Hockey

Traverse City…Traverse City Lights

By Sam Fels 1607 0

I’m sure Traverse City is lovelier in the fall than I would guess or think, but it’s more fun to make fun of. Anyway, wouldn’t it be great if the NHL just combined all of these rookie tournaments somehow into one big one? Had their own Vegas Summer League thing? Probably makes too much sense.

Anyway, we’re only a week away, if you can believe it, from the 2019 Traverse City Tournament, which once again will feature the Hawks, as well as Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, the Rangers, and St. Louis. The Leafs are something of a new addition to this, thus making it THE MOST IMPORTANT PROSPECT TOURNAMENT EVER and definitely a harbinger of the four Cups in a row the Leafs are going to win in the next decade, minimum.

The Hawks announced their roster for it today, which is:

23 F Bignell, Luke***
54 F Coughlin, Liam*
77 F Dach, Kirby
55 F Element, Shawn***
58 F Entwistle, Mackenzie
38 F Hagel, Brandon
59 F Hakkarainen, Mikael
52 F Johnson, Reese
71 F Kurashev, Philipp
42 F McKay, Riley***
45 F McLaughlin, Dylan*
25 F Nurse, Isaac***
76 F Soderlund, Tim
53 F Teply, Michal
74 D Beaudin, Nicolas
27 D Boqvist, Adam
39 D Gilbert, Dennis
43 D Krys, Chad
62 D Moberg, Cole
85 D Ramsey, Jack*
75 D Ryczek, Jake
49 G Daws, Nico***
33 G Gravel, Alexis
80 G Marchand, Chase**

So, notes: Obviously, the names to watch here are Boqvist and Dach. The hope is that both completely dominate this thing (Boqvist should easily), and vault themselves into serious contention for roster spots in training camp. You get the feeling the last thing the Hawks want is for either or both of these players to make things tough on them and have to shelve a veteran (*cough* Seabrook *cough*) to put them on the ice. But it’s not like the Hawks haven’t been open to that in the past, as Alex DeBrincat just two years ago took a plus performance in Traverse City to training camp and essentially forced himself onto the Opening Night roster.

It feels like Dach has the much higher mountain to climb–imagine being so fixed on keeping Zack Smith on your team–but if he plays well enough, he’ll be harder to ignore. The floor for Boqvist seems to be he’ll end up in Rockford and just a phone call away, but either can start to change that next week.

-As you probably know, I’ll be keeping an eye on Philipp Kurashev. He’s not going to make the team out of camp but could be one of the first call-ups during the season with a couple steps. He’s got straight-ahead speed, which the Hawks still don’t have enough of even if they think they do.

-Feels like it could be a big tournament for Nicolas Beaudin. He doesn’t get mentioned like Boqvist or Ian Mitchell, but is still a first-round pick. He’s definitely headed for Rockford, and after playing in the Q his defensive game might need a total overhaul. And we’ve seen d-men start in Rockford and never get out alive. But still, if Boqvist blazes a path, Murphy and de Haan remain ouchy, Koekkoek continues to suck. and Gustafsson becomes deadline bait (which he should), there’s a way for him. Yeah, it’s a lot, and he’s got heads to turn, but it’s there.

-Entwhistle is another one who probably at least needs to make people notice a play or two. He’s not imminent of the big roster yet, but we know the Hawks love a big body (barf) and they don’t have too many who can actually play.

Hockey

Hey, Kids, Where Are You? – Thoughts On Prospects Camp

By Sam Fels 1846 0

Development Camp, or Prospects Camp, acts as an oasis in the desert of summer. The Hawks have made it an even weaker oasis in the past couple years with the week being filled with drills and practices instead of scrimmages, but they did get to the business end of it today by letting all the kids play. Though even that was watered down a bit in various man situations with some 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 thrown in for…reasons. But hey, it was some hockey, and it was something to discuss.

-The thing with these is that you kind of already know who is going to stand out. Every year, the first round picks generally look the best, because they’ve already dominated this age group basically and that’s why they’re first round picks. So yeah, it’s easy to notice Kirby Dach and Adam Boqvist, but at least alarm bells aren’t going off that you didn’t notice them.

We’ll start with Boqvist. His assist for the first goal will be replayed, as well it should, but he made two other outlet passes in the next five minutes that stood out as well. It felt like he could slice through the other team whenever he wanted and only didn’t do so to be polite.

