It has been over 10 years since Patrick Sharp played his first game at the United Center as a Blackhawk, and it has been over 7 years since this column first ran in the print edition on Sunday, January 4th, 2009.
Tonight will be Patrick Sharp’s first regular season game in the United Center as a visitor in a decade.
Yep, that’s right bitches. We got Razor! Enjoy.
Let’s start with what everyone wants to know: How have Sharp and Oduya fit in down there?
– They’ve been exactly what they were imported to be. Patrick has been almost exclusively a right winger (till the last few games) so he’s been forced to adjust from his most comfy side and has bounced around from line mate to line mate, but through it all his 2-way game and championship calm has helped immensely. In addition, he’s been a smart, accommodating voice from inside the room for our media and a real asset on an improved PP. Oduya has brought that same champion pedigree to the team. Watching him go about his business I find it hard to believe your ‘Captain Serious’ is a more focused dude than this guy. Wow! 100% bidnass! As you might imagine he’s been a good penalty killer/shot blocker (but he’s only one guy…Stars PK is 21st) and he has formed a nice stable 2nd pair on D with Demers. Both have made the Stars internal community more professional.
vs. 
PUCK DROP: 7:30pm Central
TV/RADIO: CSN, WGN Radio
THEY’VE GOT A WALL INSIDE THEIR HEAD: Defending Big D
Here it comes.
The storylines are going to drip off this one, more so that most regular season games. First, you have the Hawks getting their first look at the West’s best so far, the Dallas Stars. They will certainly have had this one circled in the DFW area. Second, the first regular season reunion between the Hawks, Patrick Sharp, and Johnny Oduya. Third, you have two of the best lines in hockey, the one of Seguin-Benn-Guest Star (Get it?) and the SuperPAK line for the Hawks. It certainly has a lot going for it for a game still in the first half of the season.
(And none of it will keep me from going to see Star Wars tonight, but that’s not why you called).
Moving onto the forwards, Artemi Panarin is the biggest wild card of the recent influx of Russians to the Hawks, who have not had a Russian forward in nearly 8 years after Sergei Samsonov (remember him?) was dealt to Carolina. Panarin will undoubtedly be labeled an highly skilled, an enigma, a malcontent, lazy, or all of the above because that’s just the way it works with Russians in the NHL. But with Patrick Sharp and Brandon Saad now gone, there’s a real opportunity for Panarin to make some noise on the left side.
This is yet another post we’ll probably have to revisit when the summer moves are complete, because some ballast still has to dumped before anyone calls this complete. But it’s not so easy to evaluate Stan Bowman’s performance this summer because there’s a ton of emotion packed up in every move. And seeing as how I’ve been accused as driving most of the noise, it’s probably up to me to try and suss it all out.
At the top, no I don’t think this has been Stan’s best work, but it’s probably better than most think and it’s certainly not a complete failure. Let’s see why.
This is a post we might have to keep coming back to as the summer develops. But I thought it would prove useful to compare the sell-offs of the summers of ’10 and this one, and to compare how poised the Hawks are for their next Cup as they were with that one. It won’t make for pleasant reading, but so much of what we do doesn’t either so you’ll be used to that. No time like the present, let’s dive on in and not care if the water is shallow or not.
What Hawks Lost After ’10: It’s a pretty long list. Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Kris Versteeg (and it’s pretty funny that they simple CAN’T move him now), Brent Sopel, Ben Eager, John Madden, and Colin Fraser. In other terms, the Hawks lost 2/3rd of their third line (Versteeg and Ladd flanked Bolland most of that season), their 4th line center, a top six left winger (that’s where Byfuglien ended up anyway), a couple other components that rotated in on the 4th line in Eager and Burish, and their #5 d-man.
I should also add that Antti Niemi had to be left on the side of the road after his arbitration hearing.
It’s been two full days since Patrick Sharp was traded to Dallas. The wait between the actual trade and this necessary reflective piece was not only as a result of the news coming in the middle of the evening on Friday, but also as a result of needing a couple days to let the reality sink in and to try to process what exactly even my own personal feelings are on this subject. And truthfully I don’t even know if I’ve fully sorted through them yet.
Never let it be said that the Hawks aren’t completely aware of how to manipulate reaction to stuff like this, because I don’t think it’s any coincidence that they dumped the news of Patrick Sharp and Stephen Johns getting dealt to Dallas (where Johns can pound on all their forwards for the next decade five times a year) for Ryan Garbutt and Trevor Daley. Nice try Stan, but we’re always watching.
There’s so many factors in this I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll go player by player. We knew Sharp was likely to go, even after Saad had to be tossed overboard because the math didn’t work with both Sharp and Oduya. No one expected a great return on Sharp, but I can’t help but think Stan Bowman overplayed his hand a bit here. While we won’t ever know what exactly was on offer before and at the draft, we know that there were discussions with several teams while Stan reportedly chased a 1st and a prospect. What he ended up with was an aging, one-way d-man (and not the right way) and a middle aged 4th liner, and he had to toss in Stephen Johns for the privilege of that. Would a 2nd and a 3rd round pick really have been any worse?
The holding pattern arrived earlier this year. For those of you who are new to our little prison riot here, when we hit July and August most of this becomes my own stream of consciousness. So I’ve got some thoughts to spit out about the Hawks and others today, if for no other reason than I’m bored.
We had a nice little Twitter kerfluffle yesterday when I retweeted a reporter in Miami saying that the Hawks and Panthers had a deal for Patrick Sharp but ol’ Shooter nixed it. It was from CBS Miami’s David Dwork (I only just realized what an amazing name that is). Of course, any time you do this there’s a counter surge from others saying that this is all poppycock and their sources say that the teams haven’t spoken in weeks. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t for effect more than actual reporting so everyone can cover their ass. Either way, it’s kind of impossible to know what the real truth is.
It must be a pretty dizzying summer for Patrick Sharp. From Cup win to near certainty he would have been shipped at the draft, then he wasn’t, then Saad was, and then he might stay, then he might not, then a few of the possible destinations he would have had on his list dried up. The question is what happens now.
On the surface, there are legit hockey reasons to keep Sharp around. If Bickell is indeed flogged to anyone who will take him, along with Versteeg, the Hawks simply won’t have anyone to play the left side. Whichever of Dano or Teuvo doesn’t play center would be more effective on the right (seen it with both of them last season already). Viktor Tikhonov is probably going to play on the left, or at least will be tried there in camp. Panarin also plays left wing, but you would be hard pressed to think Quenneville is going to go to battle with two inexperienced kids as his only scoring left wings.
