Everything Else

Game #19 – Blues vs. Hawks Q&A: Once More Unto The Ugliest Breach, Dear Friends

By Sam Fels 1554 0

Brad Lee runs a gameday program, like we used to but then we either grew up or lost the light in our eyes, called St. Louis Gametime. It’s like ours if all the people who wrote ours huffed paint for lunch. Follow him on Twitter @GTBradLee.

So when are the Blues hiring Quenneville? Or can you not go down that road again?
Blues fans decided five seconds after hearing he had been fired that he was a perfect match for the Blues. Granted, it’s a wet dream at this point. Coach Connor McDavid can’t teach the Oilers how to play defense or put kid gloves on dealing with Jake Allen. Both sound like pains in the ass. The dealbreaker might be how much power the Stache wants. GM Doug Armstrong is in the first year of his new contract. A new coach would get no power. Period. And make no mistake, the Blues are one bad loss away from a coaching change…before Craig Berube is promoted from associate coach. Of course I prefer the future HoFer.
The Blues are generating barely any chances at even-strength. Why?
Because the Blues struggle to get the puck out of their own end. Because the Blues defense makes shitty exit passes out of the zone. Because the Blues dump the puck in way too much. Because only one forward line wants to play well at a time. Because Ryan O’Reilly can only do so much. Because the hockey gods hate us. Because it’s a .500 team and that’s how .500 teams play.
If it’s not firing the coach, what’s the big shakeup that clearly is coming? Or is there not one coming?
Yeo is a dead man walking. The Blues went 4-3-0 on a seven-game homestand that just ended. At one point they won three of four and Yeo actually said on the television that it didn’t feel like they had won that often. On Tuesday after practice, Yeo tried to tell the media that Jay Bouwmeester is working his way back to previous playing levels. It’s a lie. Potential shakeups: Yeo gone. Bouwmeester on long term IR. Jake Allen sent packing. Possible captaincy change. Probably only two of those are likely.
The Blues and Hawks fighting it out to stay out of the basement of the division. Honestly, doesn’t this feel like where we belong?
As the late Dennis Green would say, they are who we thought they were. And we let them off the hook. On paper, the Blues are supposed to be better than this. They aren’t. Too many core guys look exactly how they did when they got Hitchcock fired. Pushing the boss overboard has gotten easy. Common. Accepted. And it sucks. Is Yeo a good coach? Hell no. He lost the room early. Ultimately that’s his fault. But the reality is he had a partial season, a full season and this one so far. And the players couldn’t figure out a way to play hard for him in that short timespan. That’s rotten. The roots of the core of this team might be rotten. And I don’t know how they fix it without a blowtorch. As for the Hawks, long-term contracts are fun. It spreads the misery out over several years. Most expensive Blues players aren’t signed past 2020.

 

Game #19 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

You Can’t Take The Emotion Out Of It

By Sam Fels 2151 0

I didn’t realize this as I walked in to the building last night. It had been 10 years since I arrived at the United Center seeing what a new coach had in store for the Hawks. In that time, I’ve done that at Wrigley five times. If you’re the other baseball color, you’ve done that three times in that amount of time (seriously, how was Robin Ventura manager that long?). The Bears have cycled through four coaches. Strangely, the Bulls have only gone through three. It still sounds so strange to say that in that span, the Hawks were by far the most stable Chicago sports team.

So in that sense, I knew what the reaction of the UC crowd would be. There wasn’t any vitriol toward Jeremy Colliton himself, because let’s be honest, most everyone doesn’t have any idea who he is. For most Hawks fans, they’re probably only barely aware that they have a minor league team, that it’s in Rockford, and that Colliton coached it. And that might be even giving them the best of it. And that’s fine. Could most Cubs and Sox fans name their Triple-A manager in Iowa or Charlotte right now (sit down, Fifth Feather!)?

I’ve thought about this a lot the past few days. It seems in these kinds of fights, fans are almost always going to side with the coach. Because the coach is the one they see every game. He’s in front of the press every day, after practice, after games, all of it. He’s the one you get a connection to. The only example I can honestly think of that goes against that is the current Cubs, and that took Theo Epstein getting here first, having the resume he does before he even took the job, and Joe Maddon’s fascination with his own voice rubbing pretty much everyone the wrong way. How many people in this town still worship Ditka? And he was unquestionably an idiot who cost the Bears championships!

And when the Hawks were rolling, even in the middle of a season, you didn’t walk out of the arena saying to yourself, “Man, Stan Bowman really has this team humming!” You walked out marveling at how well-oiled Joel Quenneville had the machine. Because he was the one running it. He was the one actually driving the car, even if he didn’t build it. Or all of it, as we know how things worked on Madison St.

And that’s what forms the stronger, emotional bond for fans. Whether you know it or not, you see the coach’s work pretty much on a daily basis. You only really see the GM set up the board. He doesn’t move the pieces. Fans were always going to be attached to Quenneville, and to whatever extent that might have skewed or blinded them to what’s going on on the ice, that’s what the Hawks now have to navigate through.

