Hockey

Game #11 – You Made Me Sleep and Uneven and I Didn’t Believe Them When They Told Me That There Was No Saving You– Hawks 0, Preds 3

By John Pullega 2694 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

Christ. Fire them all.

– The Official Marc Crawford Watch begins now. Jeremy Colliton is entirely out of his element. His systems have all the connectedness of a 3:30 a.m. Crave Case fart after a 6-hour GG Allin tribute concert.

I’m not even sure where to begin. The Hawks were outshot 40–14 through two periods. At no point did they ever lead the possession share. Their xGF% was 22+%. If not for the Kings, who have all the panache and verve of a gangrenous scrotum, the Hawks would have two goals over the last five games. Seven in five is bad enough. The Hawks were a team that finished in the top 10 in goals scored last year. Colliton has managed to take the one thing the Hawks could do well and bury it under his throbbing Genious Brain.

Then there’s the defense. It’s truly a work of art that Colliton could manage to scratch Seabrook incorrectly. Dennis Gilbert, Slater Koekkoek, and Erik Gustafsson all proved tonight that scratching your 7th D-man is pointless if the guys you’re playing ahead of him are 8th, 9th, and 10th D-men themselves.

This is after training camp. This is after Colliton had an entire off-season to implement his system. This is what it produces.

All of the Core guys—Toews, Kane, Keith—looked lost tonight. None of them were effective, and they all looked to drag. And given the overall effort, it isn’t hard to think that Colliton has completely lost his Core. If you manage to lose Toews, and it sure looked like Toews was lost tonight (28+ CF%, 22+ xGF%), what are you even doing here?

Then there was Colliton’s galaxy brain just prior to Bonino’s first goal. At about 16:40 in the first, the Preds had just finished applying a bewildering amount of pressure on the Hawks to the tune of three or four good shots on goal that Lehner miraculously turned away—including a post-to-post save—which all started because of some lazy coverage by Toews at neutral ice. After the TV timeout following a Lehner freeze, Colliton CHOSE to ice DeBrincat–Strome–Carpenter Gustafsson–Gilbert. In the defensive zone. Against a team that was outshooting them vastly. After six or seven shots (that’s not hyperbole), the Preds scored because, get this, EXACTLY ONE OF THOSE GUYS IS EVEN PASSABLE IN THE DEFENSIVE ZONE.

This is what a moron does. Jeremy Colliton is a moron. Even if his GM is a bigger moron, this kind of decision makes it clear that Colliton is out of his element.

There’s no structure to anything the Hawks do at all. It’s a lot of flotsam floating and true talent rolling their eyes. If Colliton makes it to Christmas—hell, Thanksgiving even—we can only assume that the league has contracted back to six teams and every other coach has been Poochied away.

– Robin Lehner prevented that game from being 8–0. If Stan Bowman makes it to the end of this year, it’ll be solely because Lou Lamoriello had no more use for Lehner. Falling ass backward into a talented goaltender will stay his execution longer than Colliton’s. Whoever’s the GM this off-season better pucker up their ass-kissing lips, because Lehner’s got to be looking for the nearest exit.

– This game should reinforce the fact that the Blackhawks have absolutely no idea how to scout defensive talent. Dennis Gilbert is not an NHL player, no matter how many times he leads the game in hits. The only thing I can say for sure about him is that he’s slow. I want to say he’s clueless too, but Colliton’s ass-blood scheme would make Paul Coffey look like Dennis Gilbert, so I can’t say that with any confidence.

– The Blackhawks could have traded the Erik Gustafsson formerly known as a 60-point D-man before the draft or at any point in the off-season. Never forget that.

– Jonathan Toews looked horrible tonight. He looks like he’s given up, and I can’t blame him. Colliton replaced Toews with Saad on the PP1 late in the first period. Yes, Saad was the best forward up to that point, but he’s never been much of a producer on the PP. This reeks of a coach who’s lost his best players trying to prove a point nobody cares to hear anymore.

