At this point in this era of the Hawks, there are no statement games. Ownership on down has given an organizational mandate on the standard to which this team is to be held, and that’s silver and parades. That being said. with this being the third game in four nights after playing a back and forth affair in West East St. Louis last night, it could have been very easy for the Hawks to kind of pack it in tonight without their 2nd line center, but that didn’t happen.
Let’s try something different tonight. I’m sure you all come here and expect a certain form for the game wrap, as you should. But quite frankly, I’m tired of writing of the same game wrap for games against the Blues. So let’s try prose.
They’re so scripted. It’s so easy. We know what they are, and though they keep screaming that this time will be different, it really never is. Oh sure, they’ll point to last spring as proof that the tide has turned. But seriously? They don’t give you banners for reaching the conference final. They don’t give you banners for beating a seriously flawed team that in previous incarnations has won the trophy your team could only fantasize about three times. So here we are.
When the Hawks were shorthanded, they attempted to tighten things up a bit, though considering how many shots they gave up whenever there was a genuine NHL team across from them, I’m not sure it worked. Tonight was definitely not tightened up, as this was as open of a game as the Hawks have had in a while. It worked as just about all the rest have; goaltending finds its feet and makes some huge saves to prevent a deficit from getting unmanageable, the top line scores, and then some sort of wrinkle. The wrinkle tonight wast that the Islanders for some reason never watched tape on on the Hawks power play and kept leaving the cross-ice pass open, and the Hawks got goals from the Toews and Kruger lines.
Add it all up, and it’s just enough. Let’s clean it up.
For most of the previous years, we used to have a good chortle about the first game at home after a long road trip. The beaters would drone on and on about how tough of a game it was, but the Hawks usually always aced it just as they usually did with long road trips. Tonight we saw something of what they meant, as the Hawks were certainly not very good. They ran up against a Panthers team that was certainly inspired though kind of in every direction after the firing of Gerard Gallant. But as we’ve seen, teams that can match the Hawks for speed do give them some issues because there isn’t much of a Plan B with them right now, and there certainly isn’t without Toews whatever form he’s in. The trick only got harder without Anisimov for most of the 3rd period. But as it’s been all season, Crawford held them in and together, and they were able to hold on long enough to win the skills competition for two points. The luck will run out at some point, but that could be at any time.
Let’s get to it.
This week will see the NHL season move into its second month. While the Hawks are one of the hotter teams in the league, that doesn’t mean we truly know what they are. Yes, they sit atop the West, but you don’t need to look any farther than who they are tied atop the conference with to know how weird the season has been. That would be the Edmonton Oilers. And no one thinks they’re really that good. So what the hell is going on here?
For matters close to town, what’s funny is that the Oilers probably deserve their spot atop the West more than the Hawks do. Edmonton is plus in Corsi and Fenwick, though just barely, where the Hawks are not. The Oilers have a plus shot-share per 60 at evens, and the Hawks are dead-ass last in that category. That isn’t good. If you go by xGF%, and whether you do or not I won’t complain, the Oilers are only slightly outplaying their even-strength performance where the Hawks are massively doing so. What a strange world indeed.
Quite simply, pretty much everything about the Hawks is something of a mirage right now. They have the league’s highest PDO by three full points over Minnesota. Their even-strength save-percentage is a full two points ahead of Montreal’s. We know this. In fact, they could be something like last year’s Canadiens, except they have way more top end talent than the Habs did last year.
And yet I can’t sit here and say it’s totally false.
Box Score
I suppose when you lose most of your ammo, as the Stars have done throughout the season and then another tonight in Spezza, you have little choice but to revert to trying to Blues the Hawks (which the Blues don’t even really do anymore). The Stars certainly tried to shrink the ice by turning into heat-seekers all night. Sometimes, this early in the season we’ve seen the Hawks decide it isn’t worth it in early November and kind of just spit it. But when they feel like it, and certainly whenever it truly matters, the Hawks beat it EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME. Learn this, NHL.
As we’ve seen for the first month, games all over the league have been sloppier than usual for whatever reason you subscribe to. When you have two teams like this that want to play at warp speed, but they don’t have the sharpness to quite pull it off, you get a mess like you had for at least the first half of this one. Throw in some shitty Dallas ice and you’ve basically got a Saturday night on payday weekend in Muskogee (glove tap, JR). But the Hawks muscled through to a 3-2 lead, and then expertly shut the Stars down in the 3rd as we’ve seen so many times. The forwards drop a little deeper in the d-zone, forcing everything to the points. The dump-ins are more carefully placed. When there’s space they’ll make a play, but don’t force anything. Oh, and the Stars had to find a third goal against Corey Crawford and that’s just not happening these days.
Let’s clean it up.
-One day, part of a philosophy class somewhere should be dedicated to Pat Foley pointing out the farcical nature in which hit stats are tracked and yet championing them a few sentences later. We can’t stress this enough. They’re bullshit. They mean nothing. And they’re tabulated in the same way Lovie Smith’s Bears used to track tackles and would come out every Monday to tell us both Urlacher and Briggs had 46 tackles each the previous afternoon.