And even if we here or just me are some of the leading voices in the Q-had-to-go camp (if not more than a little surprised at how early it came), I didn’t skip into the building last night. While I was curious and excited to see how this team will respond to Colliton (and they were faster and more creative), the overwhelming emotion was sadness. That a big part of it is all over. Not just the window or the era or however else you define it. There was a feeling, one we haven’t had much as Hawks fans over the past two or three decades, that’s now officially part of history.

Because there was a six- or seven-year stretch, maybe even eight, where the Hawks were basically the control of the group. They were stable, and in that stability were a force. You knew exactly what you were getting. Sure, there were a lot of bumps in the road and drama here and there, but for the most part the Hawks didn’t only win games, they won them methodically and coldly. Winning was just this thing they did. And the joy you got from it or the buzz came not from the wins, or not just the wins, but how ingrained or efficient or systematic those wins came. The machine just kept moving on. The assuredness that the Hawks would be good, it was now the natural state of things, you drew strength from that as a fan.

Q also rode in as something of a savior. Not in the traditional sense. But when he arrived, you knew the Hawks had an abundance of talent and were capable of something special, it was just so loose then in 2008. It was barely roped together. It was winning games back then on the sheer force of its talent, not by any system. And Quenneville banded it together into one being and momentum almost instantly, so assuredly. It was calming. It was only 19 games into his tenure here that the Hawks ripped off nine in a row, outscoring their opponents in that streak 41-12. It was barely six weeks in charge, and he already had that team capable of that kind of punch.

And whatever I might have said or thought about it at the time or now, Q was at the helm of that. Maybe he wasn’t the biggest reason, but he was doing the steering. However he got there, Q put the settings in place that kept it moving smoothly and dominantly. It felt like a lot of teams lost the game before they even hit the UC ice. Sure, maybe the suspense was gone some nights, but in the best possible way. The Hawks were going to show up, do their thing, and most teams were just about powerless to stop it. They could try everything. The Hawks did what they did and barely noticed anyone else was there. It was impersonal as it was authoritative.

And that’s gone now. Perhaps Colliton gets there one day, and we’ll get that feeling again. And maybe the journey there is just as fun as it was last time. Maybe it’s longer. Maybe it never gets there.

But that sure-feeling is gone. It has been for a while. It’s just official now. And I can understand the lashing out from those who miss it. Part of me wants to, too.

 

Everything Else

MIldewed And Smoldering, Fundamental Differing: A Timeline Of The Quenneville-Bowman Schism

By Sam Fels 3308 0

Whatever the Hawks say, it’s been an open secret to just about everyone in the league and those following the Hawks that Joel Qunneville and Stan Bowman didn’t see eye to eye. Everyone got past it because the Hawks were so successful. When that stopped, this is what you get. And their disagreements spilled everywhere. You didn’t have to have inside information to know this, because you could see how the team was deployed. I’m going to do this mostly from memory, but this is a rough outline of how things went that led to today.

2010-2011: There wasn’t much to be done here. The season before had gone so swimmingly, aside from Quenneville starting the season with John Madden as a Patrick Kane’s center. But that was Tallon’s signing, and it only last two or three games. So we move to this particular season, and after the roster was gutted due to the cap. And there wasn’t much Q could do when half or more of his team spend about seven minutes sober. Duncan Keith admitted he wasn’t totally focused during this season, and I guess if you wanted to you could pin it on Q to have run a tighter ship. But that would have been awfully tough.

If you want to look deeper, the immediate promotion of Nick Leddy to pair with Duncan Keith didn’t make a lot of sense. The acquisition of Michael Frolik was a tad confusing, as he was billed as a center, which came as news to him. Q tried him there but quickly moved him to wing, which is what he was and is. He bounced all over the lineup. Marcus Kruger came over at the end of the season, which is when “The Plan All Along” was born. This season went about as it should.

Oh wait, did I mention John Scott on the power play in the playoffs? Yeah, there was that.

2011-2012: This is where the real trouble starts. The year started with Q moving Patrick Kane to center. You could definitely argue that there were few other options, as this was when Patrick Sharp basically decided he didn’t want to play center anymore, Dave Bolland wasn’t cut out for it, and anyone else they tried was pants. This was the offseason that Stan brought it Andrew Brunette, Steve Montador, and Jamal Mayers. Montador started as a scratch and on the wing. Eventually Toews got hurt and Sharp and Kane basically had to play center, and it was better than you remember. Montador was never a fit and then had his devastating head injuries, which had fatal consequences. Andrew Shaw came up in the middle of the year. Niklas Hjalmarsson was a disaster. Johnny Oduya came in midseason, but he wasn’t much better, especially in the playoffs.

You’ll also recall it was in the spring of this season that Stan sent Barry Smith into practice and onto the staff to fix a dysfunctional power play (sounds familiar) which did not go over well. Nor should it, because this was as clear a nads-cutting as you can get.

It was the summer following this season that Q nearly either was fired and went to Montreal or just left for Montreal. The Hawks were bounced for the second straight year in the 1st round. In exit interviews, the players made it clear to Bowman that they wanted Mike Kitchen out, because they thought he was A. an idiot (he is) B. a mole for Q (possibly) or C. both. Stan wanted to fire Kitchen, but Q was going to take the fall for his guy. Eventually, McDonough came down and made it clear what the lines o the authority where. He hired the GM, the GM hired the coach, the coach hired his assistants. In a “fuck you” to the players, Q fired their guy Mike Haviland and replaced him with his guy, a for-certain moron Jamie Kompon.

