Everything Else

Atop The Sugar Pile – Week #3

By Sam Fels 1947 0

I guess that’s what you’d call the first speed bump of the season. If that speed bump came to life and chomped on your skull for like an hour while you just sat there contemplating the meaninglessness of it all. At least that was last night. It saw the Hawks suffer their first two regulation losses of the season. Though it did include their first regulation win. So yeah…this season is weird. Anyway, let’s see what was bad, what was good, and what was right where it should be.

The Dizzying Highs

Alex DeBrincat – Able to remain above the fray, and I feel like we’re going to say that for most of the season. Set up the only goal they got against the Coyotes, scored against the Jackets to put the Hawks ahead (admittedly one Bobrovsky should have had, but the hands and quickness to get to that spot and get that shot off after a middling pass from Kahun was worthy or reward). Top Cat’s scoring-streak came to a stop last night, as did any illusion about this team, but he was still the Hawks best skater this week and has been all season. I also love the added bonus of scouts and pundits trying to wheel-pose themselves to cover their ass for not thinking or making him a first-round pick because he happens to be small in a league that’s getting more and more away from size.

Oh hey, the only three players who have outscored Top Cat from that draft are Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine, and Matthew Tkachuk, and all have played a season more than he has. Everyone can go pound.

The Terrifying Lows

The Entire Defense – Boy, this is going to be the subject of several posts this week I feel, and certainly the subject of this week’s podcast (recording tonight, send in your questions!). The Hawks were basically mullered for both games on the weekend, and had Corey Crawford to thank for any points they got let alone the two they did. Cam Ward had the unusual feat of giving up five goals and still maintaining a 900 SV% last night. I’m not even sure how mad you can get about the actual players, because they are what they are and have been. Duncan Keith is old. Henri Jokiharju‘s balls haven’t dropped, at least in a hockey sense. Jan Rutta, Brandon Manning, and Brandon Davidson (at this point we should just call them, “Davidson Manning” because really what the fuck does it matter?) are big bags of suck. Seabrook is old too, and Gustafsson is a cowboy. There really are no surprises here.

No, the anger should be at a front office that thought this was an acceptable defensive corps to toss out there with a straight face and still run your “One Goal” ads about a revival season coming (while knowing Connor Murphy was going to miss two months!), and a coach who is still insistent on a defensive and breakout system this group has no hope of being able to run. And really, it won’t work in this league any more. The Hawks coach needs to adjust his system to his players, not the other way around. Until that happens, nights like Sunday are not going to be isolated incidents. You’ll be reading a lot more about this in the coming days.

The Creamy Middles

Corey Crawford – It may seem harsh to not put Crow in the “Dizzying Highs” category. Because he was really good in both of this games this week. But here’s the thing: Corey Crawford is really good. Vezina-worthy performances don’t really surprise me, because he’s a Vezina-worthy goalie. Sure, the fact that they came after 10 months out is startling, and unexpected. But the actual games themselves are what Crow has been serving up for four or five seasons now. Maybe having gone without him so long people will realize just what he means to this team while he can still do it. The Hawks can put Toews and Kane on their marketing drive all they want. The player whose importance to his team rises to the level of Bryant, Rizzo, Mack, Trubisky, Eloy is Crawford. That’s just how it be, kids.

 

Everything Else

Game #8 – Lightning vs. Hawks Preview – Business? Pleasure? The Business Of Pleasure?

By Matt McClure 1736 0

 vs 

Game Time: 6:00PM CDT
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, WGN-AM 720
Spanish Moss: Raw Charge

Tonight the Hawks will cap off the traditional 3-in-4 stretch weekend stretch by welcoming the eastern conference powerhouse that all of the galaxy brained hockey minds seemingly always forget about, the Tampa Bay Lightning, who themselves are also bringing a weekend Midwest swing to a close.

