Game #36 Preview Suite
Notes: Arvidsson, Forsberg, and Subban remain out…the Preds have lost six of their last eight road games…Rinne has been a touch iffy the last little bit, giving up 11 goals in his last four outings and getting pulled last night…Smith is on a bit of a heater, with three goals in his last five games…if the Hawks couldn’t handle a fourth line with Ryan Reaves on it, wait until they get a load of this one…
Notes: Well look at this happy horseshit…
Game #36 Preview Suite
vs. 
RECORDS: Hawks 9-12-5 Predators 17-8-1
PUCK DROP: 7pm
TV: WGN
KISS MY GRITS: On The Forecheck
There’s no such thing as sympathy in the NHL, so even if you’re getting your dick knocked in the dirt night after night, the next team on the docket is going to be real excited to repeat the punishment. So it is for the Hawks, who head from one division favorite to another and the one actually on top, the Nashville Predators. And even in their beat-up state, you fear how quickly it could get out of hand if the Hawks don’t straighten the fuck up. So, cheerful, eh?
Let’s start with the Hawks. Henri Jokiharju will return after an illness, and looks to be paired with Duncan Keith again. The Keith-Forsling Axis Of What The Fuck? never really worked, though it didn’t work for the same reasons that the Keith-HarJu pairing has struggled at times. Both players are inclined to be aggressive and get up the ice, and only one is supposed to play that way. The HarJu is more defensively inclined than Forsling though, and overall this pairing has done ok this season. So it’s good and proper to have it back. But you can look forward to more tweets from us about Keith having to change his game when he gets caught outside the circles again.
That slots Forsling down with Gustafsson in what can only be called “adventure time,” and Brandon Manning and Brent Seabrook are paired in what can only be called “fuck my life.”
Cam Ward looks to be the starter, which is fine because Crawford hasn’t been all that good and could use the extra day. The lines are going to pretty much stay the same, with Dylan Strome at least starting between Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane. Jeremy Colliton went away from it in the 3rd against the Jets but will give it another go. To maximize what they do well and to eliminate as much of what they don’t as possible, they really should only start exclusively in the offensive zone. Toews’s and Kampf’s line can do the defensive starts if need be, and you don’t want any of Kane, Top Cat, or Strome there either.
Right, the Predators. The headline, other than their marvelous and expected record, is that a good portion of their team is on a trainer’s table. Kyle Turris, Viktor Arvidsson, and PK Subban all will miss out tonight, and Arvidsson is a long-term casualty. It’s put a dent in their mojo, as they’ve lost three of the last four, including getting capsized at home by the Coyotes and getting trounced by the Blues. So if there was ever a time to catch the Preds, it would be now. If the Hawks were anything resembling a coherent outfit, that is.
If there’s a bone to pick with Nashville, is that they can look a touch short on scoring. With Arvidsson out, Filip Forsberg is the only player with more than eight goals in the lineup. Ryan Johansen has gone back to “Treat Boy” status, and Ryan Hartman isn’t going to continue to shoot the lights out forever. Subban was chipping in a bit from the back, points-wise at least, but he’s out now too.
Another quirk of the Preds is that their power play is just as bad as the Hawks’ somehow. It won’t get any better with Subban out, but then again there isn’t a power play that the Hawks’ kill can’t cure.
Given how the Hawks play defense, there’s no reason to think that Peter Laviolette won’t turn the Preds up to 11 and pressure them all over the ice. The Hawks simply can’t match their speed, though they played them pretty tough last year, going 2-2-0. Still, if the Hawks can find their way past what will be a furious forecheck (they can’t), they can get some rushes and chances in the open ice behind it.
Of course, waiting there is Pekka Rinne, coming off collecting his first Vezina and dead-set on getting a second. He’s your clubhouse leader, as he leads the league in GAA, SV%, even-strength SV%, and difference between his expected save-percentage and his actual. He’s simply been brilliant, so you can have a great game and still lose because you can’t pierce him. Which is great for a team like the Hawks that struggle to score.