– I guess if you’re looking for a positive outside of Lehner, maybe there were two. Dach made a couple of heady plays in the first. The first was a dump in that was out of Rinne’s reach, which led to a DeBrincat stuff attempt. The other was a good-idea-not-so-good-execution play on a 3-on-2 with Saad. Dach glided up the near side and tried to feed a streaking Saad for a tip, just missing him. He’s got a feel for the right ideas, which is nice. It’s really gonna suck when they send him back to the WHL next week.

The other was that late in the third, 11 games into the 2019–20 season, Colliton finally put DeBrincat–Strome–Kane together. They immediately produced a strong scoring chance before Kane got a hooking/unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The fact that the one line that should have been a given going into the year is together only after more than 13% of the season is finished is lamentable.

– I don’t give a fuck that DeBrincat and Strome were statistically awful tonight. This putting-them-on-the-fourth-line horseshit is unacceptable. It was cute when they played the Kings, in the same way that a toddler screaming “God dammit” in a church is cute. Only after letting his team get thoroughly embarrassed did Colliton put them with Kane—which is where they should be at all times, defense be fucking damned—and what do you fucking know? They finished with a 100 CF% and a 78+ xGF%. Get fucked, Jeremy.

This team is lost. Its identity has been reduced to off-ice soap operaisms and leading the fucking league in hits. It’ll be hard for them to do worse than they did tonight, but as long as Colliton and Bowman are calling the shots in any capacity, they sure as shit are going to try.

Start over.

Beer du Jour: Craggenmore 12 and High Life

Line of the Night: “PK Subban wasn’t even in their top three defensemen.” Eddie O on the Preds

Hockey

Dear Jeremy Colliton, You Haven’t Earned The Right To Bus Toss Your Players

By Sam Fels 2810 0

Dear Jeremy Colliton,
We don’t know each other. Likely won’t. That’s cool. Anyway, I was at the game last night. Surely wasn’t inspirational. Truly impotent, in fact. I came home to find you bus-tossing your players in the press. Interesting move. We’ll get to why in a sec.

I want to be fair to you, Jeremy. So I’d like to list the obstacles put in front of you that either aren’t your fault or have nothing to do with you. It’s actually pretty long. So your job is hard. Very hard, in fact. Perhaps too hard for someone with your experience. You might never have had a chance. But again, let’s get to that a little later. So here they are.

-You’re not the GM. So hence, you didn’t put together this blue line that simply has no one with plus-speed. And other than one doofus who has completely reversed, it doesn’t have anyone who can actually handle the puck all that well (though Maatta has been better at that than anticipated). You have no transition game because of this. Not much you can do.

-You’re not the GM, so you didn’t put together a forward grouping that also simply isn’t fast enough and is a bit mismatched. It doesn’t really have enough forecheckers. You didn’t bring back Andrew Shaw to sell tickets (even though they’re also all sold? Weird that, no?) when what you really needed was an Erik Haula-type (he’s got seven goals already, by the way), A whole lot more speed to go with his puck-winning abilities.

-You’ll never convince me that even your entrenched veterans didn’t know it was time for a change behind the bench and actually welcomed it. But you still followed a legend, which means you had little chance of winning over the fanbase and your leash with the “Core Four” was always going to be short. They were open to new ideas and new ways, but they also weren’t going to be all that patient given what they’d known. That’s hard.

-Your best d-man is made of duct tape and boogers.

That’s a lot actually, Jeremy. You probably have every right to be frustrated, because in your first NHL job you shouldn’t have to deal with that. Especially when you were shotgunned into the position before you could have reasonably expected to be so. So…okay fine.

But Jeremy, you’re not doing anywhere near enough with what you can control, and your play of putting it on your players has little chance of working.