-Speaking of that, it’s not that we’re against physical play. But a hit three seconds after an opponent successfully completes a pass doesn’t do anything except prove that you were slow and/or dumb. That was most certainly not Ryan Hartman’s game, who has the feet to get there in time to force a misplaced pass or an outright turnover. This was the Hartman the Hawks envisioned when they picked him, a bowling ball with some skill. That puck was rolling that he blasted by an admittedly slow-to-get-over Niemi, but the balls to try it is enough. Like Sgt. Hartman said (Hmmm…) sometimes guts is enough.
-Yeah your goaltending is fine, Dallas. Niemi saved everything like he was trying to cough something up and there were rebounds everywhere. The first goal 11 seconds in came after a bad one. Hartman’s goal came after another one led to more chances for the Hawks. And Lehtonen is no better. He’s not helped by a decidedly light-in-the-ass defense that let the Hawks just stand in the crease for far too long, but if they hope to make anything of this season they’d better fix it.
-There was a play in the 2nd that pretty much sums up why the organization loves Forsling. It was on a power play and Campbell gave him something of a hand grenade pass right at the center of the line. It bounced off his stick and into his feet, and there are countless young d-men that would have panicked while an on-rushing Benn was certainly envisioning a breakaway. Forsling calmly sorted his feet out, and with inches of space calmly passed the puck to a teammate. Now imagine what TVR would have come up with there. They would have been scraping pieces of him out of the ice for days.
-There is one disturbing trend. This was the third game in four where Keith and Campbell got buried possession-wise. It’s a strange pairing, and I don’t think either is playing to the level they will, but there’s definitely some pains as they try and blend their very similar styles.
-That’s balanced by Hossa and his brother Russian and his other brother Russian all being over 60%.
-The Hawks also probably won’t win too many games where Toews’s line is getting thrown around by the other team’s top line as they were tonight (26%… yikes).
-I know Schmaltz has been saddled with two plugs which decidedly do not compliment what he can do well, but he should have flashed more to get better linemates and I’m going to guess he gets the seat next to Pelico tomorrow to make room for Desjardins.
Onwards…
It really is amazing what a little time to get into the flow of things can do for a top heavy team at forward, especially when the vast majority of them played in a useless exhibition tournament right up until the start of the regular season. But since the first weekend of the season, the right names have been appearing on the score sheet for the Hawks, and as a general rule, standings points follow.
So it should be no surprise that with Toews, Hossa, Hossa again, and Panarin with the markers the Hawks walked away with a W.
vs. 
GAMETIME: 6pm Central
TV: WGN
SPRINGSTEEN SUCKS: In Lou We Trust
RECORDS: Hawks 3-3-1 Devils 3-2-1
SCORE-ADJUSTED CF%: Hawks – 51.3% (10th) Devils – 50.1% (13th)
POWER PLAY: Hawks – 19.2% (16th) Devils – 23.8% (9th)
PENALTY KILL – Hawks – Awful (Dead Ass Last) Devils – 90.0% (5th)
TRENDS: Hall has three goals and four points in the past two games, Kyle Quincey… still sucks
The Hawks will embark on a road game for only the third time this season and the last time this month. They’ll be looking for their first point on the road as well. They’ll have a pretty big chance against yet another non-descript Devils team. In fact, the Devils officially changed their name to “The Non-Descript New Jersey Devils.” You didn’t notice, because no one notices anything the Devils really do.
You live by the shootout, you die by it. Or you just take them to mean nothing because they don’t. While some will use this as an excuse to say everything’s fucked, it really isn’t. The Hawks, even as off their game as they were tonight, mauled the Flames at even-strength (which doesn’t say much for Glen Gulutzan Glen Ross). Once again, the penalty kill cost the Hawks a point this time, as it did in Nashville, and in Columbus, and would have against the Leafs if they didn’t get the two minute drill right.
vs. 
PUCK DROP: 6pm Central
TV: CSN
THE HOCKEY BLOG: Jackets Cannon
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SCORE ADJUSTED POSSESSION: Hawks – 50.3 CF% (11th) Jackets – 48.2 CF% (20th)
POWER PLAY: Hawks – 35.7% (3rd) Jackets – 40% (2nd)
PENALTY KILL: Hawks – 47.1% (Dead ass last) Jackets – 85.7% (12th)
Trends: Cam Atkinson only has three goals and seven points in 10 games agains the Hawks. It only feels like has 27 and 43.
The Hawks take it out on the road again tonight, to face a certainly well-rested if oddly-cobbled Blue Jackets squad in the Ohio capital. It’ll start a three-in-four stretch for the Hawks, who return home tomorrow for the Leafs Saturday and Flames Monday. What they’ll find in Columbus is a team built to play a game that no longer wins in the NHL, and one under that that could be a useful NHL team if they let it.
