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Wednesday Mishegas

By 1447

Just a few notes to go over on this offday on the last Circus Trip ever. By the way, can we make it the last circus ever? Like, is the circus something we need anymore? I don’t think it is. Elephants are awesome and not a single one should be kept in chains. I guess that Cirque de Solei stuff is cool, there are no animals in that. But if we had to sacrifice that to have no circuses ever, I’m good. Anyway…

-So what had everyone on buzz on Twitter this morning was a tidbit from Elliotte Friedman’s 30 thoughts. If you can’t be bothered to read the thing, even though it should be required reading for every hockey fan every week and I still can’t believe they surround Friedman with a gaggle of buffoons every Saturday night on HNIC, he speculates that Brandon Saad might be available from the Jackets. Apparently he was last year too, and the Hawks at least kicked the tires on it.

Ok, first of all, the idea that the Jackets would even consider this makes me weep for the state of the human race, and I’ve done enough of that already in the past week. There’s no question that Jarmo and especially Torts have little idea what they’re doing. Saad is somehow fifth in ice time amongst their forwards, even though he’s the best forward they have. I don’t even know how this is open for debate. He’s also their best possession player once again, because that’s this thing that he does.

While this rant really shouldn’t go on any longer, Saad scored over 30 goals last year. Only 28 players managed that feat last season. That’s 7% of all forwards who laced them up all year. These are valuable fucking commodities. Somehow goals, y’know, the thing we measure who wins and loses by, are not nearly as valued as they should be. Seeing as how hockey’s scoring is starting to resemble soccer’s more and more, maybe guys who can score should be valued in the same way. If you score 20 goals in a season in soccer, they honestly don’t give a fuck what else you do. Christiano Ronaldo hasn’t seen his own half in like six years. Does anyone care?

Rant over. Now to Saad.

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About This Time Of Night, 51 Phantom Gets To Feelin’ Right

By 1388

This was just about the worst kept secret around here in a while. The only question for the Hawks and Brian Campbell was just how cheaply they could bring him back. $2 mildo and the answer is, “pretty fucking cheap.” I hope Beavis and Butthead in the booth don’t pull a muscle having to backtrack all the things they said about him since he left.

In case you don’t watch the Panthers much, and there really wasn’t much reason you should unless you’re demented like me, Campbell spent the past two years playing with Aaron Ekblad and the two of them basically kicked the competition’s nuts up into their throat. They were +5.2 and +5.7% relative in Corsi to the rest of the Panthers, with pretty evenly split zone starts. Gudbranson and Mitchell (for some reason) took on the toughest competition most of the time for the Cats, but Campbell isn’t going to have to worry about doing that here either.

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On The Blocks

By 1491

So the frenzy begins tomorrow, and the Hawks are doing last minute stretching and warming before they pick their targets. Both Michal Rozsival and Brandon Mashinter were re-upped today for dirt cheap, barely $1.1 million between them.

The Rozsival one is slightly interesting considering that no matter how much Q loves him, he was absolutely railroaded in the playoffs last year, supposedly what he was being saved for during a regular season where he wasn’t really all that bad. How he’s going to improve in the spring, even if he plays 40-50 games. Whatever.

The Mashinter signing is frustrating because we do this every year. Every year the Hawks have some tomato can on the roster who plays too much during the season and by the playoffs Q has discarded them into the ether, basically telling you that “the element we like” means jack and shit. Or either they/Mashinter/both is an actual player now, which will get hilariously exposed. Again, doesn’t really matter.

So where do the Hawks stand, lineup wise now?

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The Negative Zone

By 2249

Restricted free agency in the NHL is a weird, middling, vague, and unpleasant realm of the CBA. Due to the League being run by a bunch of old white, back-slapping cronies, the top end of the RFA toolkit rarely ever gets used in trying to poach players that have drastically out performed their first and second contracts. It’s a bit underhanded, but it’s perfectly legal to do, and the it’s such a big deal when an offer sheet happens is because they are so rare. Whatever anyone’s thoughts on the Flyers or Shea Weber as a player, the offer sheet he signed was brilliantly structured with poison pills left and right that made it difficult for mid-market dope David Poile to swallow when signing him.