2013: And these problems could have really fissured if every single Hawk didn’t have a career year in the lockout season-in-a-can. But they did. The only mark you could find was it taking Daniel Carcillo to blow his knee out again to get Brandon Saad into the lineup, but once he was there he never came out.

Sure, Michal Handzus was over-promoted, but he actually did play pretty well that spring. Bickell had the playoff run that got him that contract. Whatever issues the coach and GM had were washed away in confetti.

2013-2014: Again, there are only little things here. Starting a tradition, a failing tradition mind, of bringing former players back, Kris Versteeg was re-acquired in November. Andrew Shaw and Handzus bounced between taking the #2 center role, because Brandon Pirri never grabbed it even though Stan made it clear he wanted him to. This was also the first season that Brent Seabrook was pretty damn bloated. It was the season that ended when Q tried to steal an overtime shift with Handzus, Bollig, and Versteeg on an offensive zone draw after an icing in overtime. You know the rest.

2014-2015: Brad Richards was signed to finally anchor the #2 center role that had been in darkness for years. But it took ten games or more to get him there because Q insisted on putting Shaw there. Everything went just about swimmingly until Patrick Kane got hurt and missed the last six weeks. Teuvo Teravainen was called up for good in his absence. He bounces between center and wing and various lines. Antoine Vermette was acquired, and he had the same fate. Kimmo Timonen was actually dead. This was the spring that Q scratched Teuvo and Vermette in Game 3 against Anaheim. They went on to score four of the biggest goals the rest of the way to win a Cup.

2015-2016: It was basically over after this. Brandon Saad was traded because he got expensive and the coach was never sold, and this was the height of Q getting personnel say. Johnny Oduya left and proceeded to age 80 years. Kane and Panarin dragged the Hawks to a playoff spot but Toews was starting his decline and the defense never found anyone to replace Oduya. It was the full TVR Experience. Fleischmann and Weise were acquired at the deadline at the cost of Phillip Danault, and both were scratches before the season was out. Hawks bounced in first round.

2016-2017: Hawks finish first but are gassed by the time the playoffs roll around and a terrible matchup with Nashville. Defense is still thin and slowing, and Oduya’s reacquisition didn’t come close to helping with that. Hjalmarsson can’t keep up with the Preds. Toews is still nowhere and is eaten alive by Ryan Johansen (you’ll be shocked to hear Johansen was playing for a contract then). Schmaltz, Hartman, Forsling, and other kids can’t seem to find a home in the lineup.

And of course this led to the trade of Hjalmarsson right from under Q’s nose, as well as Panarin. This was the organization giving control back to Bowman, which is where the trail to today basically really gets going.

Everything Else

It’s All Over Now, Baby Q

By Sam Fels 5443 0

It was always going to end like this. It shouldn’t have ended like this.

You knew from the summer on it was going to be some kind of American Gladiator obstacle (or do I say Titan Games now?) for Joel Quenneville to finish this season. The Hawks hadn’t won a playoff game in two years, which in some ways is eons in this hockey world and also how the Hawks see themselves. There had to be a turnaround and quickly.

For that turnaround, Corey Crawford had to return and not be rusty at all from jump street (hasn’t happened). Every young kid on the roster would have to take at least a step forward, if not a leap (incomplete there). Every veteran would have to rediscover some kind of form from three to four to five years ago (Toews yes, Saad sorta, Keith no, Seabrook whatever). And they would have to do that for 82 games. Well, we’re at Game #15 and you know how it’s gone.

Better yet, let my compadre Matt McClure sum it up best:

It is kind of clear that Q never quite adjusted to what the NHL and how his roster fit into that had become. And we can debate whether or not the Hawks tried to change how the defend in their own zone this season, though with how bewildered Keith has looked at times there obviously have been changes. But the game’s speed no longer allows for the intricate exits the Hawks perfected when they were the league’s leading light. Even if it did, the Hawks don’t have the players with the precision to pull it off. And yet for most of the past two seasons, that’s what they’ve been trying to do. You see the results.

These days, it’s not really about that. It’s get it out and get it up, and have your d-men follow in behind. Unless they can do it all themselves like the pack in Nashville or San Jose can. The Hawks don’t have that. But they’re trying neither. The last three years have seen teams with blue lines led by Nate Schmidt or Brian Dumoulin or Matt Niskanen play for Cups. You can take your lack of depth back there out of the equation if you play it right.

That doesn’t mean if the Hawks emulated what the Penguins or Knights did in style they’d be good now. What was clear is that what the Hawks are doing doesn’t work and they have to try anything else. Q isn’t about trying anything else. And really, why would he? His ways have gotten him just a fair amount of silverware. He might tweak things here or there, but massive changes aren’t his bag. They never needed to be.