So despite whatever Luis Robert-like reasons the Hawks give you this training camp, Boqvist’s skating and offensive game are NHL-ready now. Which to me means he should be on the team, but if they wouldn’t punt Seabrook aside for Jokiharju they aren’t going to for Boqvist just yet, even though they should. The Hawks have no one to get the puck to the forwards, no one who can skate them out of trouble, and only Gustafsson can make a play with his head up but he and Seabrook are too slow to give themselves time to do that. Boqvist could do that tomorrow. A team run the right way and not terrified of its players would put Boqvist on the third pairing right now, give him sheltered starts, and give him any of the centerfielders who can play the left side as a partner (Maatta and Murphy come to mind). But the Hawks will stash him in Rockford, saying he needs to work on his defense (where have you heard that before?). Your best hope is that he tears the AHL apart, which he probably will, and the Hawks will have no choice but to find a way to have him up by Christmas.

-Dach clearly has hands, and he wasn’t afraid to get to the net. But it’s one thing to do that against kids your age and another who’s willing to eat your heart for his paycheck. He’s not slow, but he’s not fast either, but his hands are so good I think it might make up for whatever the feet aren’t now. He also sees the ice at an NHL-level already, and I doubt it would take him long at all to adjust that to NHL speed.

-Alex Nylander didn’t do shit, so you get that taste of saganaki out yo’ damn mouf, Fifth Feather!

-Below the radar, my adopted guy Philip Kurashev looked good in flashes. If we could put his feet on Dach’s body, we’d really have something. Kurashev goes in straight lines, which is good. I’m telling you he’ll get a surprise call-up somewhere in December or January and stick. In fact, he’ll outdo Nylander easily. OUT YO’ DAMN MOUF!

Other than that, I thought Brandon Hagel looked good too, because you obviously can never have enough Brandons. Good wheels and a nose for where to be. Keep an eye on him.

-Mitchell looked good too, but he should after two years in the NCAA which is more than and higher than just about anyone else was in this camp. He made a couple nifty passes in traffic, which will be good practice for when he gets to the Hawks and whoever he’s paired with is drowning. Not a ceiling guy either, I don’t think, but a very solid floor. Then again he’s never signing so whatever.

 

Hockey

This Damn Compass Is Broken And We Don’t Know Where We’re Going

By Adam Hess 2795 0

Recently I have been reading The MVP Machine, a pretty interesting book about player development in baseball. The opening chapter delves into how the famous Moneyball story led to just about every team in baseball adopting a similar strategy in an effort to build their teams more intelligently. At one point they quote baseball analyst Phil Brinbaum, who once said, “You gain more by not being stupid than you do by being smart.” This quote stuck out to me as one that could apply far more to hockey than baseball, as there are far more GMs in hockey that work themselves into bad situations simply by being stupid rather than helping themselves out by being smart.

And lately Stan Bowman has been pretty fucking stupid.

Heading into this offseason, you would’ve been forgiven if you thought that Bowman’s shopping list was simultanesouly small and difficult to fulfill. Primarily, the Blackhawks were (read: still are) in need of at least two defensemen who could handle at least a top-4 assignment, or at least one or two who could play a much more competent third pair game than Slater Koekkoek and Gustav Forsling. They also could’ve used a more reliable backup/1A goalie, and maybe some forward depth or a top-six guy if they were lucky and the cost was right, but given that they were 8th in the NHL in goals scored but 30th in goals allowed last year, the defense clearly needed far more attention. So let’s call this shopping list: two defensemen, a goalie, and one or two versatile forwards.

On paper, you could easily say they’ve checked off this list. They traded for Calvin DeHann, Olli Maatta, and Andrew Shaw, and signed Robin Lehner and Ryan Carpenter in free agency. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that even though this group consists of two defensemen, a goalie, and two versatile (used loosely) forwards, the Hawks have done very little to actually move the needle. Maatta stinks, DeHaan could be fine but might only have one shoulder, and neither of them bring anything of value in the puck-moving department which this team also desperately needed and still needs. Lehner could be a great signing, but he’s also been streaky in his career and no one will blame you if you feel icky about him given his politics. Carpenter’s contract bring almost no risk, but he’s a nothing forward and is supposed to be the PK savior apparently even though he was Vegas’ worst penalty killer. We already know Shaw sucks ass, and if you don’t think his 2018-19 production was a fluke I have a bridge to sell you.

