Everything Else

Dead Leafs On The Dirty Ground: Leafs 1 – Hawks 3

By Sam Fels 1258 0

There is a certain satisfaction in this matchup and coming out clearly on the better end of it–though the talent gap played a huge part. But here you have the possession-conscious Hawks and the possession-dismissive Leafs, and look what happened. The Hawks pretty much rolled them, even though it was a tie game for about half the occasion. It’s like a vision of where the sport was and where it is and where it’s going. Or maybe I’m just feeling like reading too deeply into things, because fuck me this Commodore Perry IPA is good.

After a pretty nondescript 1st period, the Hawks slowly exerted more and more authoritah’ over proceedings and eventually choked the Leafs out in a Million Dollar Dream. Oh sure, there were a couple moments in the 3rd, but not the onslaught the Hawks had been seeing at times this season (a malady that did affect them early last year as well, but was covered up by OT and shootout wins instead of losses).

Let’s get to bulletin’!

Everything Else

New Day Rising: Blackhawks 3 – Islanders 2

By Matthew Killion 1275 0

Nikolai HarveyBirdman’s return to the red sweater’s was just about what we expected from these two teams, except I didn’t realize he was sitting at 332 wins, meaning we were forced to listen to the “tree-turty-tree” nonsense before the game even started. The Hawks and the Isles traded the north and south game they both prefer to play. While the action swung from one end to the other with quick transitions and counterstrikes, it was clearly dominated by Chicago for much of the period. When the Hawks got on a roll, there seemed to be nothing the Isles could do but wait for the inevitable goal.

Everything Else

Wheel It Out Here, Carnac

By Sam Fels 1268 0

Just about 30 hours or so from the new piece of cloth going up to the rafters. And as I do every year, I’ll take a whack at predicting what goes on this season. I think the only thing I’ve ever gotten right was Hawks-Flyers in 2010 (so did McClure, and boy did the Flyers make it interesting before getting there). But we’ll do it anyway. I’ll invite the other three goofs on this blog to add their predictions to this post later today, but they have lives which I don’t. So no guarantees that I won’t be the only one hanging himself upon his own petard.

Let’s do it:

Hawks point total – The number 102-105 keeps ringing around my head. Of course, last year the Hawks were on a 131-point pace (Jesus Christ!), but no one expects that again. 102 in the old set up would have landed the Hawks probably a 4th or 5th seed. 105 near the top I would think. I just don’t see them ducking the injury and fatigue bugs all season as they pretty much did last year (only Sharp missed significant time). In this new division set up there are certainly easy points to rack up, and the Conference as a whole won’t be as tough as it once was with Vancouver and Anaheim sure to backslide at least a little. Only Edmonton looks like it has a chance to rise up, and even then only a little.

Would 105 win the division? Probably. Not sure 102 will. Pretty sure it won’t matter if the Hawks are mostly healthy in April.