So I could go on about the Hawks problems on the blue line, with all of the bottom four taking turns technicolor yawning to let a goal in. Or the Hawks lack of a bottom six. But we’ve all been over that. So we’ll just go anti-DLR here. This is pretty much the sound of Seabrook trying to move in musical form anyway.
As the Hawks and specifically Stan Bowman barrel into trade deadline week, we here at the lab are not only discussing names and proposals but how it fits in with the overall window of the Hawks. It becomes a more and more philosophical discussion, as well as trying to figure out what the actual length is. I’m sure it’s a discussion Bowman and assistants and scouts are having every day, just how much do you shorten the window on the back end for this chance this year?
Last year’s championship basically puts the Hawks on house money. As first-hockey-world problem as it might sound. two Cups wouldn’t have sounded like enough when we look back in 10 or 20 years (though ask Bears fans what a second championship would have felt like in the 80s). A third though puts the Hawks in rarified air, even if they don’t compare to what came before. In my lifetime, only three teams have bunched three Cups or more together, the Oilers, the Devils, and the Wings. Even the Avs in the late 90s, as stacked as they were, only managed two. So even if the Hawks didn’t win again in the Daydream Nation era, three in six basically lives forever.
at 
Game Time: 8:00PM Central
TV/Radio: CSN, WGN-AM 720
Summit County Mountain Retreats: Mile High Hockey
Now that the league and all of its fans are done treating a 6’8″, 265 lb., 33 year old man with a mechanical engineering degree that he can’t wait to remind everyone he has and has punched people in the face for a living for going on the last decade (and has conservatively made $4.25 million dollars doing so) as they would a Make-A-Wish Foundation child, the games that matter can now resume. But because of more fun with the NHL rule book the Hawks are now without Jonathan Toews tonight because he had the good fortune to be sick and not have to show up for the farce in Nashville.
If you’ve watched the Hawks for even just a few years, this was not all that hard to see coming. A single road game before the break. A more than solid effort last out over a division rival that put to rest a mini-losing streak, so there wasn’t really anything to “correct” tonight. A motivated opponent that needs every point it can get with the things that the Hawks struggle with when they’re not all there (a good coach and a mobile defense). A sick captain, and it’s hard to keep a sickness restricted to just one player on a team, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if a few guys have rumbling tummies or whatever’s bugging Toews. It all added up to an effort where the Hawks looked like they were watching the clock from the opening faceoff. And that’s exactly what we got.
This harkened back to some other games. The tenets of was made the Hawks 12-game win streak were not in evidence tonight. And while it was only a one-goal game, this was as badly as the Hawks have been outplayed in a long while. Other teams had done it for a period or two during this streak, but for a whole game you’d have to go back to the loss to the Canes. The Bolts are basically the realized version of what the Canes would like to be. A high-tempo team with a couple puck-moving d-men, a band of quick, skilled forwards who play with speed at both ends. The Hawks were nowhere near tonight.
What had gotten them to this point? Let’s go through the checklist:
I was thinking tonight right before the 3rd period that at this point, the lack of drama Hawks games have when they lead going into the 3rd have. They haven’t lost one in a the past season and a half, and when they’re taking a two-goal lead into a 3rd, you basically know it’s over. This would be the very definition of hockey 1st world problems, because this is what every fandom wants. The Hawks weren’t particularly spectacular tonight, but they didn’t have to be. But at this point, no team is better at knowing exactly what it takes to get two points out of a game, and once they bunched two goals at the end of the 2nd, it was basically over.
Sometime last week I tweeted out that if Corey Crawford kept all the points he’d stolen for the Hawks this season for himself he alone would still be ahead of the Jets and Avs and Preds in the standings. You can throw one and possibly both tonight on that stack, at least for the 2nd period and parts of the 3rd.
vs. 
PUCK DROP: 6:30pm Central
TV/RADIO: CSN for the locals, NBCSN for the outer rim, WGN Radio
THE QUEBECOIS: Habs Eyes On The Prize
The Hawks will take their scorching performance art piece on the road the next two nights, and into the cradle of hockey. If you don’t believe it is, just ask the citizens of Montreal and Toronto. It’s an Original 6 week for the Hawks. What they’ll find when they get to “The Keg” is a team and fanbase that’s been pulling it’s hair out for so long and so aggressively parts of their brain are flicking out of their scalps. No one does panic quite like the Canadiens.
The Hawks moved to their sixth win in a row with a simple adjustment after 20 minutes, or at least a tightening of their usual plan. But even though the Hawks basically kept the Sabres under their thumb (it’s down to me) from the start of the second, they let them hang around and hang around. And as the Hawks should know by now, they can’t let any team hang around that has Ryan O’Reilly on it, because he will score against them. Luckily, a few minutes later Rasmus Ristolainen let Phillip Danault have far too much space entering the zone, and Danault was only too happy to gobble it up and bury the winner short-side. Throw in another Toews empty-netter to throw the mainstream off his scent of struggles, and you have yet another Hawks win.
vs
Game Time: 7:00PM
TV/Radio: NBCSN, TVAS, WGN-AM 720
Thanks Mean Joe: PensBurgh
In its infinite brilliance, the NHL schedule makers have once again knocked hammered out an interconference season series in the span of 28 hours, give or take with the time zone differential. Naturally tonight’s telecast will be the one that is nationally broadcast as a RIVALRY game, one which will likely feature the very telegenic goaltending of two backups, which seems appropriate given all of the announcements surrounding the All Star Farce earlier today.