Everything Else

Game #7 – Hawks vs. Blue Jackets Preview – Turn On The Water

By Matt McClure 1839 0

 @  

Game Time: 6:00PM CDT
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, NHLN US, TVA-S, WGN-AM 720
Street Fight Radio: The Cannon

After basically the entire work week off in an unofficial early season bye, the Hawks venture to Ohio for the second and only road game of another thee-in-four-nights stretch that sees them facing down a Columbus team that still isn’t quite sure what the hell it actually is at this point.

At 4-2-0 to this point in the seaoson, the Jackets are at least making a fist of it while unholy terror Seth Jones remains absent from the blue line. To this point, they’ve beaten Detroit, Florida, Philadelphia, and Colorado, with only the latter of which actually playing well to start the season, as their other three victories have been over teams that are presently total messes. Their losses came to a speedy and spiky Hurricanes team, and the Bolts who dropped an 8-burger on them. So for right now, it’s fair to call them the middling team that they are with Jones out.

That’s not to say they’re bereft of any kind of punch. Erstwhile Style Boy Artemi Panarin has put up 9 points in 6 games so far to pace the Jackets, and is in full on “Fuck you, pay me” mode with his bridge deal coming to a close at the end of this year and lacking the mega-paper he’s seeking, which the Jackets seem slightly hesitant to give him. He flanks former first rounder P-L Dubois with Cam Atkinson on the other side, and this line has shown plenty of speed and creativity in the early going. The Jackets’ middle six has been getting plowed over on the possession ledger however, with the de facto second line of Duclair (remember him?), Wennberg, and SANDPAPER Captain Nick Foligno and the third line of Boone Jenner, Riley “Not A Purported Wiener Tucker” Nash, and Josh Anderson contributing intermittent offense, but certainly not enough to balance out the top line and force opposing coaches to pause when trying to get matchups. The fourth line of Sonny Milano (OHHHH!), Lukas Sedlak, and Dane Oliver Bjorkstrand has at least tilted the ice to spell the other three units.

With Jones out on the blue line, Zach Werenski has been partnered with David Savard, and they’ve been getting their skulls kicked it at a 41% clip, and if Werenski isn’t pushing the play on offense, he’s not a world beater in his own end, particularly when he is basically covering for Quebecois Wisniewski as a partner. Markus Nutivaara, a seventh round pick and a 24 year old and not a Finnish candy bar, however, has been the beneficiary of the top line taking a pounding, and flipped the ice at 60% clip with the will-he-ever-get-his-shit-together Ryan Murray. Adam Clendening (remember him too?) has landed here because he’s a right handed defenseman with the vague threat of offense in his game, and he and Scott Harrington have been turned into paste in the 20 even strength minutes they’ve played together on the third pairing.

Long the strength of this team, two time Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky has had a slow start to the season, with only an .888 at evens and an .875 overall. Clearly those are not up to his high standards of play, and if that continues, that type of goaltending will torpedo just about any team, let alone one that’s been as reliant as the Jackets have been on Bob. But for as much as he’s slumped, he’s still fully capable of power-windmill breakdancing in the crease all night long on any opponent, as Bobrovsky remains one of the best combinations of size, athleticism, and positional soundness in the sport.

As for the Men Of Four Feathers, while their first regulation loss was probably overdue, they certainly didn’t play terribly against the Yotes on Thursday, or at least the names that are supposed to matter didn’t. The ones everyone expects to be terrible gift wrapped all three goals for Glendale, and Corey Crawford’s return to the cage didn’t have the storybook finish that was hoped for despite looking as solid as can be asked of a goalie after having not played in over 300 days. He’ll get the nod again tonight with a sterner test, particularly from the top line with Panarin’s ability to pick corners as a “bad shot maker”. In front of Crawford will be the same defensive configuration as the past few games, which means it’s duck and cover time with Manning and Rutta on the ice, particularly unsheltered on the road.

