Everything Else

Their Emblems Built of Garbage – ’18–’19 Blackhawks Player Previews – Chris Kunitz

By John Pullega 1946 0

If you believe that time is a flat circle, then there are two signings that make perfect sense. One is Brandon Manning, whose performance Q recently described in an after-camp interview as pleasing in the same breath as saying that Jokiharju will need to work on his decision-making if he wants to make the team. The other is Chris Kunitz. He came into the league when the Hawks were really bad and, barring a lot of ifs becoming yeses, will likely go out of the league when the Hawks are really bad.

2017–18 Stats

82 GP – 13 G, 16 A

50.2 CF%, 46.8 oZS%

Avg. TOI 11:57

A Brief History: Kunitz has been playing professional hockey since 2004. And believe it or not, he’s played mostly good hockey by the numbers over 14 years. Kunitz is a rare combination of GRITHEARTFAAAAAAAAART and actual talent, and unlike many other plugs teams sign simply because DEY WERE ON DA TEAM DAT WON DA CUP SO DEY KNOW HOWDA WIN, Kunitz usually contributed to his team’s success in ways that didn’t get the blood pumping to Mike Milbury’s gnarled shillelagh. Over all four Cup runs, he posted a healthy 51.5 CF% and contributed 29 points (five goals, 24 assists). His career 55 CF% is nice, and reflects both the talent he’s played with (Crosby, Malkin et al.) and the 55.4 oZS% he’s accrued over his career.

So what the silly shit is he doing in Chicago?

Last year saw Kunitz in a full-fledged fourth-line grinder role. For only the third time in his career, he started more often in the defensive zone than the offensive zone. Despite spending just 46.8% of his time on the offensive side of the ice, Kunitz still posted a 50.2 CF% with the infinitely talented Ning. He also scored 29 points, which would have made him #8 in the Hawks’s scoring totals last year, just two points off Artem Anisimov.

Given his contract this year (one year, $1 million) and usage last year, Kunitz would have been a no-doubt improvement for the Hawks on the fourth line. He’s a bit long in the tooth, but he can still be a gigantic boil on his opponents’ asses in terms of agitation and offensive production.

The problem, of course, is that Joel Quenneville has no intention (and perhaps no option) to use him as he should be used. Early in camp, he’s on the top line with Jonathan Toews. With all the what-have-you about how Toews needs to up his scoring if the Hawks want to stand a chance, it’s hard to understand how having Kunitz on his left side helps him do that. Kunitz is slower and less handsy than he was in his heyday. Maybe, if you really, REALLY squint, you can justify having him on the right side next to Alex DeBrincat and Toews, but if it’s come to that, then this year is already a burning clown car with a stuck horn.

And of course, in the organ-I-zation’s constant attempt to tie their own hands behind their backs while pissing into a headwind, Kunitz has a No Movement Clause. So, if he manages to have a decent year and turns into trade bait, he will have all the leverage in picking which team the Hawks can even potentially trade him to. That’s fine from a high-level players’ rights lens, but I don’t see any reason why the Hawks had to give him an NMC in the first place, and I’ve given up on trying to figure it out.

It Was the Best of Times: There might still be some gas in Kunitz’s tank. In a best-case scenario, he hunkers down the fourth line with Marcus Kruger and I guess John Hayden, and they serve as a strong shutdown line with a bit of scoring flair in Kunitz and Hayden. In small doses, Kunitz plays on the right side of the first line with Toews and DeBrincat, playing the role of Annette Frontpresence and taking the Wide Dick route of having Toews and DeBrincat fire shots at him instead of the net. He scores 15–20 points by the trade deadline and agrees to a trade to Toronto for a second- or third-round pick in 2019.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Kunitz spends most of his time on Toews’s left side, which is where DeBrincat should be if Q is dead-set against throwing Top Cat–Schmaltz by the Bowlful–Garbage Dick out there regularly (and of course he is). This means that either DeBrincat has to play on the right side (recall that even though Top Cat is righthanded, he’s goofy-footed in that he’s more comfortable on the left wing) or, god forbid, on the third line again. When approached by upper management about a trade, Kunitz declines.