It’s deeper than that. The Hawks are way too easy to get through the neutral zone on, and with the speed and exuberance they have at forward, that shouldn’t be. The power play we could go over, and yes the Hawks won in the past without one, but this team needs one and the coaches have never had an answer for it. It’s why there’s a new personnel grouping every opportunity. They’ve been throwing shit at a wall for years.

There’s more. Don’t think the treatment of players like Michal Kempny doesn’t factor into this. There’s no way it didn’t absolutely enrage Stan to see what Kempny became in DC and there being utterly no excuse for him to not be used here. Connor Murphy’s early treatment might also fall into this category. Scratching Nick Schmaltz after being stuck on a line with two bozos for a run of games could fall here as well. Do we want to go through the TVR Experience again?

They won’t say it, but you could see where the veterans might need a new voice as well. The constant line shuffling the past couple years seemed to only generate eye-rolls from Toews and Kane and the like, at least on the ice. Seabrook’s determination to be in the best shape over the past few years wouldn’t suggest locked-in focus, would it?

That doesn’t mean Q is all to blame, or even close. I’ve become a house-clearing guy (not the Ed McMahon thing, you ninny) for a while now. To me, the extension of Jan Rutta and signing of Brandon Manning at all are fireable offenses on their own. But reasonably, there’s only so much you can do with this roster. There are maybe four NHL d-men on this team.  One is 19. One is a fading legend. One is Seabrook, and the other is Erik Gustafsson, who in reality is a #6 on any team worth a shit. That changes when Murphy is healthy, but no one seems to know when that will be or what that will even look like with a back injury in tow. Ask Dave Bolland how that tends to go, and he wasn’t 6-5.

There are what, seven NHL forwards? Toews, Kane, Saad, Top Cat, Schmaltz, Anisimov (barely)…Kampf? We can say Kahun based on what we’ve seen, but there’s a long way to go before that’s official. Again, there wasn’t much to work with.

What I won’t do is what the Kings and their fans claimed after John Stevens got axed, and that the problem was the team was lifeless or the like. The Hawks never did look like they didn’t care, at least most of the time. They just looked like they were running a playbook from another era of the NHL, which basically they were.

Jeremy Colliton has a near-impossible job as well, and I can’t even begin to think what the bar for success the Hawks have in mind for him. He’s going to have to sell what he wants and quickly to Keith (who is older than Colliton), Seabrook, Crawford, Kane, and Toews, and you can’t find a more accomplished group of veterans anywhere in the league (outside of Pittsburgh, and there’s only three of them). If they’re not on board, you’re pretty much fucked. He has to get a raft of young players to play above themselves to make anything of this season, having never done so in the NHL. He’s only been in the AHL a year-plus.

Still, this is a team that could do with just something different. You could see the boredom and familiarity with their play at times the past few years. I imagine Dylan Sikura is up soon, and when he is, it’s not like the forwards are slow. Get Schmaltz back to center, get up the ice and let’s just go.

It was obvious where this season was heading. This was the one trigger to pull to try and head it off somewhere else. After what Joel Quenneville accomplished here, he clearly deserved a better ending. But coaches, in any sport, almost never get those. Down the road, in a few years, he’ll get his banner night here. And the ending will be forgotten.

It was always going to end like this, because it almost always does.

 

 

Everything Else

Defending Your Life, And Losing

By Sam Fels 1857 0

I don’t know that we’ll make it strict blog policy, but I think it’s important that when analyzing and discussing the Hawks we always keep in mind their “real” record. That’s hard to decipher in the NHL at times, as they do everything they can to ensure the standings are what are interpreted as what a team really is. So the OT results can cloud things a bit, or sometimes more so. Right now, the Hawks are a 3-5-6 team. That’s essentially what they’ve earned. They have six ties, and three regulation wins: in Columbus where they were severely outplayed for most of it, and over the Ducks and Rangers who both suck eggs. If viewed through that prism, then recent results don’t really surprise.

Coming into this season, the biggest problem the Hawks had was that they were a bad defensive team last year. And that’s being kind. You might be tempted to describe them as “abominable” defensively. While the goaltending was awful without Corey Crawford, no one was pretending that he wasn’t Atlas-ing a very creaky if not downright faulty ship. The team didn’t seem to lie to you about it either, as they knew they were terrible in their own end and the neutral zone. Clearly changes had to be made not just personnel-wise, but structurally as well.

We’ll get to those changes in a minute, but the story so far is that they haven’t worked. The amount of attempts the Hawks give up at even-strength has gone from 58.1 per 60 to 58.0. Not exactly a cataclysmic improvement. Their shots against per 60 at evens has gone from 32.1 to 31.8. Again, an improvement but not enough and still one of the worst marks around. And their expected goals against per 60 has actually gotten worse, and by a noticeable margin, from 2.54 per 60 last year to 2.74 this year (about an 8% increase). So even if they’re giving up a shade less attempts and shots, they’re giving up even better chances than they did last year, and last year was a veritable waterfall of chances against (which you shouldn’t go chasing, as you well know by now).

What’s been clear in the season’s first 14 games is that Joel Quenneville appears to be trying to install a more aggressive tweak to the defensive system. It’s not an overhaul, and the Hawks were always aggressive–trying to stop rushes ahead of their line, going into the corners and half-boards as the slightest sign of an opening, etc.–as well as going with a more zonal system. But now the Hawks, at times, send two guys after the puck, are chasing behind their own net far more than I can remember, and are trying to step up even higher into the neutral zone.