Among the forwards, because the Hawks actually lost, Quenneville predictably used it as an excuse to do what he’s presumably been dying to do since the start of camp, and that’s move Anisimov back to the #2 center slot between Schmaltz and Garbage Dick. Schmaltz has been scuffling a little bit, but having Alexandre “2009 Troy Brouwer Redux” Fortin continually biff chances tilts the scoring sheet a little bit, and Wide Dick Artie isn’t the best answer to sparking Schmaltz long term. Fortin was platooning with Martinsen at last report this morning, which results in the splitting up of the speedy Saad-Kruger-Kampf line that could use some more time in a true shutdown role to see if it really could end up being a thing. Instead, Chris Kunitz will play with Saad and Kampf, and Kruger will get some combination from the Fortin/Hayden/Martinsen turd grab bag.

While John Tortorella is assuredly A Moron, he’s not so entrenched that he doesn’t know that at home he’ll have some advantageous matchups that can be found for his top line. The key will be to minimize that damage and hope that Crawford makes some of the saves that Cam Ward wasn’t or couldn’t make, and that at the other end each save that Bobrovsky makes isn’t the one that snaps him out of the funk he’s in. Let’s go Hawks.

 

Game #7 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

It’s Not a Cage if You’re Feeling Like a Resident – Hawks 1, Coyotes 4

By Rose Rankin 2238 0

You don’t need me to tell you what was important about tonight—but I will anyway, it was Corey Crawford coming back. And despite what the score was, he looked just fine. It was the usual suspects being the pieces of crap that they are that led to the loss, but you don’t need me to tell you that, either. To the bullets:

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

–After goal-a-thons in recent games tonight’s effort seemed rather anemic on offense. This could have easily been at least 2-0 Hawks at the end of the first, had it not been for Fortnite’s total lack of finish. Kane set him up beautifully multiple times, but to no avail. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him demoted back down to the third or fourth line after tonight’s performance (although it’s just as likely Q loves him and will keep him on the second line, so who knows). A poorly timed post by Schmaltz in the second period was another example of the Hawks being snake-bitten.

–Don’t take that to mean that there was no plain ‘ole incompetence tonight—that would be far too generous. Back to Nick Schmaltz, he had a pretty shitty game, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, his CF% ended up being 52.9, but that was a rebound from the mid-30s he had going in the first period, and he pulled his classic pass-when-he-should-shoot early in the third, which basically wasted a huge amount of time and space that could have been a good opportunity.

–But the real tale of woe here is Brandon Manning and Chris Kunitz and how horrible they truly are. We’ve already beaten this dead horse that they suck, but it’s hard to overstate just how much. Even with the aforementioned anemic offense, this game would have been tied at 1 (at worst), had it not been for Manning completely misplaying a 2-on-1 in the first and hanging Crawford out to dry, and had Kunitz not made a shitty, stupid pass attempt late in the third that Clayton Keller (GET A FIRST NAME, ASSHOLE) picked off and scored on to basically put the game out of reach. So after not being able to score a 5-on-5 goal yet this season, the fucking Coyotes found their even-strength mojo thanks to our useless clods who Quenneville refuses to sit, despite the availability of Brandon Davidson, Victor Ejdsell, and ANYONE ELSE FROM ROCKFORD AT THIS POINT.

–Alright, enough of what sucked. The silver lining was that really Crawford looked pretty good. Sure, there were a couple saves where he just barely got a toe on the puck, and in the second there was a terrifying moment where he half-somersaulted out of the crease and I held my head in my hands like I was trying to protect his brain by steadying my own, but all in all he was solid. That includes some great point-blank saves like the one he had on Grabner in the third, which at that point kept it a one-goal game (till Kunitz shat the bed). I’m guessing it’ll take a little while for him to be fully comfortable, and there’s always the chance he’ll regress after dealing with contact or other unforseen issues, but for a first outing after 10 months, this was a very good sign.

–You know who else had a good game? Erik Gustafsson. That’s not a huge shock as he’s been generally playing well, but tonight he had the lone goal after textbook passing from Toews and Top Cat during a 4-on-4 stint, and he made two huge shot blocks to bail out Crawford in the first and second periods.