Prediction: With this team looking more and more like the West Lake Landfill—which, I shit you not, is a smoldering landfill fire approaching a radioactive waste dump outside of St. Louis, a more apt metaphor for that dogshit city I cannot think of—I suspect Kunitz will play more time than anyone wants on the top line. But with Dominik Kahun promising to fuck off back to Germany if he’s not on the team this year, maybe Q does DeBrincat–Toews–Kahun (which is a problem itself) and lets Kunitz troll around the bottom six, which is where he belongs at this point in his career.

The nice thing about Kunitz is that he’s fine. He’ll be OK if in the bottom six, frustrating on the top line. Much like how this season looks to bode, his presence is an overall shoulder shrug, a constant reminder that nothing gold can stay.

Previous Player Previews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Brent Seabrook

Brandon Manning

Jan Rutta

Erik Gustafsson

Henri Jokiharju

Nick Schmaltz

Alex DeBrincat

Everything Else

Blackhawks Open Camp, Are Covered In Puke Within 10 Minutes

By Sam Fels 3252 0

People, as I’ve shared in the past, I used to be a comedian. And never, in my seven to eight years of dedicating my life to trying to write stuff to make people laugh, did I ever come anywhere close to anything as absurd and uproarious as the opening hour of Blackhawks training camp this morning. Yes, I use the featured photo a lot, but you sum it up better than that!

Where to even fucking start? So yesterday, company and television stooge Pat Boyle “reported” that Corey Crawford would hit the ice today. He didn’t say in what capacity, if he was just going to check that he in fact can still skate at all, or would be just touching up the logos painted under the surface. This was clearly the Hawks attempt at…

So Crow did actually hit the ice, and he did actually practice…just by himself. Which is…something? I mean it’s better than nothing. It’s on the road to full participation, it’s just that no one has any idea how long that road is. But hey, he’s alive and he’s wearing gear and that’s like, a step forward from where we’ve been. Maybe. Unless he disappears again tomorrow and/or this was all for show. Good stuff, really.

Oh, but it gets so much better.

Right about the time the Hawks were hitting the ice as a team, it was announced that Connor Murphy is going to miss two months with a back injury. TWO MONTHS. BACK INJURY. Let’s try and unpack this all, because it’s a fucking ton and ain’t none of it good.

So, this summer, Stan Bowman hoarded all of his “assets,” such as they are, and decided against upgrading a blue line that was rat semen anyway, because the Hawks are terrified of what they have to pay Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat in the next two years (no really, that’s the reason). Except there’s no fucking chance Murphy showed up today and said, “Hey I think my back is fucked up.” For it to be a two month thing, they have to have known about it for a while, and still elected to present you with Brandon Manning and Jan Rutta. TICKETS TO THE HOME OPENER STILL AVAILABLE, PEOPLE!

So essentially, what the Hawks are telling you while hoping you don’t notice their lips are moving, is that they know they’re going to be a dungheap this season. Because if you thought you had a chance at being anything, you wouldn’t just toss your hands up at the news that your most consistent d-man of last year was going to be out until December basically, yelling, “Dems da breaks!”

Going further, you wouldn’t do that if your thought your team has any hope of being anything other than a representation of sadness and confusion in watercolor because back injuries of this significance to a player who is, y’know, 6-FOOT-FUCKING-5, have a tendency to be career-altering, if not debilitating. That’s a major, major problem that the Hawks thought they could just sneak by you.

Oh, and Brent Seabrook is going to miss a week with an “abdominal injury,” which simply just has to be a really unruly burrito.

The capper of course is that at the first practice Chris Kunitz was skating with Jonathan Toews and Alex DeBrincat, which couldn’t be a more Quenneville moment unless it came with a bottle of wine, a Whalers jersey, and a mustache painted on the ice. TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE

If there’s a silver lining to all of this, and there isn’t, basically Quenneville is going to be forced into giving Henri Jokiharju a long look because there ain’t shit on shit else. And he was already skating with Keith today, so fuck it, let’s ride that snake as far as it’ll go and figure out the rest later. Or never. Probably never.

So just to review, when the Hawks open the season, your pairings could be a declining Keith with a 19-year-old the coach will hate, Sbarro and Jan Rutta, and The Guy Worse Than Radko Gudas next to Cowboy Gustafsson.

Everything Else

The Murky State Of Urgency

By Sam Fels 2793 0

Just like yesterday, one should hesitate in putting too much into anything right now before we see the entire scope of what the Hawks do this summer. So just know I reserve the right to toss this out in a week, a month, whenever. And the problem for the Hawks is what they seem to be attempting is nearly impossible.