It’s the Flames tomorrow night, who are playing some of the best hockey around. Which means if the Hawks can’t find another gear and some stability in their own end, they’d be a Top Cat miracle goal from losing seven in a row and 15 of 17. Not that 14 of 17 is that much better.
The season is on the very edge of the precipice. Maybe they should act like it on the ice…or perhaps they’ve already accepted their fate.
Game #27 Preview Suite
Whatever the Hawks were selling you about trading Ryan Hartman, it’s proven to be just this side of horseshit. That’s not to say Ryan Hartman would greatly change the fortunes of this Hawks team. But ask yourself who you’d rather watch thrash around on the bottom-six right now, him or Chris Kunitz?
Ryan Hartman sits in the nexus of a lot of Hawks arguments, kind of undoing them all. We’ll see if we can untangle them in no particular order.
The Hawks love to make it known that they are all in favor of compensating their players. It’s part of the reason Bryan Bickell and Brent Seabrook got the contracts they did (from whoever ordered it in the front office). It’s why they made sure to tell everyone who would listen they wanted Artemi Panarin to hit his bonuses when he was going after those in his entry-level deal, no matter the headaches it caused. The Hawks want their players, and others, to know that they will be treated well. You earn what you get with the Hawks, at least that’s the story.
They’re also terrified of paying anyone, with only some of that due to salary cap problems. The rest is poor decisions. Hartman was traded partially because he was coming out of his entry-level deal. Though that didn’t seem to scare the Predators, who just handed him a one-year deal because Hartman hasn’t really proven to be anything yet. Yet another thing the Hawks don’t like to do is play hardball with players, but the Preds didn’t mind taking advantage of Hartman’s zero leverage.
But it’s the same reason, or one of, that Teuvo Teravainen was moved along when he was. Same with Nick Leddy. Same with Panarin, from the contract the Hawks gave him. Brandon Saad before. This list goes on. When you’ve been burned by bad contracts before, you get itchy, even though you want everyone to know how much you love giving contracts to your players. It’s even worse when you’re not prepared to stare anyone down in negotiations, which as callous as it is is pretty necessary in a hard cap league.
Another theme around the Hartman trade was that the Hawks got a first-rounder back for him, along with Victor Ejdsell. Well, Ejdsell is yet to be here, and Hartman himself was a first-rounder taken around the same spot that the pick he netted was. The Hawks got Nicolas Beaudin out of it, and no one can safely say what he’ll be. What the Hawks did was simply kick that down the road a couple years. And yet they were telling you they wanted to compete this season for a playoff spot. Except they didn’t fill the spot Hartman occupied with anything productive or useful. It’s an empty spot right now. Hartman would be more productive in it than nothing. What about that says, “win now?” Because the prize appears to be Beaudin, that puts the return two years in the future, which sure seems like a rebuilding plan.
The third thing was about Joel Quenneville. The whispers after the trade was that Hartman was the most vocal about the problems Q had with the younger players on the roster. Hartman shuffled from wing to center and back, up and down the lineup and sometimes into the pressbox. And he was one of the first to claim he didn’t know why any of it was happening and the coach wasn’t telling him what he needed to do. So instead of letting that fester and spread, the Hawks moved him along.
And then a mere handful of games later, the Hawks fired Quenneville anyway. Partially because they felt he wasn’t getting anything near the most out of their young players, who were getting agitated about their ever-changing roles and little description of them. So…Hartman was right? Was it worth trading him for futures then?
If the front office had cooled on Q by then, why did he get to win on this player? Especially a player who was then moved along for what appears to be nothing more than a lottery ticket to be cashed in a couple years from now. Now the Hawks don’t have either.
Again, Hartman is not the player who swings the fortunes of this team one way or the other. He’s just an exhibit of the confusion and vacancies in the current Hawks ethos.
Game #27 Preview Suite
Well, not that JR. Not sure where we found JR Lind. He isn’t either. But he’s been our Preds guy for a long time now, which disappoints him to no end. Follow him @JRLind.