–I can’t be mad about Raanta having a good game. And when Hjalmarsson was getting misty-eyed after his ovation I was basically at the point of yelling I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING at the tv. And I can’t be mad about Our Cousin Vinny scoring two goals either. I want to be mad because this loss is extremely aggravating, but of course it’s these guys who I can’t hate.

So the Hawks were dealt their first regulation loss of the season, and to the fucking Coyotes (did I already complain and call them that? I did, didn’t I?). It was bound to happen at some point, but the fact that it came at the hands of The Team of Hawks Rejects and on the night Crow finally came back makes it all the more painful. There are still positives to walk away with, though, and with a barrage of games coming up that’s what we’ll do. Onward and upward.

Beer: Lagunitas Sumpin’ Easy Ale

Line of the Night: “Good players get a stick on it.” –Steve Konroyd, throwing shade at Alexandre Fortin after he missed yet another great pass from Kane 

Photo credit: Chicago Tribune

Everything Else

Game #6 – Coyotes vs. Hawks Preview: Come Inside Where It’s Ok

By Sam Fels 1889 0

 vs. 

RECORDS: Coyotes 1-4-0   Hawks 3-0-2

PUCK DROP: 7:30pm

TV: NBCSN Chicago

YOUNG GIRL THEY CALL THEM THE DESERT DOGS: Five For Howling

Well, tonight got a touch more interesting, didn’t it?

No point in waiting around. Tonight marks the return of one Corey Crawford to the Hawks crease, and he’s bringing all sorts of actual hope and expectation with him. While the start for the Hawks has been tremendous fun, it hasn’t carried any feeling of a sea change or entrenched positive vibes/hope. It’s just been kind of empty entertainment. But the return of Crawford makes all of that a real possibility. Don’t fool yourself, he is that good and he is that important.

That’s if he’s full-strength, and the worry or skepticism of that is basically in a blinking-sign-over-the-Kennedy stage. At camp it was suggested he might need a game or two in Winnebago County to knock off some ring rust. That has been scrapped, either by how good he’s looked in practice or by need or by both. We still don’t know that a stiff breeze or any kind of contact isn’t going to put him back on the shelf, and if he goes back on the shelf there’s a real worry that it might be for good. And of course, it’s been 10 months since he’s played, so even if he’s sharp and even if he’s completely clear of his brain injury problems, there has to be some feel to be gained back. He’s not going to be Crow just yet, unless it’s by some miracle or he’s Wolverine.

There’s also the question of how Crow is being handled. There’s been an odd and uncomfortable back and forth between he and the team for months now. I want to say that since camp opened they’ve let Crow call the shots here, but just yesterday you had Quenneville saying, “We’ll see how he feels in the morning but we expect him to play.” Is that because Crow expects that or because they do and he’s going along with it? With the Hawks it’s hard to know. You don’t want to feel like the team is pushing him back at a slightly faster pace than he would like, but you can’t say for sure they aren’t either.

On the other side, and this has only ever been a theory of mine, but with this type of injury and recovery I wonder if you don’t know if you’re 100% until you get out there. Like, he’s been dealing with stuff for so long that marked improvement could be mistaken for total improvement, just because it’s better than where you’ve been. Again, Crow and the Hawks might not know until he gets out there and tries. That’s what happened with Jonathan Toews many years ago when he was dealing with this. He came back for the playoffs, he thought he was fine, and then admitted later he didn’t really feel all the way back until the summer. We’ll all find out together.

It may seem like a soft-landing for Crow to debut against the Coyotes, but looks can be deceiving. Yes, the Yotes only have one win. Yes, they haven’t scored an even-strength goal yet. But it’s not the process’s fault. Arizona has simply crushed the opponent in every game, possession-wise. In every game they’ve carried at least a 54% Corsi-percentage. Their expected-goal percentage over five games is 52.3%. But like a night with far too much whiskey, they can’t finish. Like, at all. They have three goals in five games, two on the power play and one short-handed.