The question one might ask is if this is a prudent change with a defense that overall has gotten even slower. Because the Hawks just don’t get there, which is leaving even bigger gaps than they had last year. Let’s look at some goals from recent games. Now, the following may seem like we’re trying to single out Brandon Manning, and we’re not….well, ok, that’s not the sole intention. But he is a good example of a player ill-suited to what the Hawks are trying to accomplish, or at least what I think they’re trying to accomplish. And I will admit that using a third-pairing on a mediocre team at best is cherry-picking, But there are things to learn.

Take the fourth Oilers goal last night:

Manning makes a bad pass, which is not systematic. There’s a turnover at the blue line. Davidson, who’s already cheating to the middle before, is by far the closer to the play and cuts across. Because Manning was already backing up when passing and is somewhere near his left circle, the read should be his partner cutting across and Manning being something of a free-safety. Instead, much like Gallahad, Manning comes charging to where Davidson and a Hawks forward already are, leaving an entire side of the ice open. And because it’s Brandons EAT ARBY’S, they both get beat and it’s a 2-on-0.

Let’s move back to Wednesday:

Again, it’s Manning and Davidson. Manning wants to step up on Granlund before his own blue line, but his gap to start before the pass even heads to Granlund is too big. And because he’s slow and a clod, he gets turned trying to make it up too late, leaving Davidson with about two and a half guys to cover.

But it’s not just them. Take St. Louis’s second goal on Saturday:

Jokiharju goes chasing the puck and Ryan O’Reilly around and up to the boards, even though ROR is basically in the corner and can be easily “contained.” Keith is now on the right side of the net. If that’s where he’s supposed to be, then Alex DeBrincat has to be crashing down low to deal with Perron. Toews is late to cover for Jokiharju and Keith as they try and scramble, but he has about four different places to be. At the beginning, Toews was the one who seemed to think ROR was at least accounted for along the boards and isn’t expecting Jokiharju to come flying out there.

Now, this is easily the result of a teenager learning at the highest level, and mistakes you can live with. Except they’re happening multiple times a night to everyone. The amount of times the Hawks leave an entire side of the ice open per game is simply confounding. No one seems to have any idea what the other guy is going to do, and they hence end up doing everything and nothing at the same time. Communication seems to be somewhere around the level of whatever that shrieking was on the NBCSN broadcast last night

Before we start breaking glass to get our axes, these are changes that would take some time to bed in, but the clock is ticking. You’d have to think that if the Hawks still look this iffy and unsure at the end of this month, then real problems are going to need real solutions. But by that point, it may be too late.

It should also be noted that the Hawks most consistent defender from last year, Connor Murphy, is yet to play. But when you’re really depending on the return of a 6′ 5″ d-man with back problems now, who is also Connor Murphy–a fine player but nowhere near a great one– that makes a statement of its own.

Which makes the Hawks’ personnel decisions on their blue line the past couple years all the more strange. The perfect d-man for this souped-up system in their own zone of course is Michal Kempny. But I don’t want to litigate that whole thing again. The blue line is just another area where the disagreements between coach and GM and how they see how a roster should be built are clear. Stan Bowman liked Kempny, and brought him back for a second year even though he spent the first being spit on by Quenneville. But when that didn’t work, Stan has provided Q with Jan Rutta and Manning, which more and more seem like decisions with a “Fine, here are the fucking monoliths you prefer” tinge of attitude to them. And Q’s now running a defensive system based on what he thinks Stan wanted with the players he was stuck with.

That’s all just a theory, and not even all that likely. On the ground, what we know is that Stan tried to make the blue line more mobile last year with bringing back Kempny and swapping out Hjalmarsson for Murphy. And this year he’s made it less so by bringing back Rutta and bringing in Manning. They were forced into playing Jokiharju, who isn’t really all that quick either, just smart though learning the hard way.

At the end of the day, through their performance, decisions, changes, and whatever else, none of it really makes sense.

 

Everything Else

History Is Told By The Winners

By Sam Fels 2228 0

It’s not that it matters much, because it’s so far in the past. Doing revisionist stuff isn’t really healthy or prudent, but sometimes I can’t help it. And however it went down, the Blackhawks hiring of Joel Quenneville will go down as a seminal moment in Hawks history. It clearly could not have worked out better, no matter what our complaints and grievances have been along the way.

But I gotta tell ya, this “Oral History Of Quenneville’s Hiring” by Scott Powers is hilarious in parts. And that’s no fault of Scott’s, who is a friend and supporter of ours. He’s just recording what people said. What those people said though is just…oh my god, I can’t even.

Let’s go through some of it, shall we?

John McDonough, Blackhawks president: I can’t recall exactly, but I didn’t think we had a great camp. I don’t think I was alone in that thinking.

Right here, second quote of the article. I nearly fell off the couch reading this. Remember that when John McDonough was hired, which was less than a year before Savard’s firing and Q’s hiring, he made it clear he was not part of hockey operations. That wasn’t his duty or bag. He wanted you to know that. He would leave that to the hockey people.