Here’s the thing, JC: this isn’t the doldrums of February. This isn’t when any regular season gets boring, long, and repetitive. Last season, your front office and even some of your players (almost certainly at the front office’s behest) wheel-posed to make it clear how hard it is to make changes without a training camp. This ignored that you had five months, and also ignored that this is hockey and you’re not trying to switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4 or something like that. But that was what everyone wanted the fans to know. You needed a training camp.

Well, you got one. It was only three weeks ago, in fact. Should still be pretty fresh. And that’s when you’re supposed to instill belief, get guys to see what it is you’re trying to do, and get them to believe it will take them where they want to go. Make it clear that it will work if they are fully committed to it and get them to do that. That excitement should be clearly evident a mere eight games into the season. It should still be fresh in their minds. These new ways and ideas will work and they should be excited about it, if for nothing else that it’s still top of mind.

If they already think it’s bullshit, that’s on you, friendo. You had your chance to make it clear why this is the way forward without any distraction. Judging by introducing your players to the bus bumper eight games in, you borked it.

And is effort really the problem here? It can look like that, sure. But are you putting your players in the best spots to succeed?

This Strome-Dach-Kane line…what’s that supposed to do exactly? First of all, there’s nothing about Strome’s game that suggests it will adapt well to a wing. And he hadn’t really played bad enough to be “demoted,” and yet he’s been moved from his favored spot and off the first power play for Alex Fucking Nylander. You really expect him to play with verve after that? Or maybe play like he has no confidence?

Second, that line has no puck-winner, isn’t fast at all, and has three guys who all probably need the puck. Nothing about any of their games suggest they can flourish playing away from it and seek out space for the others. So what’s it supposed to do?

Your first line…again, you’re hampered by the fact that Andrew Shaw is a half-step slower than he was and also doesn’t seem clear on what it is he does that actually helps a team. You’re probably not helped either by the fact that it looks like Jonathan Toews when from 30 to 38 on his last birthday so far. But you still seem to think Toews is a do-it-all center. He’s not. And if there’s one set of skills that’s definitely at the bottom for him, it’s playmaking. He’s not going to get the puck to DeBrincat. He’s not a set-up guy, never really has been. So how does that work? Toews and DeBrincat worked ok last year at times, but they had a hard-worker next to them like Kahun when they did. And Toews’s most goals came with Kane and Caggiula. Now, I know that a team with real aspirations would never have Drake Caggiula on the top six. But hey, he knows what he is and does what he does, which is open up space for those who need it. You can’t seem to get Andrew Shaw to do that.

And it’s still your defensive system, Colly. You’re bottom five in the amount of attempts, shots, and expected goals you surrender. Again, that has something to do with talent on hand. But just last night, I counted at least three times where one of your d-men was just standing in between the circles not doing anything in particular. Either that’s the way you want it, which doesn’t make any sense, or your players still don’t get what it is you want. What happened to MAGIC TRAINING CAMP?

How many odd-man rushes did you give up last night? Eleventy-billion? That’s being shitty with the puck, and also a result of your forwards having to do everything, the latter of which isn’t on you. But still, being focused and smart with the puck…that comes from you. And why are you still trying to play a high-pressure game with a blue line that can’t move?

Oh sure, you can hang out Erik Gustafsson to dry again. That’s easy. That doesn’t impress anyone. That doesn’t grab anyone’s attention. He’s a third-pairing player who’s gone in a year at most anyway. So who are you talking about? Are you talking about Toews and Kane? No one’s really questioned their desire in a very long time, and only the latter’s which was some eight years ago. Anyone who’s seen what his offseason training program looks like would be hard-pressed to claim he doesn’t care.

Seabook? We’ve been down this road. You know what you have to do but are terrified of doing it. And it doesn’t matter until Boqvist is here anyway. You really want to  do something impressive? March upstairs and tell Stan to get his tiny Swedish ass up here so you can have at least one d-man who can initiate a transition game.

Keith? He looked pretty inspired next to Murphy, and he’s been your biggest critic. So whom are you aiming at?