Most points in the West, second-best goal difference, the Vezina leader…is there anything to complain about in Predators Land?
As Blackhawks fans know, there’s always something to complain about, no matter how sterling the season is. Obviously, the Preds are very, very good and were able to sustain success from last season with a minimum of moves (David Poile’s biggest free agency acquisition was bringing back Dan Hamhuis on the traditional This Guy Used To Play Here Contract).
The acute complaint is that the Preds are on a two-game losing streak, just the second time this season they’ve gone consecutive games without a point; largely this is a result of a bizarre inability to solve the Arizona Coyotes.
The more chronic issue is the power play (currently 30th ahead of only…uh hi!). It’d be easy to blame that on the recent spate of injuries with Viktor Arvidsson, Kyle Turris and Pernell Karl Subban all out, though it was worse when everyone was reasonably healthy.
Kevin Fiala has been in a season-long slump (he finally scored five-on-five Tuesday) in what many expected to be a big year for him after a breakout season last year. And while he was sparkling when he was playing everyday when Pekka Rinne was injured, Juuse Saros has been mediocre in a lot of his spot starts lately.
There’s always something to complain about.
Seriously, how has Pekka Rinne been able to come up with a career renaissance at 35?
After his surgery and then missing so much time because of the post-surgical infection, it really looked like he was on the downhill. Then goalie Yoda Mitch Korn left with Barry Trotz and the overwhelming feeling really was that it was time for Poile to go franchise goalie hunting in the ninth round again. And then we all realized there wasn’t a ninth round anymore. Fortunately, Rinne had a career year and finally won the Vezina, signed a very team friendly extension for two more years counting $5 million against the cap (somehow David Poile got the guy to take a pay cut after winning a Vezina).
So I don’t know what kind of magic he’s working. The only complaint (and this is a weird one, I recognize) is that he might be playing too well, because as a Preds fan, you’d like his regular season workload to be a little lighter so he’s tanned, rested and ready for the playoffs. Last season, he played a lot more down the stretch as the Preds pushed for the President’s Trophy and as he secured the Vezina. Ideally, he’d get a lot more rest in March and April.
If there’s one quibble, the Preds have gotten 14 goals from Filip Forsberg but no more than eight from anyone else. Is scoring something of a worry down the line? Or is the socialist method of scoring going to see them through?
Part of that is the injuries. Arvidsson, who hasn’t played since Nov. 10 and is out for a few more weeks, is the guy with eight. Then it’s a jumble of dudes – nine with between four and seven goals, led by Old Friend Ryan Hartman (who I contend should just be signed to a series of one-year deals from now until the end of time).
Arvidsson’s absence has meant a rotation on Ryan Johansen‘s wing opposite Forsberg, which has included such strange experiments as Rocco Grimaldi. The STF line of Smith-Turris-Fiala has been ho-hum outside of Turris, who is hurt. Smith is inconsistent and Fiala can’t score. But, there are worse things that having one guy who scores 40, another who scores 25 in an injury-plagued year and nine or 10 who go for 15 to 20.
How is the power play this bad with all the weaponry on it? (please don’t turn this question around on us)
Who knows? Nothing seems to work. Subban is hurt and Ryan Ellis has had trouble scoring (at evens and on the power play), which takes away two of the big outside weapons. With Arvidsson out, the coaches haven’t really found a consistent net-front threat (having tried Nick Bonino, among others, down low). Eventually, it’ll click, we’re told, but it’s getting close to 30 games in now and it’s still 14 some-odd percent so.
Game #27 Preview Suite
You get a lot of people looking the other way on the Nashville Predators, mostly because hockey writers really like to get drunk on Broadway St. and some of them even like country music. Because of that, there’s a piousness among the Preds fanbase, even added to the general piousness of the South, about how their team is built and run.