So now all of the sudden he thinks the Hawks are having a bad camp? I mean, yeah, sure, he’s in the building and he’s watching practice and games I guess but…HOW THE FUCK WOULD HE KNOW?! What’s he comparing it to? He’d been in the job less than a year! What, did he do what he did for the Hawks game presentation and go around to every other team’s training camp and rip off what they were doing?

Again, this worked out incredibly well. But either McDonough is again trying to throw himself all over the credit for this hire, and/or he’s lying to you now or he was lying to you then. Or both! I just couldn’t let this one go.

Whenever something has gone right on the ice, McDonough does a reasonable impression of Usain Bolt to get in the way of any praise. This reminds me of the video of their second Cup win, when everyone is being interviewed about the 17 seconds. And McD is there to tell you the Bruins should have taken a timeout after Bickell’s goal. Oh, you think so, Toe McDonough? Your advanced hockey mind told you that?

Dale Tallon, Blackhawks general manager: It was kind of the end of the year and moving into the summer and into training camp, you hear things, and you develop and gather information and you go from there. It’s a day-to-day situation in our business. You’re only as good as your last game it seems.

You can see where Tallon knew he was fucked. Read between the lines here and what he’s saying is that McDonough and Rocky Wirtz hired Scotty Bowman as a consultant, because neither of them knew hockey from their ass, and essentially what Bowman told them was I can’t tell you what you’ve got on your roster until you’ve got a real coach running a real system, something Savard wasn’t and wasn’t doing. Oh and my son happens to be in the front office…

Remember that Tallon was also kind of forced to have Savard replace Trent Yawney. Savard was foisted upon SEVEN DIFFERENT COACHES as an assistant by Bill Wirtz. He was the pet project. When Tallon wanted to fire Yawney, Wirtz wasn’t about to pay two separate head coaches, so it was finally time to anoint Savvy. I’m not sure it was Tallon’s first choice, but it was his only choice. But it was yet another thing they could cuff to him when it came time to torpedo him a year later.

Brent Seabrook, Blackhawks defenseman: I remember playing like, I think Dunc (Duncan Keith), Soupy (Brian Campbell) and myself we all played 30 minutes a night the first three games and one of those was back to back. I remember being exhausted. So I don’t know if that was anything or what it was. It was probably nothing, probably just trying to win games.

You can see the problem. Also, under Savvy a lot of other teams thought the Hawks were horribly conditioned. You might recall a lot of blown leads the season before.

Stan Bowman, Blackhawks assistant general manager: The vibe that I remember was this didn’t have a feel like it was going to work in terms of Savy’s strengths as a coach, and I had known him for a long time because he had been with us for a while as an assistant coach. I just think sometimes your strength as an assistant doesn’t always translate over into being a strength of a head coach.

“I thought he was an idiot, so did everyone else, and I certainly wasn’t going to work with him when they gave me this job, which was going to be pretty soon.”

Bergevin: I said to him in the meantime, I said, “Joel, would you like to do some scouting?” He said, “I don’t want to travel, but I could watch games.” He loves hockey obviously, he loves watching games. I said, “That’s perfect. We have a kid in college, playing for CC (Colorado College), I believe, fast guy, I can’t remember his name, winger, left winger (Billy Sweatt).” He said, “I’ll watch some games in Colorado. If Dale wants that, I’ll just be like a part-time scout.”

I love this. They hired Joel Quenneville. To scout Bill Sweatt. Bill Sweatt. This is the story they’re giving you. They want you to believe this. Sidenote: Bill Sweatt just replaced the oil on your car.

Hmmm… I wonder what else might have happened in the fall of 2008 to keep the Hawks from making this move before the season started? What could it be? Just can’t put my finger on it…

To be fair, this arrest was already after camp had begun for the Hawks. So maybe this was the plan all along. But…come on. Look, the Hawks had a buzz, even after missing the playoffs the year before., Everyone around town knew big things were happening. And they were terrified of any bad buzz encroaching upon it. So maybe firing your coach who was the team’s most popular player for a decade and a half wasn’t something they had the total stomach for. Replacing him with someone who just had a DUI would have made it worse. They didn’t want anything to ruin the momentum.

But I’ll let you decide what you believe more.

Brent Sopel, Blackhawks defenseman: Having Joel on the staff, you knew something was going to happen at some point and time. You don’t bring Joel Quenneville, a guy who had been around the league and was known for what he had done all those years, you don’t put him on a staff. I felt at some point and time he was going to be the coach. When that was? Was that going to be in two weeks, two months, two years? But that was the feeling that I got.

Torchetti: I think we kind of got our ears up. I think everybody knew that.

Now here are two people giving you the straight dope.

McDonough: I think it was a combination of both. I think the decision that we were going to do this, this was imminent, but it helped that we felt we had somebody that would be a good fit. We did not plan on going the interim route, bringing somebody in as a temporary. We thought we had the right guy. I think history now says we do have the right guy and it’s worked out.

Don’t pull a muscle patting yourself on the back there, McD.

I mean, this tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it? We’re not going the interim route? You wouldn’t hire a guy you’re going to keep around for years on the fly. You would have done your research. This was the plan.