Your team looks like it’s not working hard because other teams know they just have to clog the neutral zone a bit and prevent your forwards from carrying the puck the whole way, which they have to. It’s why only your third line looks good because it’s the only one that can do it at what is now NHL speed. Force the Hawks to dump it in, and they simply don’t have the forecheckers or speed to get it back. That’s not about effort, and that’s not really on you.

Who looks like they’ve improved from last year? Kubalik wasn’t here. This is what Kampf has been and is. Anyone? Maybe Maatta? That’s on you too, bud. Ask Matt Nagy about players not improving and who gets blamed for that.

But if you think they’re uninspired, well…you’re supposed to do the inspiring. And you’re not supposed to use the press to do it until you’ve tried everything else. This is kind of the last chord to pull. If it doesn’t work, where are you?

Sincerely,
A Functional Alcoholic in Section 320

Hockey

The Production of Cats We Like

By Sam Fels 1769 0

The rare genuinely exciting news broke out of Hawks camp this morning, where it was announced that Alex DeBrincat has put pen to paper on a three-year extension, starting next season. The deal will pay $6.4M per season, which is honestly kind of insane.

Top Cat would have had every right to pursue what Kyle Connor, or Patrik Laine were after, or what Mikko Rantanen actually got. Same goes for William Nylander. This could have turned quite ugly next summer, and likely spilled into next fall. Clearly DeBrincat wanted the security of the next three years and the Hawks were equally excited to have this in the bag quickly and efficiently.

There are clearly some interesting quirks to this deal. You can’t help but notice it ends at the same time as Kane’s and Toews’s contracts, which is when the Hawks might be headed for a hard reset anyway. Should they send Kirby Dach back to the WHL, assuming he’s still alive, that would be the end of his entry-level deal as well. Funny enough, that just so happens to be when Duncan Keith’s deal is also up, assuming he makes it all the way through. Strange, no? It’ll also be the first full season after a new CBA, when a tweaked or possibly wholly different system is in place.

Now, there could be some sort of under-the-table agreement that when the Hawks have at least near $27M in cap space freshly available in 2022 thanks to the expiration of contracts to The Main Three, that Top Cat will get a further extension. Or he’s betting on himself to get a really big number. Either way, the Hawks should have the flexibility then to do what they need, assuming they don’t fuck it up be reacquiring…oh I don’t know, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Teuvo Teravainen when they’re old (please reacquire Teuvo).

As we said on the podcast, if the Hawks really do plan on making another run with the old guard still in place, they kind of have to do it during Boqvist’s and Dach’s entry-level deals (assuming those players turn out to be everything they hope). Basically in the next three or four years. Does this deal help them do that? Sure does, but it’s still going to take some work. They currently have $11M in space for next year, and they have two big spots they have to fill. One is goalie, and the other is Dylan Strome’s spot, as the defense is going to be reinforced by kids (you’d hope. Man, a lot of parentheticals today).

I say “spot,” because I’m willing to wager that the Hawks want to see Strome earn it this season. If he were to spit it, they would just let Dach take the #2 center role before ascending to the #1 cheaply and basically tell Strome to do one. If Strome does earn an extension, him and whatever goalie they choose almost certainly eat up most if not all the cap space the Hawks have. Of course, some of that could be alleviated by jettisoning some combination of Saad, Shaw, Smith, or Maatta off the roster either during this season or in the summer. All these guys have something to play for, clearly.

Still, to get Top Cat at that number is a good thing. A very good thing. Keep in mind that even with the juiced scoring last year, there were still only 13 guys to eclipse 40 goals. Top Cat was one of them, and they’re getting him for a touch more than Jake Guentzel. It’s nice work. It also removes that headache discussion all season, which is a relief to everyone.

So it’s over to you, Strome.

Hockey

Before The Dress Rehearsal

By Sam Fels 1569 0

We’ve been setting you up bit by bit for the season, but we haven’t gotten a chance to muse much. And musing is what we do best. So before the Hawks have their dress rehearsal tonight, thought we’d go through some things (that weren’t covered on the podcast, which was most things, which you can find here).