At some point though, all that possession and chance-generation is going to count. This isn’t a team completely bereft of scoring touch, though the injury absences of Alex Galchenyuk (The American With The Russian Name Who Used To Be a Canadien) and Christian Dvorak aren’t helping. Clayton Keller and Dylan Strome are where you’d look first. Derek Stepan is starting to get up there and was never what he was billed as but he’s far from helpless. Michael Grabner has gotten very rich off scoring 25 goals that no one can remember. It’s hardly a murderer’s row, but again, they’re doing most things right.

And they should get goaltending. Antti Raanta has had a slowish start to the season, but has been marvelous the past two seasons when healthy. There were even some stumping him as a dark-horse, boxcars-paying Vezina candidate. Might want to pump the brakes on that, but he will improve from his current. .903 SV%.

The defense has been good too, as the Yotes have only surrendered 11 goals in five games. Jakob Chychrun is out injured, but Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jason Demers, our lost son Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Kevin Connauton make for a competent at worst unit.

As for the Hawks, aside from the Crawford apparition the lineup stays the same. They only threatened Brandon Saad with a scratch, but he stays in. If he is a ghost tonight, then he might be staring at the pressbox for one or both of the games this weekend. So don’t do that. Everything else is as is.

Perhaps this is the beginning of something real. Perhaps it’s just a false dawn. But it’s definitely more lively than a normal tilt against Arizona in October would have been.

 

Game #6 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Blackhawks Open Camp, Are Covered In Puke Within 10 Minutes

By Sam Fels 3313 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

Their Emblems Built of Garbage – ’18-19 Blackhawks Player Previews – Cam Ward

By Adam Hess 2488 0

After a season marred in large part by bad goalie play after Corey Crawford went down to injury, the Blackhawks decided to attempt to address their bad backup goalie problem by signing…. a bad backup goalie. Cam Ward probably wasn’t the worst option available on the market, but he wasn’t exactly far from it.

2017-18 Stats

43 GP (42 starts) – 23 W, 14 L, 4 OTL

.906 SV%, 2.27 GAA, 2 shutouts

.914 EV, .846 PP, .858 SH

28 SA per game

A Brief History: Cam Ward has had one of the cushiest gigs in professional sports over the past decade, as he has been living out the true American Dream of making a lot of money to be not that good at his job. He’s done that by living off the glory of a Stanley Cup win in 2006 as a rookie, despite the fact that he was pretty much dogshit during that regular season, posting a .882 SV% in 28 games that year.

It’s really a wonder Ward has even made it this long into an NHL career, now a veteran of 13 seasons, because in his first two years he couldn’t even crack a .900 SV% and even when he did get there in year 3, it was by the thinnest of margins with a .904 mark. Something seemed to click for him between the 2008-09 and 2011-12 seasons, as he went .916, .916, .923, and .915 over that stretch, finally lending some credence to his place as an NHL goalie. Since then, it’s been less rosy.

Since the start of the 2012-13 season, Ward has yet to get post a save rate north of .910, and only got to that number once. The last two years he’s gone back to barely scraping hockey’s Mendoza Line, with .905 in ’16-’17 and the above mentioned .906 mark last year. He’s also posted negative or worse Goals Saved Above Average marks every year in that same stretch, even getting as low as -13.93 in ’16-’17. Less than ideal.

In an attempt to be fair to Ward, it’s probably not all his fault, as Bill Peters system is well known for hanging the goalies out to dry in the attempt to control possession. Still, GSAA at the very least makes an effort to adjust for outside factors, so the information that is out there about Ward is still not encouraging.

It Was The Best of Times: The ideal scenario for both Ward and the Blackhawks is that Ward doesn’t have to come off the bench more 30-35 times, ideally against bad teams. Maybe in limited outings Ward will be able to find some of the game that he showed earlier this decade rather than what he’s been showing recently. Quennville’s more risk averse system should at the very least take bit of the pressure off Ward’s shoulders that he’s been felt in Carolina, while perhaps giving him a bit more confidence. Even so, in a backup goalie you could do a lot worse than a guy hovering around .910, so if Ward gets in that range it could keep the Hawks in games even when Crawford isn’t there to bail them out.