A lot of the justification for moves like the above were that Bowman and Coach Cool Youth Pastor apparently thought this team lacked #grit and #toughness. We had “anonymous scouts” telling us that Shaw’s brand of bullshit was fine because of his contract, which it isn’t, and his contract is too much for his role. Maybe it’s the same anonymous scout that thought Top Cat was a 20-goal-max player.

But among all of this, the Hawks passed on a widely-consiered sure thing future 1D in Bowen Byram in favor of skilled but flawed center Kirby Dach at #3 overall. And then there was Tuesday when they went and traded Henri Jokiharju for Alex Nylander. The justification for these moves, both from the Hawks and from some analysts evaluating the trade, was that the Hawks are a team that likes to bet on skill even when there are question marks. And look, in some ways that is true – they did it with guys like Saad, Top Cat, and Strome, and those have all worked out well enough. There are other examples that didn’t work, too, but overall betting on skill is the correct approach, especially in the modern age of hockey.

The problem is that passing on Byram for Dach and trading Jokiharju for Nylander both represent the same mistake – passing on/getting rid of promising defensemen in order to bet on those skilled but flawed forwards. And when you have a giant pile of the Mind Flayer’s melted flesh legions on your blue line, you’re hardly in a position to do that, regardless of how you feel about Boqvist, Mitchell, Beaudin, etc.

But the real issue is that the moves in the Maatta/DeHann/Shaw vein and the moves in the Dach/Nylander vein are contradictory. It makes very little sense to simultaneously load your team up with grinders while also betting on skilled young players, because the best way to help those young players is to surround them with other skilled players. Only a maximum of four players at a time can play with Kane and Toews, and other than those two there are very few skilled veterans on this roster that can truly elevate the talent around them. Dach might not be in the NHL this year, but the Hawks should at least plan for scenarios where he is. If Nylander isn’t, the trade looks even worse. And if both of those guys end up on the roster, you can’t really construct a lineup that maximizes their help without ending up with someone on a third line who should be much higher.

All of this is indicative of a very real and very large problem on Madison St. The Blackhawks have no clue what they are doing. They admitted it earlier this year and then again after they signed Lehner – they don’t have a plan, they’re just flying by the seat of their pants and hoping it works out. They can tell us until they’re blue in the face that they’ve like Maatta and Nylander for years. They can tell us they wanted De Haan last year (if that was the case why did you not sign him instead of Brandon Fucking Manning?). There is zero reason to believe any of it is true, or that it is anything more than lip service. They are a team without a direction, and they keep making it harder on themselves to find one.

Hockey

Hawks Make It Official, Sign Kirby Dach

By John Pullega 2428 0

The Hawks have been conspicuously quiet for the past few days, despite the facts that their blue line still sucks to high heaven and they never really filled the open spot in the top six (and if you think Andrew Shaw is that, please mail me whichever substances you’re using). So, the official signing of Kirby Dach is what we’ll hold onto for now, since he ought to be a top-six solution someday.

Dach signed a three-year entry-level deal ($925,000 per) today. The signing doesn’t mean too much new, other than the Hawks can now get their hands directly in the dirt of molding him into the Center of the Future™. Of course, Dach gave platitudes about how he wants to make the team out of camp and make management make tough decisions, which is something they’ve never been particularly good at (see Teravainen, Teuvo; Seabrook, Brent post-2015 Cup; Jokiharju, Henri), so tread lightly, Kirby.

As usual, the Hawks will have nine free games to look at Dach before he burns a year off his contract, if they choose. And unless he’s a complete mess throughout camp and the preseason, we’re hoping that the Hawks will play him over the first nine games. Remember that after the season opener against the Flyera in Czech Republic, eight of the nine games they play are at home, which is about as easy a landing as you can imagine getting, provided Beto O’Colliton plays the matchups (something he hasn’t proven to us just yet).

If he does turn out to be a mess, or if/when we start hearing about how versatile Artem Anisimov is on a wing and boy oh boy are we excited for THAT justification, Dach will go back to the WHL because of a weird rule wherein if you’re under 20 and not American, you can’t play in the AHL until either your junior season ends or you turn 20. Based on some of the signings/trades so far (Shaw, Carpenter, Kampf), you have to imagine Dach will need to blow it out of the water to even sniff the nine-game threshold, let alone playing beyond that.