Rick Dudley: There’s a couple things I believe. I believed we all believed Savy could be successful in the National Hockey League. I believe Dale did. I believe all of us believed that.

How’s that working out?

None of this really matters. It worked out. It was the right move. And maybe one day, 10 years from now, we’ll get the real story and a bunch of other real stories about what really went down with this team. It’s just kind of amazing they’re still pushing the super polished version of events.

But hey, when you do what they’ve done, you get tell your story how you want it.

Everything Else

Let’s Just Go Straight To The Load Jokes

By Sam Fels 1944 0

It’s just easier that way.

It would be silly to draw any massive conclusions from just three games. Even 10 wouldn’t be nearly enough. We don’t know anything about the Hawks yet, except that they’ve been entertaining as hell, and Brandon Manning and Cam Ward are terrible. The first is something of a surprise. The latter two are depressingly not.

But one thought I’ve had over these three games, pretty much thanks to the bonkers trio of efforts that Jonathan Toews has been able to put together, is that when the Hawks’ top six is out there, or the top-pairing (usually at the same time), the Hawks aren’t a bad team. Their underlying numbers are simply surreal, they’re scoring almost all of the goals, and they’ve been fun to watch.

What’s clear is that so far, Joel Quenneville knows this as well. Which is why he’s basically only used his fourth-line when he absolutely has to, and even then we can be pretty sure his ass is puckered up tight. I can’t say I know that, because quite frankly I don’t want to be considered an expert on the state of Joel Quenneville’s ass-elasticity.

It’s a sound strategy, because the fourth line has been getting their dicks knocked in the dirt on the reg. While every other forward on the roster has gotten at least 35 minutes of ice-time in the three games, none of the players who are on the fourth have gotten even 25.

This has always been a debate in hockey lately. With TV timeouts as they are and the shape players are in, can you ride your better players more and leave the fourth-line to be something you only close your eyes, point at to go out there, and tell your assistants to tell you when it’s over? Sure, it’s a real advantage when you can use your fourth-line for real purposes, and a staple of past Hawks’ champions was that their fourth-line was actually taking checking line duties thanks to the unicorn nature of Marcus Kruger. Well, he’s on a wing now staring at SuckBag Johnson quizzically, so that’s not an option at the moment.

The defense has been more spread out. In terms of percentage, only Seabrook and Manning are getting less than 30%, with Keith and Jokiharju gobbling up the extra at 37% and 35%k respectively. This is mostly due to Seabrook and Manning getting the dungeon shifts, as they’ve only started a third of their shifts in the offensive zone and mostly have been restricted to their own. And while it might not seem like it, the Hawks have been starting most shifts in the other end. No, I don’t get it either.

The forwards are a little more skewed in percentages, as you might guess. As a frame of reference, obviously your pivot points is 25%, if you were to divide all even-strength time into quarters, one for each line. Well, Kane and Schmaltz are at 34% and 31%, with Saad at 29%. Toews and DeBrincat are at 28% or thereabouts, as Dominik Kahun has gotten some shifts off here and there. The third-line is right at the 25% mark, or just a tick below, and the fourth-line is all below 20% of the time at even-strength possible.

The Hawks are top-heavy. We know this. What I was curious about is how teams that have just accented to their top six as much and how they’ve done while doing so.

Last season, in terms of time-on-ice-percentage (again, the portion of even-strength time available given to a certain player), Connor McDavid was the leader at 33%. This isn’t a huge surprise, given that he’s the league’s best player and all. The problems there is that the Oilers sucked. After him it was Henrik Zetterberg. And yep, the Wings sure did suck as well. Up next was Alex Radulov. And the Stars might not have sucked, but they probably had the “S,” “U,” and most of the “C” in “suck” lined up. Anze Kopitar was next on the list, and though the Kings did actually make the playoffs for four minutes, they weren’t any good either. Patrick Kane is after that, and well, we don’t need to finish this thought.

Rounding out the top-10 last year in TOI% are Artemi Panarin, Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, Rickard Rakell, and Sasha Barkov. All of those players are on good teams! All of the top-10 clicked in at 31% or more.

Going back two seasons ago, Patrick Kane led the league in TOI% at 33.8%. McDavid was next, followed by Mark Scheifele, Ryan Getzlaf, Zetterberg, Jack Eichel, Taylor Hall, Vincent Trochek, John Tavares, and Nikita Kucherov. Some duds in there, but mostly playoff teams.

Of course, this really only tells us what happens when a team leans on one or two players a ton and not a top six. But clearly these players are bringing top six lines along with them for their extra shifts.

A quirk of this category is that in the past five years, Patrick Kane owns the three of the five largest percentages. The fourth-largest share of shifts was given to Jonathan Marchessault last year, which made sense because all that line did was score.

We’ll have to dive deeper into this as the season goes on and Joel Quenneville’s strategy becomes clearer. What’s obvious is that having to basically get your top six out there as much as possible isn’t ideal, but you can be a playoff team with it. What you probably can’t be is a Cup team, but no one’s expecting that around here.

