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On The Blocks

By 1492

So the frenzy begins tomorrow, and the Hawks are doing last minute stretching and warming before they pick their targets. Both Michal Rozsival and Brandon Mashinter were re-upped today for dirt cheap, barely $1.1 million between them.

The Rozsival one is slightly interesting considering that no matter how much Q loves him, he was absolutely railroaded in the playoffs last year, supposedly what he was being saved for during a regular season where he wasn’t really all that bad. How he’s going to improve in the spring, even if he plays 40-50 games. Whatever.

The Mashinter signing is frustrating because we do this every year. Every year the Hawks have some tomato can on the roster who plays too much during the season and by the playoffs Q has discarded them into the ether, basically telling you that “the element we like” means jack and shit. Or either they/Mashinter/both is an actual player now, which will get hilariously exposed. Again, doesn’t really matter.

So where do the Hawks stand, lineup wise now?

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Fare Thee Well, Chicken Hawk And Other Drafty Day Musings

By 1525

It wasn’t hard to be immediately smitten by Andrew Shaw. Within his first couple shifts as a Blackhawk, he’d already scored and gotten into a fight (guess which one Q noticed more?). You watched him skate around that first game in Philadelphia and thought, “This kid is nuts!” Hockey is probably the one sport where watching a player makes you say that, and that’s a good thing (though Willson Contreras might be carrying this tradition into baseball, and a young Charles Tillman did it for the Bears SKY POINT). In his second playoff game he ran over Mike Smith, fulfilling the fantasy of most Hawks fans (and I assume players as well). Sure, it didn’t help the Hawks much but that didn’t mean we didn’t glean a perverse joy from it.

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The Chicago Bruins

By 1635

Day late to this, was traveling yesterday so apologies for the delay.

As we spent a season watching the Hawks fuck up pretty much every chance to make themselves likable as an organization, or even appear competent in the ways of PR or understanding, yesterday’s post-trade bus-tossing of Teuvo Teravainen shouldn’t really be disappointing considering the heights of incompetence and deafness they’ve already scaled. And yet it’s another minor notch on the post showing that the Hawks aren’t really anywere near the first-class organization they love to tell us that they are. Maybe they were once again too busy filming an ad with a sick kid they use to sell tickets where they don’t tell us what disease or condition that child has and/or provide information where others might find out where to learn and help.

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It’s Hard To Leave When You Can’t Find The Floor

By 1661

Most of Hawks Nation is still clearing the cobwebs from the news that Teuvo Teravainen had to be included to rid themselves of Bryan Bickell’s contract. It’s yet another case of the Hawks choosing to go with their veteran’s floors instead of their prospects’ ceilings. Teuvo is probably the highest ceiling of the players the Hawks have had to lose next to Brandon Saad, and that’s why the sting is so great. Then again, the real sting is that while the Hawks probably HAD to lose Saad given his salary demands, they didn’t have to lose Teuvo. They decided, or more to the point Q decided, that Andrew Shaw was the higher priority.

We’ve done this before, but it’s worth examining whether that’s really the case.

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Be Here Now

By 1939

It was rumored a week or two ago but a lot of us didn’t want to believe it. The Hawks pulled the trigger on trading Bryan Bickell and having it cost them Teuvo Teravainen to do so, shipping them to Carolina for 2nd and 3rd round picks this year. Remember, Patrick Sharp can’t get you picks in return for a salary dump but Bickell and Teuvo can. MMMMMM THAT’S GOOD GM-ING!

There are various levels on which to view this, and you can’t really judge it until we see what the Hawks get to do with the cap space they now have. Though you have to ask yourself if the $1M in savings this does over simply buying out Bickell, and the $1.5M next year, is worth losing Teuvo. I don’t think it is.

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The “Irreplaceable Shaw,” Pens-Caps, Boudreau, And Other Argle Bargle

By 1713

Lotta strands floating in Ol’ Duder’s head today. Let’s see if we can’t get through it all.

-So it took me a day or two to get around to commenting on Joel Quenneville’s assertion that Andrew Shaw is “irreplaceable.” We know that Q has a loose grip on what a salary cap actually is, considering the way he spent the first month or two of the season in a strop (not Pedro, #HatToTheLeft) that Brandon Saad wasn’t around even though there was no way the Hawks could sign him for what he got. That’s unfortunate, given how much sway we’re pretty sure Q gets over personnel decisions. Or maybe he doesn’t get enough say and that’s why he shits on the ones Stan makes. But that’s not why you called.

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Leave Me Lying Here: Hawks at Blues Game 5 Preview/Dress Fitting

By 1338

Hawk Wrestler vs. old_school_blue_l

PUCK DROP: Somewhere in the neighborhood of 8:42pm

TV: NBCSN round the nation, CSN here

THE SWORD OF DEMOCLES: St. Louis Gametime

All right, let’s get the positive right here at the top. No team has put the Hawks to the sword at first time of asking since the ’09 Wings. It took the ’11 Canucks four tries, the ’12 Coyotes two, and the ’14 Kings three. Quite simply, when the Hawks haven’t won the whole fucking thing they’ve been just about the toughest out around. And that’s with rosters as or more limited than this one. This is also a Blues team that has one series win to its name in this era. So for proceedings to end tonight, both teams are going to have to do something that has gone against their recent nature.

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I Wanted To Live, So I Pretended To Die: Blues at Hawks Game 4 Preview/Taco Club

By 1434

old_school_blue_l vs. Hawk Wrestler

PUCK DROP: 8:30pm Central (more like 8:42)

TV: CSN here locally, NBCSN everywhere else

JASON HEYWARD FANCLUB: St. Louis Gametime

Blues Stats

Blues War On Ice

This all feels so familiar, mostly because the Hawks were here the last two playoff series they played. They lost a Game 3 at home to both the Ducks and Lightning, the former partially due to some baffling lineup decisions from their coach and the latter because they couldn’t find a way past a goalie who couldn’t move. That was a weird one. Anyway, how will they respond to this Game 3 loss, the first they’ve lost in regulation when leading after 40 minutes in more than two seasons?

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It Doesn’t Matter If You Think You Might Be, You Are: Hawks at Blues Game 2 Preview/Babies On Spikes Shower

By 1479

Hawk Wrestler vs. old_school_blue_l

PUCK DROP: 7pm Central (Holy shit a normal time)

TV: CSN and NBCSN

GOOD GOD DON’T GO THERE: St. Louis Gametime

Blues Stats

Blues War On Ice

It took about one game for this series to get annoying in all the ways we knew it would. The raging debate out of St. Louis is whether the Blues were physical enough, which is always the fucking debate down there and shows that no one has learned anything from the Hawks’ reign of dominance or how the one team to beat them during it actually did it. For the Chicago side, the return of Duncan Keith is the main story, and whether he will shift the balance of this series and/or change how the Blues might play it (I tend to doubt it).

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You Smoke Her Like She’s Incense: Hawks 0 – Blues 1 OT (Blues lead series 1-0)

By 1493

Boxscore

Event Summary

War On Ice

I suppose if I were on the other side of this (meaning I was about 50 pounds heavier and hell of a lot uglier and I’m not pretty now), I would say that the Hawks have scored one goal against the Blues in about 130 minutes of play the past two games against them. I would say that it doesn’t matter that the Blues are doing exactly what they shouldn’t against the Hawks, i.e. backing up and trapping and grinding, because even with Keith returning for Game 2 he’s still the only trap-buster the Hawks have. I suppose I would say that the Blues probably can play better and they still have a 1-0 lead.

But I’m not on that side, so all I can help but say is, “Haven’t we seen this before?”