It Was The Worst of Times: Believe it are not, there are pretty much two worst case scenarios here. On the other end of spectrum of possibilities to what’s above is that it turns out Ward can’t stop a puck unless he’s getting frequent playing time, and resorts back to the player he was early in his career and not even stop 90% of what’s thrown at him. If Ward turns into Swiss Cheese in net whenever he’s in there and can’t even give the Hawks a fighting chance in the games he backstops, the classic Stan Bowman NMC is going to really bite this team in the ass unless they can find a way to make up an injury and try Forsberg again.

The other worst case scenario is that Corey Crawford is no longer good or his brain is mush after all, and Ward turns into your starter. Sorry, but this Blackhawks roster with a .905 goalie behind them is probably gonna have top-3 odds at Jack Hughes next spring.

Prediction: I am awful at predictions, but I will use Pullega’s Crow prediction as a baseline for mine. If Crawford does come in and only miss 10 or so games before coming back and being his old self, Ward will do just enough to help the Hawks survive Crow’s brief absence without falling apart, then turn into a dependable-but-not-impressive backup goalie, which really is how all backup goalies probably should be.

Previous Player Previews

Corey Crawford

Everything Else

Their Emblems Built Of Garbage – ’18–’19 Blackhawks Player Previews – Corey Crawford

By John Pullega 2852 0

Today is the first day in our monthlong look at what the ‘18–’19 Men of Four Feathers have to offer. We’ll give you a review of each player, a best-case scenario, a worst-case scenario, and a prediction. The style’s new but the face is the same. Let’s kick this pig into life, after the first missed playoffs in a decade. We hope you enjoy.

In times of doubt and sorrow, there are always coping mechanisms. Wild Turkey 101. Watching The Crow on a loop. Asking strangers to put on a clown mask and open-hand slap you until you feel something, anything. And with the organ-I-zation’s handling of Corey Crawford’s status since last year, we might have a chance to experience all three at once this year.

2017–18 Stats

28 GP – 16 W, 9 L, 2 OTL

.929 SV%, 2.27 GAA

.935 EV, .931 PP, .902 SH

30 SA/Game

A Brief History: Last year, we had a chance to test McClure’s theory that the Hawks will live or die by Corey Crawford. And boy, did we find out. Prior to Evgeni Malkin catapulting himself into Corey like the bag of over-ripe compost and chewed-off thumbnails he is, and Crawford’s subsequent December dizzies in New Jersey, Crow was on his way to having the best year of his career.

– His even-strength SV% of .935 and short-handed SV% of .902 at the time of his demise eclipsed his final stats from his Jennings-winning year in 2013 (.934, .895), in about the same number of games (28 vs. 30) and with a less talented team in front of him.

– His overall SV% of .929 was the best of his career to that point.

– His GAA of 2.27 was tied for third-best of his career—behind only a 2.26 in 2013–14 and a comical 1.94 in 2013.

He managed these numbers despite facing 30 shots per game, as Joel Quenneville regaled us with his yearlong “I can touch my asshole with my elbow” strategy of pairing piss and poutine on his blue line in front of Crow. It may be folly to assume he could have maintained all of those numbers, but it’s clear that Corey was putting together a Vezina-contending year before he got shelved.

Before his unexplained 30-week absence, the Hawks sat at a disappointing but still-in-contention 39 points through 35 games. In those 35 games, they only lost more than three in a row once, losing five in a row at the end of November/beginning of December, four of which Forsberg started. They proceeded to post 37 points over the next 47 games—including losing streaks of four games, five games, and eight games—without Crow in net.

While there are several reasons why this happened, none loom as large as losing Crawford.