Make no mistake, the Preds have been as much or more filled with shitbags and fuckheads than any other team. This is a squad that signed Mike Ribeiro to two contracts. It signed Harry Zolnierczyk. It’s one that has Austin Watson. and then used his wife to try and save their ass for employing him. They also have Zac Rinaldo.
While Rinaldo has at least kept his shitbaggery on the ice unlike the others, it’s a whole collection of it. Make no mistake, Rinaldo is a useless turd of a player who has racked up more games in suspensions than goals he’ll ever score. It’s true. He’s only ever been out there to try and intentionally hurt people, and in the dirtiest and cheapest ways possible.
He continues a long tradition of Predators ass-mongers like Jordin Tootoo and Cody McLeod. Somehow the Preds get to skate on having these guys even though the league is doing everything it can to move on from clods like this. What Peter Laviolette wanted with this dungheap when he went to GM David Poile, himself quite the harvester of shit in his career, is anyone’s guess. Lavvy went through this horseshit in Philadelphia with Rinaldo, and must’ve come away impressed somehow.
Especially in a division that doesn’t contain any of this tripe, it’s a real wonder why the Predators think they need this. The Jets aren’t going to beat on them in the playoffs, and if that’s why they think they lost last year they’re already fucked. the Wild aren’t. The Stars aren’t. The Avs aren’t. The Preds seem to be preparing for a fight that’s never coming.
Next time anyone tries to tell you the Preds are on the cutting edge of the NHL, you just remember all of this.
Game #27 Preview Suite
It was all lined up for the Preds last year. Coming off their first Final appearance, and after a big trade that supposedly landed them the #2 center they’ve always needed (even though they don’t really have a #1), and a career-season out of Pekka Rinne at 35, this was their moment.
And they fluffed their lines.
They ran into a team that did what they did but better. They ran into a team with four genuine centers and two that could claim to be #1s. Rinne looked his age. Sure, it took to a Game 7, but the Preds only got to that by having to revert from their style and basically trap the Jets. It could only work for so long, because Pekka Rinne for his whole career save one playoff run has been just good enough to get you beat. And so it proved.
Oh, and the summer had yet another Predator proving to be nothing more than a shitbag, which of course they’ll welcome back with open arms because that’s what they do in Music City. AW HERE IN THE SOUTH WE THINK HITTIN’ YOUR WOMAN IS A SIGN OF LOVE. YOU YANKS JUST WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND WITH YOUR FANCY COMPASSION.
Anyway, the Preds are just going to roll it back, with essentially the same team and Rinne another year older. Funny thing though, the Jets haven’t gone anywhere, the Blues suddenly look a little spiky, and the Sharks await whoever survives this cage match. The Preds very well may have missed their boat.
2017-2018: 53-18-11 117 points 267 GF 211 GA 51.5 CF% 50.9 xGF% 8.1 SH% .935 SV%
Goalies: This could be the start of something big. And by “big” I mean a controversy. The Preds have seemingly wanted to hand the job to Juuse Saros for a while now. But they watched Rinne have a renaissance starting in the ’17 playoffs and all through last season. They can’t exactly just dislodge him due to policy.
And yet he’s turning 36 in a month. He has the Game 7 full-body dry heave during the Preds’ best chance for a Cup hanging over him. It won’t take much for their to be a whiff of a switch. They nearly did it two seasons ago before Rinne discovered Ponce De Leon’s secret.
Which in one sense is great for the Preds. Saros has been excellent whenever called upon, even though he’s small and small goalies really struggle in today’s league. If Rinne stumbles, their season won’t be torpedoed.
On the other hand, you’re talking about an organizational legend, the longest-tenured Pred by some distance, and a fan favorite. A team leader, and there’s no telling what kind of effect turning things over to Saros could have. This seems to be a team that has cohesion, but you’ve seen it rip teams apart before. It’s one fissure everyone has to keep an eye on.
Most likely, Rinne is just good enough during the season to keep these questions at bay. But in the spring if something should go haywire, it’ll take quite the tap-dance for Peter Laviolette to negotiate.