We’re all sitting and hoping the see Dach in the first nine games of the season, but we aren’t holding our breath for it. The Hawks have played around the fringes the last couple of years, so it’ll be surprising if they stray from that conservativeness with Dach. If you see Artem Anisimov in another sweater before camp, things’ll get a little bit more interesting, but until then, it’s hard to see how Dach carves out any spot on the team this year, even if he does look good in camp.

They’ve got contracts and experience to play, after all.

Everything Else

Maybe They Don’t Have A Plan So They Can’t Keep Changing It

By Sam Fels 2045 0

As the weekend wore on, I sold myself more and more on the Kirby Dach pick. We’ll never know, but my hope is at #3 the Hawks wouldn’t ever pick for need. Those picks come around maybe once or twice a decade (unless you’re the Oilers), and you take the best player on your board. If for the Hawks that was Dach, fine. Any argument for Turcotte there seems equal to me as Dach at this point, and at least Dach was playing in the realest junior league. He also seems to have a higher ceiling, and I’m always here for guys who make the game look easy, as Dach does, than go-go-motor guys like Turcotte kept being advertised as. That “making it look easy” can easily devolve into just remaining on the perimeter and fading into the background of games, which is why the Getzlaf comparisons are frightening. It’s up to the Hawks to make sure that doesn’t happen.

But what bothers me about the whole drafting policy is that it seems a whole new sense of direction, and a dumb one at that. We’re only two years removed from THAT press conference after the Predators had left tire tracks all over the Hawks where Stan Bowman definitely wrestled total control of personnel from Quenneville and his cronies, and promised that this team would and had to get faster. Saad-for-Panarin didn’t really make the Hawks faster, but you could see the logic (only kind of). Murphy-for-Hammer did make them more mobile on the blue line.

And their draft kind of reflected it. Jokiharju is hardly big and is supposedly mobile, though I haven’t really seen that yet. Ian Mitchell is definitely mobile. Altybarmarkyan is small and fast. Evan Barrat isn’t even that quick and he’s small too. Same goes for Tim Soderlund.

Last year’s offseason moves are barely worth talking about, because all it really included was Bowman spiking Q with Brandon Manning. But signings like Kampf (admittedly earlier) and Kahun and other Euro signings stuck to the “getting quicker” theme. And at the draft it was Boqvist, Beaudin, Kurashev. All meant to get to playing at a quicker pace in the future, especially from the back end. They even reached on Boqvist to do that.

And now we’re here. Dach at #3, Vlasic at #43, who just happens to be 6-5 with skating concerns. Michal Teply is 6-3, and he doesn’t have the skating worries that Vlasic does but the “good speed for his size” doesn’t make you think he’s a burner.

This goes along with the rumors that the Hawks are hot after Anders Lee, who is a good player and has a fit here but is also something of a big plodder. So has there been a gear shift? And why?

The why you know, even if it is complete horseshit. I don’t know how the Hawks could buy into the theory that the Bruins and Blues grunted and farted their way to the Final through the use of viking warlords or something. Here’s the Blues top players from the playoffs, and that’s even if you think you should be using a team that missed the playoffs last year and then got sweetheart matchups all the way to the Final as some sort of model:

Schwartz, Schenn, Tarasenko, O’Reilly, Perron, Pietrangelo, and Parayko.

I guess Pietrangelo and Parayko are big and the latter plays like it, but where are these crushers at forward? Do the Hawks really think Pat Goddamn Maroon is such a difference maker they need like four of him.

Now the Bruins:

Marchand, Bergeron, Pastrnak, Krejci, McAvoy, Krug, Grzelcyk.

Chara was a fucking anchor all playoffs. Where are the monsters here as far as size? Back it out to the conference finals and you have the Canes, who simply battered Lee’s Islanders, and the Sharks. Again, where are the heathen hordes on those teams? Or on the Lightning, who did manage to be one of of the best teams ever in the much larger sample size of the regular season?