-I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a while, and it’s Stan Bowman’s take on Kirby Dach. Now, everything that follows is obviously moot if Dach can’t ever actually suit up due to concussion, and it doesn’t sound like that’s going to be tonight. On the ground, he’s going to Europe but probably isn’t going to play in the exhibition game in Berlin or in the season opener. Which is fine, as this weird schedule opener will actually give the Hawks an additional 3-4 practices before the home opener against the Sharks on the 10th. So there’s plenty of time to acclimate Dach for whatever audition he’s going to get.

And the gist of this piece is that he’s going to get it. Stan even hints at keeping him longer than the nine games even if he proves to need more time in the WHL, though that would be kind of silly. The beauty of the schedule here is that after this Euro opener, the Hawks next seven are at home. Which means seven games that Coach Cool Youth Pastor, if he even realizes he can do such a thing, can put Dach in the right spots and keep him away from tricky matchups. Obviously, you can’t go through a season doing that, but it would certainly give us an idea of what Dach can do and what he can’t when set up for success.

Whether Dach sticks or not will be an indication of what exactly the Hawks want out of this season. We’ve been debating this for two years without any answer, because whenever they deign to actually answer a question about what the goals are here it’s always some mealy-mouthed argle bargle trying to halve the line of competitiveness and development. We still honestly have no idea if the Hawks think the playoffs are a must this year, or if their eyes are really on next year and the one after when Dach, Boqvist, and Ian Mitchell are for sure on board. And we won’t, because transparency isn’t something they can spell over at 1901 West.

It would seem to me a third straight playoff-less season would mean everyone is fired, but we’ve though that before. And considering how much it feels like they’ve eaten through their season ticket base, that would be the factor applying the most pressure. They didn’t really have this last year as they remained competitive, but if they’re out of it in March I wonder how many patches of red seats we’ll be seeing in the stands (or won’t be seeing thanks to NBCSN Chicago’s spelunking-like filters).

So if the goal has to be playoffs, then Dach is here. Plain and simple. You’re not as worried about development, and he could walk in right now and be a better third center option than Anton Wedin or David Kampf. Put him between some two-way conscious wingers, and you might have something. If the Hawks send him down, then you have a pretty good idea this season isn’t the priority (and it might not have to be). That is unless he looks completely lost, which I heavily doubt he will.

Dach is a little awkwardly fit because even at home, Dylan Strome also needs sheltering. Ideally, you could trust Strome to not have to be coddled with hammock shifts every time, but we’re not there yet. If he could be, you could start Dach exclusively in the offensive zone and you’d probably have something.

I wonder if some of this Bowman thinking isn’t really hoping that Dach comes up, absolutely kills it, and makes the Strome negotiations in the summer easier. If Dach looks like he’s going to be a #2 or even #1 center by the end of the season, and Strome is knocked down the depth chart, well you’re not so eager to just hand him $6M or $7M are you? It’s definitely a factor.

Either way, Bowman sounds a little more aggressive with this prospect than he has about ones in the past. Part of that is he has a coach who won’t have his own agenda this time around, but I think he knows he’s got something here and he’s not going to get in Dach’s way.

-And when I say putting Dach between two two-way conscious wingers, I’m looking straight at this Saad-Kubalik combination. The Hawks seem intent on making Alex “Fetch” Nylander happen, so he’s with Toews tonight and Kane is going to have ya-ha time with The Hounds Of Justice (well, “The Shield” line was Perlini with DeBrincat and Strome but we’re keeping it). Putting David Kampf between the two of them makes for an effective checking line, and saw Saad control play from a third line spot last year, but there’s more they could be doing.