Defense: Well, they had the best defense in the league, so no reason to not return with it. Or they did until the Sharks traded for Erik Karlsson. But this is still the strength of the team. They added Dan Hamhuis again to fill out the third pairing, and even though he’s a million years old now he can probably take 12-15 minutes a night and do it well. It’s still the top four that’s the envy of most of the league.
It’s actually only middling defensively, as they give up an average amount of attempts and chances. But with Ellis, Josi, Subban, and Ekholm, they create far more than they surrender. You can’t find a team that has more players that get the team up the ice from the back themselves. Ellis is here for the full run this time, which will help them stay at the top of the division. Sure, they need some bailing out from their goalie at times, but they also keep the Preds on the right side of the ice enough.
Forwards: We’re the only ones who think this, and no matter how much we shout it from the rooftops no one seems to listen. When Ryan Johansen is not playing for a contract, he’s playing for a lava cake. As I said in the Preds’ eulogy, he had the same amount of points as Jonathan Toews last year and everyone tells me Toews is clinically dead. Mark Scheifele kicked his ass up and down the ice in that series last year, mostly because RyJo was still digesting the family size bag of M&Ms he ate at intermission. There’s no reason to think that won’t continue.
The Preds backed that up by acquiring Kyle Turris, whom reports suggest did play in last year’s playoffs. I’m not sure where there’s evidence of that. Maybe I need decoder glasses for it or something.
Turris and Johansen will do enough in the regular season to make you think the Preds are strong down the middle. And then they’ll run up against the Jets or Sharks or Blues, who actually have real center-depth, and the Preds will have a real damn problem.
Other than that, it’s still the same crop of quick forwards who never stop working and basically run most teams out of the building most nights. They’re probably looking for more from Kevin Fiala this term, who had something of a breakout with 23 goals last year. If they get it they’re more than fine. If they don’t, they’re just a touch short on scoring.
Outlook: Here’s another thing to watch with the Preds this year. Lavvy is almost certainly past his sell-by date. He wore out his act in Carolina and Philly well before this, and his intense ways can grind on players. If things go just a little sideways early in the season, they could pull the rip-chord on him. The goalie situation won’t help.
But other than those two maybes, there’s a lot more certainties with Nashville. One of the best blue lines in the league. Two good goalies. Maybe not the forward corps most people think, but certainly one good enough to cash in on the puck-movers they have at the back. They’ll be at the top of the division and conference again.
But there’s also no reason to think that an encounter with Winnipeg will go that much differently. If they survive that, there’s still San Jose, who won’t be nearly as tested in the Pacific, likely. It looks like it’ll be too much for Treat Boy and the gang to overcome.
I’ll admit my first reaction last night when I saw that Austin Watson had been suspended 27 games for pleading no-contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge was, “Well, at least they did something.” Such is my weariness and the way my expectations have been beaten down, not just by the NHL’s, but really all sports’ handling of such things. Honestly, I don’t envy anyone who has to come up with what the right number should be for this charge. There’s many who are incensed that it’s barely more than Nate Schmidt got for his sneeze’s worth of a banned substance, but that’s actually negotiated with the NHLPA and has a standard.
It goes two directions from there. The first is that there are those who think Watson and anyone else caught up in a domestic violence charge should immediately be banned, fired, tarred, feathered, whatever. And believe me, I understand that impulse. Playing in a professional league is a privilege and there’s certainly an argument to be made it should be taken away much easier than it is today.
But various survivor’s groups have said that really isn’t a solution, partly because loss of income doesn’t help anyone in the long run and is a factor in the fear of coming forward for women to report such things. Second it can make a woman or partner an even bigger target for someone who’s already shown to be violent, which can lead to somewhere much worse. I can certainly see the problem.
The second is to mock or spew venom at the NHL for not having a standard, domestic violence policy, and this is obviously understandable, too. Except the standard policies in the NFL, MLB, and NBA haven’t really satisfied anyone either. And I’m not convinced a bad policy is better than none at all. That’s a discussion that could go on forever, but for the only the optics this is probably something the NHL should hammer out with the NHLPA tout suite.