While the Hawks make all the noise the past two summers about seismic changes and alarms going off in the front office, which appear to be nothing more than John McDonough bullying his employees, that doesn’t mean you can force things.

Obviously, the model is how the Red Wings were able to pivot from the Yzerman-Fedorov Era of the late 90’s to the Datsyuk-Zetterberg era of the late 2000s. But as we get farther away from it and our lens scopes out, we can see that it probably just was Ken Holland getting extremely lucky with some later round picks. Because how’s the pivot going from the Dats-Z Era to the Dylan Larkin one? It’s been eight years of irrelevance at least and counting. The Penguins haven’t had to deal with this yet, but you can certainly see it on the horizon for them, especially if Matt Murray never matches what his first two years brought. Once you start winning and taking yourself out of position to draft genuine class, it’s nearly impossible to go get. Victory defeats you, eventually.

So while Stan can boast about maintaining the present and the future, the options for the former were limited. There was one player that would have made the difference in free agency (Tavares) and he never considered the Hawks. Maybe in another town the Hawks would face questions about how they couldn’t even get to the table for the most prized free agent to hit the market in years, (and arguably they landed the last one this coveted in Hossa), but not in this one. It’s an anonymity they clearly relish. There were others who might have helped, but again they didn’t seem to be a consideration at all for Stastny or Bozak, which is curious. It’s only taken a season or two for the Hawks to completely fall off the map for free agents.

If you want to argue they could have put together the same package of flotsam that the Blues did for Ryan O’Reilly, I’ll listen. Because that’s really a big bag of nothing the Blues sent to Buffalo. Tage Thompson my ass.

So there wasn’t much Stan could do to demonstrate “urgency” yesterday. The more I think about it the more the Manning signing makes no sense, and we’ve been over and over Cam Ward. Kunitz is fine, it’s not like anyone was in love with what the Hawks could sport on the fourth line anyway.

I suppose Stan envisions a time, very soon, where this team belongs to DeBrincat, Schmaltz, Jokiharju (and boy that’s a leap right now) and maybe even Boqvist in three seasons. I’ll leave Jokijarju and Boqvist out of this, because we simply don’t know anything right now. But if Schmaltz or Sikura were going to be top line players in the NHL, we’d know by now. Yes, we would. You know one when you see one, and they very well may be top sixers (Schmaltz already is), but as my compadre McClure says every spring, it’s top line talent that gets the parade. Right now, the Hawks sport one genuine world class player still playing at that level (Kane). If everything goes right with Top Cat, you could see him being one. But that’s not enough.

Stan seems to be planning and reserving for a future that either isn’t coming or isn’t going to be what he thinks. And maybe he has little choice. There just isn’t a lot out there. But this team isn’t buttressed for when Keith, Toews, and Kane are simply old (the first two might already be there, Seabrook certainly is) and it hasn’t provided them the support to still make a go of it now while they might still be able to do it from memory. If the Hawks were a hitter, you’d say they’re in between–can’t catch up to the fastball but still ahead of the offspeed pitches.

At the end of the day, no one is going to answer for this, really. They’ll point to their three banners and ask you about how much you enjoyed that, even if it appears more and more those three banners landed on them. They’ll bleat on about changes and yes, maybe Q will lose his job this season. And if things don’t turn around quickly after that, Stan could follow him. But both could leave with their heads held high.

I still have to believe the Hawks have a trade in them to try and make something of this season. That waiting list won’t last forever. Those empty seats will only get more numerous. They can’t roll into that convention unveiling Chris Kunitz.

But then again, they might.

Everything Else

Hawks Sign Three Guys…Nope, That’s It

By Sam Fels 3171 0

At the top, it’s important to remember that it makes no sense to judge fully the three signings the Hawks made today until they make their big splash via trade, which appears will be the only way they do so. Or until they don’t make that splash. Needless to say, a team that missed the playoffs by 19 points and currently can’t figure out if they’re starting goalie is just a gaseous form at this point choosing to just tinker would be…abstract.

The good news: The Hawks didn’t tie themselves into anything here. Cam Ward and Chris Kunitz got one-year deals, Kunitz for barely the minimum, and Brandon Manning got two. Essentially, all these roster spots will open up soon for either another promising kid or a bigger addition down the road. The Hawks have kept their salary cap powder dry, as it were. And just because you have cap space doesn’t mean you have to use it just for the sake of using it. So all fair enough.