But there is an inverse, flip-side, bizzarro aspect to restricted free agency as well, and that is when a team declines to give a player it has under control a qualifying offer, the deadline for which passed yesterday afternoon, and sometimes it’s not exactly done on purpose. And the list of players now left out in the cold is quite interesting.

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Fare Thee Well, Chicken Hawk And Other Drafty Day Musings

By 1524

It wasn’t hard to be immediately smitten by Andrew Shaw. Within his first couple shifts as a Blackhawk, he’d already scored and gotten into a fight (guess which one Q noticed more?). You watched him skate around that first game in Philadelphia and thought, “This kid is nuts!” Hockey is probably the one sport where watching a player makes you say that, and that’s a good thing (though Willson Contreras might be carrying this tradition into baseball, and a young Charles Tillman did it for the Bears SKY POINT). In his second playoff game he ran over Mike Smith, fulfilling the fantasy of most Hawks fans (and I assume players as well). Sure, it didn’t help the Hawks much but that didn’t mean we didn’t glean a perverse joy from it.

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Good God Man, What’s The Plan?

By 1628

Last night, during the usual car crash that is the NHL Awards Show (and why does the NHL need a show? No other sport needs one), Chris Kuc from the Tribune tweeted out that the Hawks are actively shopping Marcus Kruger and even Andrew Shaw, though what he could bring back as a pending RFA really wouldn’t be all that much.

The Kruger one is especially baffling.

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Be Here Now

By 1936

It was rumored a week or two ago but a lot of us didn’t want to believe it. The Hawks pulled the trigger on trading Bryan Bickell and having it cost them Teuvo Teravainen to do so, shipping them to Carolina for 2nd and 3rd round picks this year. Remember, Patrick Sharp can’t get you picks in return for a salary dump but Bickell and Teuvo can. MMMMMM THAT’S GOOD GM-ING!

There are various levels on which to view this, and you can’t really judge it until we see what the Hawks get to do with the cap space they now have. Though you have to ask yourself if the $1M in savings this does over simply buying out Bickell, and the $1.5M next year, is worth losing Teuvo. I don’t think it is.

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We Like To Watch – May 16th: The Good Fortune Of Mistakes Not Made

By 1386

If you haven’t read Ryan Lambert’s What We Learned on Puck Daddy today, you should. It’s pretty instructive on not just how luck plays a huge part in playoff success on the ice, but also off the ice. And considering how most NHL teams are run, the moves you don’t make–or more to the point the ones you aren’t allowed to– can shape an organization’s future and present. It also kind of lets you know just how backward a lot of teams still are.

And that also applies here. While everyone still rushed to praise Stan Bowman and his staff, even though they might be the most born-on-third front office in the history of the game, there are slices of good fortune in moves they weren’t allowed to complete that played a huge role for them.

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The “Irreplaceable Shaw,” Pens-Caps, Boudreau, And Other Argle Bargle

By 1712

Lotta strands floating in Ol’ Duder’s head today. Let’s see if we can’t get through it all.

-So it took me a day or two to get around to commenting on Joel Quenneville’s assertion that Andrew Shaw is “irreplaceable.” We know that Q has a loose grip on what a salary cap actually is, considering the way he spent the first month or two of the season in a strop (not Pedro, #HatToTheLeft) that Brandon Saad wasn’t around even though there was no way the Hawks could sign him for what he got. That’s unfortunate, given how much sway we’re pretty sure Q gets over personnel decisions. Or maybe he doesn’t get enough say and that’s why he shits on the ones Stan makes. But that’s not why you called.

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Dream Warrior Gets His

By 1359

There was always the feeling that when Marcus Kruger signed his one-year deal late in the summer that there was at least progress to a long-term deal. Considering the way both Quenneville and Bowman bat their eyes at Kruger, it was pretty clear he was never going anywhere. That was only confirmed when his first possible, viable, younger, cheaper replacement in Phillip Danault was punted to Montreal in return for two players that aren’t going to be here past June (at least not likely to be). If Kruger’s spot was assured, there was no room for Danault. And today we have confirmation that his spot was assured.