It Was the Best of Times: Going forward, best-case scenario, Crawford rises from the grave and doesn’t miss a beat. He plays his usual 55-game, 3,300-minute year at a .920+ clip, bailing out the defensively declined likes of Erik Gustafsson and Brent Seabrook, giving Jokiharju a chance to take risks, and preventing teamwide deflations from the kinds of backbreaking goals Forsberg and Berube were so primed to allow. This lets Cam Ward channel his 2005 essence in relief, and we all go back to gushing about how the Hawks know how to pick backup goalies. Assuming that guys like Saad and Toews rebound; Sikura, DeBrincat, and Schmaltz continue to grow into Top Sixers (I’m banking on both happening); and Quenneville puts down his fucking copy of House of Leaves before he pairs his defensemen, having Crawford back makes this a playoff team.

And since we’re doing best-case scenarios, let’s go even farther. Crawford finishes as a Vezina finalist behind Jonathan Quick or some other such horseshit because the NHL drinks from the piss troughs at Wrigley before they give out awards. Pat Foley finds time in between chugging Night Train and giggling at his own jokes to heap praise on Crawford like an incel at a sex doll brothel. Eddie O. openly admits that Crawford is the best goaltender the Hawks have had since Tony O. The Hawks team up with Taco Bell to give away free cheesy gordida crunches for every Crawford shutout, and we all get 10 free cheesy gordida crunches.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Crawford disappears from hockey completely. Like a scorned lover, StanBo and Q answer all “Do you have a timeline on Crawford?” questions with a dead-eyed “Cam Ward is our goaltender.” The narrative turns to “He told us he’d be ready, but now he refuses to skate for us.” Cam Ward tosses a .870 SV% on the year, and the Hawks finish dead last in the league. Edmonton wins the draft lottery, and the Hawks name Bobby Hull as the GM. The Hawks trade Crawford and DeBrincat for Patrick Marleau and Jake Gardiner, and sign Roman Polak to a 1-year deal. Everyone eats Arby’s as we wait for the Yellowstone Caldera to explode and finally end the fucking madness.

Prediction: Because I take Crawford’s word over StanBo’s or Q’s expectations, I suspect we will start the year without Crawford between the pipes. Crawford misses the first 10 games, but comes back and posts a tidy career average .919 SV% and 2.37 GAA on the year. He drags the Hawks into the last playoff spot by himself and still has his GRIT N’ HEART questioned by people who unironically wish Scott Foster were the starting goaltender. His brilliance goes underappreciated all year, but it doesn’t matter because the Hawks squeak back into the playoffs.

It can’t rain all the time.

Everything Else

The Ballad Of Corey And Summer Break

By Sam Fels 2676 0

It wasn’t that we were ever going to learn a whole lot from the Convention and when Corey Crawford appeared (forced to appear?). If anything it only added to the confusion, and pushed us to being more convinced that when he’s not ready for the camp, or even for the season, the Hawks are going to fully put the blame on him. And it sounds like that will be more and more unfair.

Let’s get the stuff on the ground first before we try and sift through the higher-concept stuff. After the season, both Stan Bowman and Joel Quenneville said that they fully expect Corey to be ready for training camp. Q referenced “reports” they get, though who these are from or what exactly they are, no one’s going to be able to tell you.  And if you’re even more confused as to why a coach would need a “report” on his own player you’d hope he had any kind of relationship with, I’m going to have to leave you in that body of water because I have no tow-rope of an answer for you. They’re might not even be any such reports. And what’s clear now is that neither individual actually spoke to Crawford himself. Which isn’t encouraging.

Because if either had spoken to Crow, they probably would echo what the man himself said. He said that it’s a possibility he could be ready for camp, he’s progressing, he hopes he is, but that he can’t promise that. He really has no idea. So why do the coach and GM? Why are they making pronouncements that clearly don’t line up with what the player himself is feeling? The only explanation is that so they can dump this on Crow when he’s not ready, except at no point did either Stan or Q say, “Corey has told us he’ll be ready for camp.” They just said it, based on these nebulous “reports.” And I guess they want us top believe either that they don’t have Corey’s phone number and can’t ask him themselves, they never called him, or he didn’t return their calls/texts. Quite frankly, it’s a load of shit and when the Hawks try and pin this on Crow you should be angry at them, not at the player.