Now let’s complain.

First off, Ward. We’ve been down this road. He sucks. The idea that he could flourish in a new city and with a new team is simply built on baseless hope. There has been nothing in seven years to suggest he can even be a representative goalie. If he’s just a backup, that still can kill you because you still need points in those 25-30 games unless you really think Crawford is healthy and going to go 55-0-0. Those points matter. And as we’ve already pointed out, the Canes were actually a better defensive team than the Hawks last year, and the Hawks, so far, have done nothing to address that. The fact that Ward signed for the same money as Steve Bernier, a proven NHL goalie still, is a complete farce. Were the Hawks scared off by the three years Bernier got? Why? Do they really think Collin Delia and his superfluous L are going to develop into a capable backup/replacement for Crawford? Okayyyyy…..

Let’s move to Kunitz. I really wouldn’t have anything to say about it if I were confident he would live in the bottom six all season and be a side contributor. He potted 13 goals last year basically playing on Tampa’s 4th line with Pacquette and Callahan, and if that’s all he was asked to do here with some combination of Hinostroza/Kampf/Sikura/Ejdsell/Some Bozo, fine. But this is Joel Quenneville we’re talking about, and you know that Opening Night in Ottawa Kunitz will be up there with Kane and Schmaltz, or worse yet Kane and Anisimov, due to “veteran presence.” It’ll be nearly impossible to crowbar him out of the top six unless DeBrincat scores 27 goals in preseason. Oh wait, he did that basically last year and still ended up on the third line on the right side.

Brandon Manning is slightly intriguing. He has positive metrics for a stay-at-home guy, and that’s truly surprising because he spent the past two years playing with mutant weasel Radko Gudas. What’s strange is that Manning is a left-sided, stay-at-home guy, and the Hawks don’t have any right-sided get-it-the-fuck-up-there guys. As of right now, all the puck-movers are on the left in Keith, Gustafsson, Jokiharju, Forsling. The Hawks still haven’t addressed who is playing with Keith or who is on the second pairing. Are they going to sign Manning and make him play the right side when he’s never done it? And if Jordan Oesterle is still somehow included in this equation, don’t worry about your playoff invoices. It seems an odd fit, though not necessarily a bad one.

If the Hawks can move Hossa’s contract, they’ll still have $8-$9 million to play with. Remember as we go forward here to take them at their word of the past two seasons. This was unacceptable. Changes are coming. We expect better. None of these signings do that. It’s tinkering on the edges, which is fine if you get the middle right.

We’re still waiting on the middle.

 

Everything Else

Game #47 Desperation…it’s the World’s Worst Cologne – Hawks 0, Lightning 2

By Rose Rankin 3328 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

Well, I guess anything is better than last Saturday’s shitshow against the Islanders, right? Anything is better than the, well, I won’t even call it a half-assed attempt against the Red Wings, it was a no-assed attempt. Is this the most pathetic way to rationalize a season that is quickly disappearing down the toilet? Yes. Yes it is. To the bullets!

– The Hawks actually didn’t play badly—they got Glass’d. By the latter half of the second, they had outshot the Lightning by a decent margin (they ended that period leading in shots 30-17), and they dominated possession. They had a 64.5 CF% at evens in the second, and in the first they (barely) had the edge as well (51.7 CF%). The Hawks were pressuring on offense and had four high-danger chances in the second period, yet the Lightning got a short-handed goal late in the period, which blunted the momentum the Hawks had going that whole frame. And how did that come about, you ask? Chris Kunitz banked a shot off Glass and the Feel Good Story kicked it into his own net. And making it worse was the fact that it was on a delayed penalty thanks to Mikhail Sergachev being a general dumbshit. Yes, it appears that Kunitz made a hand pass prior to the goal and the play technically should have been blown dead. But shit happens, the Hawks were already getting the benefit of a penalty being called, and when your goalie scores on himself in that situation, you can’t really blame it on a missed call.

– Isn’t it just the damndest thing, when Kempny and Murphy play and Forsling and Rutta don’t, our opponents have fewer shots and we have fewer defensive breakdowns? Now, in full disclosure both Kempny and Murphy had pretty shitty numbers possession-wise (36.7 and 42.4 CF% respectively), and of course the Hawks still fucking lost, but giving up 31 shots to the league’s best team after they had given up 46 in the game before? You can’t tell me the personnel changes and these numbers aren’t related.