Everything Else

Game #1 – Hawks vs. Senators Preview: Unto The Breach

By Sam Fels 1855 0

 vs.   

PUCK DROP: 6:30pm Central

TV: WGN

S-E-N SPELLS SEN: Silver Seven Sens

Whether you like it or not, the Hawks will kick off their season tonight. For better or worse…and it’s worse. It’s already worse, as #3 goalie Anton Forsberg–who would have backed up Cam Ward tonight and probably had a decent shot of usurping him to get some starts before Crawford returns–went TWANG! at the morning skate and now Collin Delia is currently on his way to Ottawa. That’s how you kick this pig!

There’s really no way to mask this anymore: The Hawks lineup sucks. The top-six you could make a case for, and I’ll admit to being awfully interested in seeing what Alex DeBrincat can do with Jonathan Toews, and what this Brandon Saad – Nick Schmaltz – Patrick Kane line can do. That could be fun! Maybe Dominik Kahun is more than just a German Tony Salmaleinen? We’ll find out. Toes has needed a playmaker for a while now and we know Top Cat can do that. If Kahun is anything, and that’s a pothole-filling “if,” that line could surprise. Saad and Kane have torn a hole in the Earth together before, but that was a long time ago now. But hey, I love things that are old. Except myself.

But after that? You would read the names of these two lines to a misbehaving kid to punish him. “If you don’t start paying attention in physics I’m going to list out the Hawks’ bottom six repeatedly!”

“NO! NO! I promise I will! I love Newton’s third law! I’m totally gonna opposite reaction in this bitch!”

Artem Anisimov and Chris Kunitz on the third line is aching to be scorched. But then again anytime Arty is on a line that doesn’t include Patrick Kane it’s the same story. For some reason Marcus Kruger has moved to a wing to accommodate Luke Johnson. Q is moving a favorite toy so make way for SuckBag Johnson. Let’s all think about that for a minute and then die. David Kampf and John Hayden are here because the rules state someone has to. This is the second straight season that Hayden has “looked great in camp,” so his seven goals on the year will be even more special this time around.

As for the blue line…I mean do you want us to? Fine. Duncan Keith and Henri Jokiharju are the top-pairing. It really could be anything. The fading star and the possibly-overmatched-but-exciting kid. Keith has never been apt to be the more conservative partner in a pairing, and I’m not sure he has to be here. Maybe let both of them do their thing and just see what the hell happens. What do you have to lose? We’ll see how Keith takes to it but it would be a first if he were to rein his game in to let someone else be the aggressor. But hey, stranger things have happened…is what I’m contractually obligated to say here.

Beyond that…well, Erik Gustafsson and Brent Seabrook are the second-pairing. If this was Seabrook five years ago, you’d be about that. But now he can’t cover for Cowboy Goose and Seabs himself has some cowboy leanings that his sloth-like foot-speed hasn’t dissuaded him from. Goose showed something toward the end of last season, and of course he has the lucky charm of the “Fels Motherfuck” (TM) which should carry him to a Norris, obvi. Still, the Hawks haven’t given up on him even though he’s 26 now and we’ve seen them discard a host of prospects before reaching that age so they must think there can be a middle-pairing puck-mover in there somewhere.

As for the third pairing…

Luckily, the Senators are not a team that’s going to make anyone pay for their various roster misdeeds. Anyone who’s worth anything is either a neophyte (Brady Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot), or a veteran who is simply waiting for his cell to ring to tell him he’s been released from this hockey malebolge (Matt Duchene, Mark Stone). Put it this way: Zack Smith was on waivers two weeks ago and is now the #2 center. That’s a life lesson right there, mister man.

Clearly, it’s going to be a long damn season in Ottawa, which just about no one is going to notice in retaliation against the owner/avoiding the trip to Purgatory-In-Reality Kanata. And the hockey will be even more boring as Guy Boucher is only going to be more convinced to trap even more given the talent discrepancy he’ll face on most nights. Most Senators games are going to look like what Steelers-Ravens games will look like in three years. You’ve had booster shots you enjoyed more.

The Senators will hope to get a promising season out of Thomas Chabot, a step from Ryan Dzingel (LOCAL GUY), and basically hope a couple other veterans can spasm a few goals to be trade bait at the deadline. But hey, they’re one of the few teams to figure out that you have to bottom out on purpose to get back up the mountain.

So I suppose it’s the perfect starting point for the Hawks. They can rack up a win and at least feel like maybe they could start to build some momentum before some very tough games this weekend. If the Hawks were to start 0-3, and you never know, then they’ll already be feeling like they’re fucked without any of the usual fun and Joel Quenneville will be facing questions about his job before he’s even through a week. Let’s try and put that off as long as we can, even though we know it’s coming.

 

Game #1 Preview Posts

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups And How They Were Built

Live From The Five Hole

Live From The Five Hole – What A Time To Be Barely Alive

By Matt McClure 1877 0

It’s a new season, and for the most part that’s probably not a good thing. But there’s a full cast here to discuss it anyway, with John Pullega and Rose Rankin joining in to discuss the slog that’s in store this year. This podcast will probably be more entertaining than the game in Ottawa, trust us. As always, it’s free to everyone, and available for download here along with various other outlets.