I don’t know where the Hawks think they’re going to go by getting slower. What are you going to do about Colorado on the five nights you’re lining up against MacKinnon, Rantanen, Makar, Byram, and Girard? If Nashville does sign Duchene, he is pretty damn quick if nothing else. Did Winnipeg lose speed? You’re still trying to catch up to all these teams, and you’re going to do it with Anders Lee and Olli Maatta?

Having your finger in the wind isn’t a plan, and maybe that’s why the Hawks have told you they don’t have a plan.

-The Hawks were making it seem like they really want Dach to take a spot this season, though most experts think that’s a stretch The thing is, they can shelter him just about as well as any team could. A center at 18, you’d want to keep him at the offensive end as often as possible. Which means you’d have to have Kampf and Toews take most of the defensive zone shifts. And you can do that, but is that what Toews is anymore? He could do it, but you’d lose a fair amount of offense from him because he’s no longer the guy who can continually flip the ice. Maybe he’s got one more year of doing that in him, but I’m skeptical.

And who would Toews do that with? Saad in theory, but then who? Would be a waste of Kane (and don’t be surprised if you never see Kane and Saad on a line together ever again) or DeBrincat. Is that what Lee would be for? That involves flipping Saad over to the right, which he’s never really taken to. It’s an odd fit, though I guess you could scratch it out.

Then one wonders who plays with Dach. Kane? You want shooters with Kane, and Dach isn’t that. Just give him Kubalik and like, Sikura and shelter them as heavily as possible?

The problem for Dach might not be what he can do, but what the Hawks can give him. Still, I find it hard to believe that there’s that much benefit from beating up on children he’s already played with for another season, and because the AHL isn’t an option you might as well keep him here. At least show some urgency. You just said it’s not like you’re waiting for him to grow.

 

 

 

Everything Else

Of Course They’d Take The One We Didn’t Preview – Hawks Select Kirby Dach

By Sam Fels 3736 0

I knew it would happen this morning, and Jay Zawaski pretty much told me it would happen. But I didn’t do anything about it. Anyway, this isn’t about me. The Hawks used their third pick to take Kirby Dach out of the WHL.

So what’s Dach’s deal? If the Hawks tell you they weren’t smitten by his size, they’re lying through their teeth and even those are false. However, that’s unfair to Dach to merely call him a big body. As far as vision and hands, most will tell you Dach’s are only second to Jack Hughes, and might even be a match. He’s a highlight reel waiting to happen, and if hockey were to ever have a Magic Johnson type-passer, here you go. Dach is going to send a few fans, and one certain color analyst, into orbit a couple times with his deferential play, but the plays he will make probably make up for that. And you can add looking for your own shot to one’s game over the years. You can’t add how they see the ice.

Dach skates very well for a player his size, so if you’re having shivers about another Strome or Anisimov, don’t. He’s a better skater than both of them now by some distance and that might improve. 73 points at 18 in the WHL, probably the realest league of the CHL, isn’t anything to sneeze at, though it’s not galactic.

The drawbacks for Dach are that some scouts, ones that probably snort a lot, believe he can be pushed around and out of games. There’s also some question about whether he brings it every night, because the ability to dominate every game is there. He’s big but is going to need some time with Paul Goodman, and a lot of it. The hope for the Hawks, if any of that is true, is that A) Dach’s playoff performance in 10 games was something that refuted a lot of this, and B) being around Jonathan Toews will show him the way. We shall see.

So what does this mean for the Hawks next year? Stan Bowman said after the pick they’re going to give him every chance to make the team this year. So look for him to get at least some if not all the nine game tryout, and he’ll have to kill it to stick. But if the Hawks are determined to get him on the team, you’d have to believe that Artem Anisimov is a goner. We can only hope. Still, it’s a little strange that no later than 2020-2021, the Hawks will have two sizable, pass-first centers. Then again, you can’t ever be too deep down the middle. So whatever.

Still, the Hawks still have no answers on the blue line. They have no one poised to be on their top pairing who can either do it or is ready for it, and that’s going to need addressing. Even if Dach makes the team, the top six looks short one finisher, though maybe after all this time Saad is going to be it (HA!). That also might need addressing.

There’s a lot of boom promised with Dach. There’s also a fair amount of bust. And whatever he is, the Hawks can’t be done. And the notion that Bowen Byram went next and will be in the division, and he solved a lot more than Dach does right now…well, good luck, kid.