– In the most obvious statement of the night, Andrei Vasilevskiy is really fucking good. The Hawks had plenty of quality changes—e.g., Jurco in the second, Duclair in the third—and they had six power plays including a two-man advantage. Yes, their power play remains as terrible as ever, but Vasilevskiy still stopped 40 shots on the night. I just made the second-most obvious statement when mentioning the dismal power play, but we’ll just leave it at that. Still complete clown shoes.

– It felt like Patrick Kane was triple-shifted all night. In fact he wasn’t, but he did have a shitload of ice time: 23:30. Kane spent more time on the ice than four of our six defensemen (only Keith and Oesterle had more time, and for Oesterle it was a matter of seconds. Same goes for Toews but I’m not talking about other forwards here). Kane finished the night with three shots, and he and Schmaltz were moving even if they were dragging Sharp around most of the time. So I get why this happened, but when you have to play Kane that much it feels like a desperate move by a team running out of options, time, and trust, which is most certainly now the case.

On Wednesday the Hawks play the Leafs, who lost tonight to the inexplicably-on-fire Avs, who are in the process of leaving us in the dust in the Central as they’re tied with Minnesota and chasing other also-relevant teams. Have we passed the point of no return on this season and playoff hopes? It’s not entirely certain, and keeping a game like tonight’s close—when we’re playing a far superior opponent—almost gives you reason to hold onto hope, but that in and of itself is a harsh indictment of where we’re at. Onward and upward.

Everything Else

Game #20 – Hawks vs. Penguins: Spotlight – Conor Sheary, The Power Of Sid, And The Proper Way To Reload

By Sam Fels 2642 0

The cynical way to approach it would be to joke that if Conor Sheary had come up through the Hawks’ system, they would have already traded him to make room for Artem Anisimov’s or Brent Seabrook’s extension. That’s how the Penguins ended up with two straight banners seven years after their first one with Sidney Crosby. But Sheary represents more than that.

Sheary was never a big time scorer as he came up. He spent three years at UMass, never amassing (see what I did there?) more than 12 goals in an NCAA season. After that he spent one full season in the AHL, scoring 20 goals in 58 games with Wilkes-Barre. The motivation to play well there is huge of course, because no one wants to spend one more minute in Wilkes-Barre than they have to. The following season saw Sheary bounce between the AHL and NHL team, with 14 goals in 74 games between the two.

Last year, Sheary was up full-time, and on Sidney Crosby’s wing full-time. The result was 23 goals in just 61 games. His 21 ES goals was in the top-20 in the league. The pace hasn’t dropped this year, with eight goals in 20 games.

All of it makes that theory of a few years ago that “Not everyone can play with Sid” seem downright laughable now. That theory got Chris Kunitz an Olympic spot and gold medal, and Chris Kunitz is basically a dude. The theory basically stemmed from Dan Bylsma just forcing Pascal Dupuis onto Sid’s line for years, and Pascal Dupuis was borderline The Suck. Patric Hornqvist spent one year as a winger for Sid, and he had the best goals-per-game rate of his career. Sheary comes up at 23 and is a 20+ goal scorer. It’s just that simple.

Sheary is also an example of how you remain a contender with high-priced starts being paid like it, and one the Hawks might be too late to get to. Sheary, Wilson, Rust, and Maatta and Kuhnackl on the blue line all came up and provided the floor for the Penguins roster for their two Cups. And none of them are expensive. Of course, Sheary got paid after last year and is now $3 million player. But that’s how it has to be done when you’re paying Fleury, Letang, Crosby and Malkin.

Meanwhile on the other side of the coin, the Hawks have traded all their young, cheap talent for a couple years and are trying to get on the right side with Schmaltz, ADB, Hartman. It might be too late.

The reckoning might not be coming for the Penguins like you would guess. Patric Hornqvist comes off the books after the season when Rust and Kunahckl need new paper, but neither are going to break the bank. They’ll lose Ian Cole’s contract of $2 million as well. Two years from now Carl  Hagelin’s $4 million comes off the books, with only Jake Guenztel coming up for a new deal. They could do this for a few years more yet if they maintain health.

It seems pretty simple, no? Wish more could do it.

Game #20 Preview

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups