 shots on goal and only managed 19 of their own. Same old story. In fact the Hawks got domed in possession tonight and were only above water in the first period. They had a 39.4 CF% and 33.3 CF% in the second and third, respectively. Going by the eye test alone tonight, the defense actually didn’t look that bad, that’s the fucked up thing. Yes, Manning and Forsling as a pairing was rather terrifying to watch, but for the most part the defense at least attempted to get themselves in front of their net. After leaving O’Hare-runway-sized gaps in front of Crawford for most of last week’s games, this is a relief. And yet, they still gave up nearly 30 shots. Baby steps, but there is still work to do.
–I’m not entirely sold on Colliton’s lines, but I also think it’s too early to start bitching about them (yet). The top line of Schmaltz-Toews-Kane is passing the aforementioned eye test. Anisimov is still too damn slow and couldn’t keep up with the again-resurgent Brandon Saad, so that’s annoying. I’m not quite sure what the DeBrincat-Kampf-Kahun line is going to end up being. They were just north of 50% in possession, which was better than the top line, and all together had five shots on the night. So yes? This is good? I have difficulty trusting Kampf to make good decisions or execute competently, I’m worried that Top Cat is wasting his time, and I’m suspecting that Kahun was basking in reflected glory from being on a line with Jonathan Toews. All of these assumptions could turn out to be wrong, so again, no judgement…yet….
–Tarasenko had an interesting evening, sacrificing a tooth (wholesale, like a cartoon with it popping out of his mouth onto the ice), and he foiled the Hawks trying to get a damn empty net goal. Twice. This had to have been a painful game for him, in both the physical and mental sense.
If the drought was going to be broken, it makes sense that it came against the lowly Blues. The fact that we had to eke out the win with a fluky own-goal by dumbass Bouwmeester and Crawford had to stand on his head against these bottom-feeders to keep the Hawks in the game is a little worrisome. But hey, it’s a win! And if we can beat these fucksticks, then we can do the same against the equally terrible Kings on Friday. There’s nothing to worry about, right?
vs.
RECORDS: Blues 6-6-3 Hawks 6-8-4
PUCK DROP: 7pm
TV: NBCSN
EVERYTHING IS EVIL: St. Louis Gametime
No matter where you are in life, or how things are going, there is sadistic joy in looking around and seeing that someone else has it worse. Or at least it provides perspective. In sports, it’s joy. The Germans didn’t create the word, “schadenfreude” out of thin air, folks.
So while the Hawks have fired a coach, and yet still looked pretty helpless, and the season very well might get away from them before Black Friday, they could be the St. Louis Blues. And they should be intimately familiar with what the Blues are now, because we all are, because this will be the fourth fucking time these two have seen each other in a six-week-old season. Thankfully for everyone, they won’t do this again until April. We have enough trash here, thanks. Don’t constantly need to double it up. We could all use the break.
It was something of an outside shot that the Hawks fired their coach before the Blues did, because Mike Yeo showed up at training camp with a noose instead of a whistle. The players have had it out for him since just about the time he took over for Ken Hitchcock, whom they also hated, so it’s a real positive atmosphere down there. Unlike the Hawks however, the Blues went all out this summer to be something, trading for Ryan O’Reilly and signing Tyler Bozak. It has not worked, at least not yet. Maybe the next coach will be the one to unlock the mystery. Just like the last one was. Or the one before that. Or the one before that. And then there was Davis Payne.
And maybe it’s not going to. As we keep saying, and they keep ignoring, this was a castle built on sand. We’ve been over and over the Jay Gallon saga, which once again appears to be turning into him surrendering the starting role to a backup–in this case Chad Johnson. It doesn’t matter what work you do anywhere on the ice if it results in your goalie waving at pucks going by him like an acid head waving at imaginary, friendly flying rabbits toddling off into the sky. For some reason, even though Johnson has been pretty ok of late, Allen will get the start.
But it goes deeper. This defense isn’t good. It hasn’t been for a while. In a league that gets faster and faster and more aggressive, the Blues have become entrenched with a top four that can’t move and can’t think. Alex OrangeJello has limited mobility. Joel Edmundson has limited IQ. Same with Colton Burpo. Jay Bouwmeester is dead, and when it’s not him it’s Carl Gunnarsson who is essentially the same as Michael Cera’s girlfriend in “Arrested Development.” Way to plant, Carl! The Blues defense is like the worst house cat. It’s like having nothing, and they probably don’t even clean themselves.
So where are the Blues going with their improved forward group if they’re constantly pulling the defense out of the ditch they just backed into in their own zone? Into the basement, where they currently reside (though it should be mentioned they’ve played three less games than the Hawks and when that gets made up, it could see the Hawks with the wooden spoon).
The Blues aren’t going to trade for Justin Faulk or the like to try and correct this. They’re just going to fire another coach and then pray that their players finally start pushing up the mercury on the give-a-shit meter. They haven’t in three years but hope springs eternal! Anyway, that’s the mess that arrives at the United Center tonight.
As for the Hawks, the big story is that Gustav Forsling will make his season-debut tonight. And when that’s your story, you know there are issues. At least it will be in place of Jan Rutta, who is also in plant-area as far as usefulness. The Hawks are screaming for more mobility and spice on their blue line, and this will be Forsling third (and last) chance to grab the NHL brass ring. Now he’s got a coach who believes in him and worked with him extensively last season. It’s now or never, and he should get bum-slaying opportunities at home and on the third-pairing with whatever member of the Eat Arby’s Trio’s number is drawn (it’s Brandon Manning). As the other two puck-movers are barking at each other in the second pairing, this could be welcome.
Other than that, Alexandre Fortin is going to sit so Eddie O can wax lyrical about Andreas Martinsen and John Hayden some more, before turning on Hayden for not shooting from outside the circles. Whatever. Corey Crawford is your starter.
If the Hawks are going to pull out of this, it kind of has to be now. The Blues suck, the Kings are way worse, and you can show me the Wild’s point totals all you like but I just won’t buy it. There’s a three-game road trip either side of Thanksgiving that’s not as daunting as it looks on first glance, even with the expected thwacking by the Lightning. But then it gets real hard, real quick. Points are needed now or the Hawks could very well be buried by Christmas.
No better way to get started than against this lot.
Game #19 Preview Suite