There’s also the small complaint that the players’ union is filing an appeal. And while I could just settle for the usual, “That’s just what unions do,” at some point they have to draw the line as well. It’s one thing to file an appeal to a weird, flimsy failed drugs test or an on-ice suspension. This guy swung at his wife and mother of their baby, and whether or not that’s what they’re actually doing the optics are that the union is taking the side of a wife-beater. Some cases you just let slide by and tell that union member to sit down and swallow this one.
What I do know is that as long as hockey players stop going to school around 7th grade, and their entire social world is developed inside a hockey dressing room and around a hockey team, this is almost always going to be a problem that they’re going to have to deal with.
I don’t know what the answers are to any of these questions, but I do know what I worry about most, even though it’s not the most important component.
When Watson returns to the Predators’ lineup, currently scheduled for December 3rd against the Sabres, we know that he will get a standing ovation from the Bridgestone Arena faithful. This doesn’t really make them any worse than every other fanbase. We’ve already seen this in town with Daniel Murphy and up the road a bit with Josh Hader just in the past couple months. However, next time any media member tries to proclaim that there’s something special about Preds fans, you’ll know there isn’t.
I know it’s not the biggest problem, but it’s the one that seems to wound the most. It’s what I never got over with Patrick Kane at Notre Dame, and we could pick any one of hundreds of instances where this has happened with a player and that team’s fans. Oh, I’m sure some dimwitted Brewers fan would try and tell me, for instance, that what they were really doing is showing Hader that they support him in his attempts to evolve and become better from what he had done and was.
But that’s horseshitt. They know it, we know it. What it is is putting being a fan above all else, that no one really cares what these guys do away from the field as long as they can strike out 38% of the hitters they see or be a decent penalty-killer (if that’s what Watson does and that’s up for debate). When Preds fans salute Watson in December (or November on appeal), it won’t be to show support in his rehabilitation into a non-piece of a shit, if he even does that much. It’ll be a thumb in the nose to his suspension at all, because he’s a player on their team. And what he did to that woman won’t matter, and certainly her emotions won’t either.
And mostly out of ignorance rather than maliciousness, what it will be is a thumb in the nose to any Preds fan, hockey fan, or anyone who is a survivor of domestic abuse or anyone close to one. That their feelings, their history, the damage caused doesn’t matter as much as the Preds winning a hockey game. And there will be Preds fans who feel this, and they’ll feel helpless to say anything because nothing will change and they will fear being drowned out by the masses.
We can figure out the standards and suspensions at some point soon. What the Predators and NHL can do now is find a way to avoid the above scenario. Watson doesn’t have to be booed by his home fans. I feel like it should be greeted by nothing but silence, out of respect to those in yellow who have had this heinous scenario in their lives and also as a patient approach to force Watson to earn the adulation back through demonstrated progress, contrition, learning, and evolution.
I don’t know how you go about that. A concerted campaign by both team and league to illustrate the horrors of this. Perhaps Watson himself doing an ad or speech on the jumbotron, though that would probably just garner applause, too. Some sort of regular press-release about the details of the case and the reasons for the suspension, so it doesn’t fall out of the memory or news cycle. Maybe that’s harsh, but it doesn’t feel like it’s too much so. Perhaps Preds fans themselves could start a campaign to makes this happen, but I’ll just go ahead and assume they’re too busy trying to figure out yet another way to keep Hawks fans from buying their tickets.
There are obviously loftier goals we should be reaching for when it comes to professional sports and domestic violence/sexual assault. And we shouldn’t stop. But for right now, this one, small, attainable step should be something we can accomplish and sharpish.
So the next time a team acquires an Aroldis Chapman or Roberto Osuna or Watson or Mike Ribeiro (never forget), their fans aren’t spurred to cheer even louder because every other fandom is disgusted. That only polarizes and hurts.
Let’s just aim for silence. It doesn’t seem that far away.