It’s easy to understand the frustration of the ambiguity of this. But you also get the impression that Crawford and the Hawks are dealing with something not all that common, and that’s if we leave it as just head trauma. If he blows out a knee or requires rotator cuff surgery, we have some frame of reference for the recovery of that. What we clearly have entered into here is something that can’t be tracked or has little precedence.

It won’t do any good to dip more than a toe into the pool of simply wild rumors and innuendos about what’s going on with Crow (hmm, that’s a lot of water references. Doesn’t that mean death in dreams? I’m in some trouble here). Some of it is really out there. But if even a shred of them have some truth, then this is a deeply personal thing, and quite frankly we don’t have this right to know exactly what’s going on. Even just a head injury is personal in that A. recovery from it is completely dependent on the player B. the risks are so great. Perhaps some players can plow through the idea that their life will be forever changed after they’re done playing (and when you’re over 30 as Crow is that’s really not all that far away), but there shouldn’t be an derision of a player who is also considering that in their recovery to make sure they’re 100%. Considering all that Crow has already accomplished–two Cups, what should have been a Conn Smythe, a couple of Jennings’ trophies, a World Cup and representing his country–he could be forgiven if he spent a little time wondering if there was that much left for him to do and whether putting his long term health and happiness on the line was really worth it.

Quite simply, if Crow is dealing with more than that–and I have honestly no idea if he is and no one I know who is plugged is seems to either, but we all hear the same whispers from the hinterlands to the jackass at the rink bar–than the Hawks seemingly pinning this on him is wholly wrong. And it was wrong when they did it after the famous Rise Against show, though they might not have known everything they were dealing with then. If there is something personal at work here–and again, I have no idea if that’s the case–I don’t see how saying one thing about him and then having him to at least tamp that down himself so that he looks like he’s not living up to expectations helps him in any way. It shows a nearly unconscionable lack of understanding. And maybe from that Rise Against happening there’s always been a separation between Crow and the Hawks and a lack of trust from both sides.

And I don’t know what the point of having him at the Convention was, either. There isn’t anyone who is or isn’t going to buy a ticket to that museum of freaks based on whether Crawford is going to be there or not. Having him there means he’s going to have to talk, and this is a situation where more quotes really aren’t going to help. And if he wasn’t going to parrot the message the Hawks have been sending out all summer, why did they send out that message? At least Crow knows he’s important enough that he doesn’t have to go along with what they’ve said about him, but this is yet another thing the Hawks have completely borked and ended up with several substances on their hands and no handiwipes around.

Sure, Hawks fans are getting a bit riled because there’s so little information we can trust out there. But at the end of the day, is it really our business? Do we have that “right?” I don’t think we do, especially when it comes to certain ailments or problems. If the Hawks were going to be vague anyway, they could have protected Corey better by saying something more like, “He’s dealing with a serious injury/matter/issue/whatever, we and him both hope he’s ready for camp but the most important thing is that Corey takes care of himself, and we support him fully in whatever he feels he needs to do that.” Instead we get this, team and player saying different things and no one knows where to turn. How is this better?

-So this is the point where things will go a bit dark around here. August is clearly the dead month on the hockey calendar, and we could all use the a break. If something happens, we’ll of course write about it. If Hess wants to bitch about Colts training camp, and you know he does, he’ll write about it. If Pullega needs to put a curse on all of us, he’ll do that. If Rose finally wants to reveal she’s Chicago Party Aunt, she’ll do that. But for the next few weeks, let’s say things will be sporadic so that we feel a bit more freshened up for training camp and season previews and all that good stuff. But don’t you worry, our Bears Roundtable before the season starts will of course be done. Anyway, take care and we’ll talk soon.