I am kind of happy Colliton has already decided to see Andrew Shaw in a 4th line role, though it’s probably already knowing what he can do in the top six and give someone else a look. Still, if this is any indication that Beto O’Colliton is a little more infatuated with what Drake Caggiula can do than Shaw, man won’t this be a fun season? This was one of our complaints about the Shaw trade, is that if Caggiula is healthy and fully blown out he kind of does the same things, though maybe not with the hands. Watch this space.

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Alex Nylander

By John Pullega 1870 0

Stan Bowman certainly has a type. He likes ‘em fast. He likes ‘em to have big shots. He likes ‘em to have potential that’s eminently tappable. And StanBo gets what he wants, even if it takes trading a statistically solid 20-year-old defenseman from a team that is seriously going to ice Olli Maatta and Brent Seabrook as its second pairing, anno domini 2019. That’s how we end up with Michael Nylander’s son, aka William Nylander’s brother, staring down a spot on the first line.

Career Stats

19 GP – 3 G, 3 A, 6 P

53.96 CF% (3.5 CF% Rel), 66.9 oZS%

33.33 GF% (1.96 Rel GF%), 43.24 xGF% (-3.79 Rel xGF%)

Avg. TOI 12:20

A Brief History: In the process of prominently displaying my ass over the Alexander Nylander acquisition—or being one of the young go-hards spit roasting Stan Bowman as McClure so eloquently essentialized it—I accidentally did a primer on Nylander. Here’s where we landed on him back in July.

  • He’s not a Top 4 D-man.
  • His AHL stats aren’t great. He had 86 points (30 goals) in 165 games, good for .52 points a game. That’s pretty pedestrian for a supposed offensive dynamo.
  • He’s not particularly good on the defensive side of the puck.
  • He has alleged motivation issues.

We worried about where a guy like Nylander would fit, acerbically wondering whether Mayor Jeremy would try to shove him into a spot on the top line to prove what a monumental genious Stan Bowman was for getting him. And lo, dear reader, that’s precisely what they’re doing.

The calls for Nylander to play with Kane and Toews began almost immediately, based primarily on a first-round pedigree, Nylander’s genetic stock, and the consistent beat writer drumbeat that this year won’t be so bad and that Nylander may have just needed a change of scenery. I’m here to shit in your milkshake. It’s what you come here for.

Nylander has played 19 games in the NHL. Twelve of them came last year, where he saw most of his time with Conor Sheary and Evan Rodrigues, who were, I guess, the second or third line. There weren’t many patterns in his stats there, other than he and his mates were consistently and deeply underwater in both GF% and xGF%.

Now, Buffalo’s offense as a whole did suck, so it’s possible that coming over to the Hawks—who, despite eating glass on defense, are still a strong offensive threat—might goose those numbers. But watching him in the pre-season, where he’s slotted to the left of Toews and Kane, hasn’t really fleshed that out.

Nylander hasn’t looked bad by any stretch. He obviously has decent vision, good speed, and a good shot. But his play away from the puck has tracked fairly in line with what both scouts and Sabres fans (pardon my redundancy) hated most about Nylander. In short, he tends to loaf when he doesn’t have the puck. When he’s not loafing, he’s floating on the perimeter, hanging around the fringes (you’d think that would tug at our heartstrings, but alas).

This isn’t to say that pre-season hockey is representative of, well, anything. But for a former first rounder with a supposed ton of offensive potential who had trouble cracking the Sabres’s roster over the past three years, it’s sort of all we have. It’s not great, it’s not awful. It’s just there. And against what’s primarily been AHL rosters, you’ll pardon us for occupying a David Byrne headspace about that.

It Was the Best of Times: Nylander rewards the organ-I-zation’s belief in the Strome Effect and unearths the offensive monster inside of him. He fills out the Top 6 next to Toews and Kane, scoring 30 goals and potting 80 points. He becomes more engaged away from the puck (e.g., finding seams in the slot, continuing to develop his ability to set picks for Kane), forcing opponents to focus their best defenders on this line and opening up the ice for the DeBrincat–Strome–(heavy sigh) Shaw line. He’s the missing piece of the Hawks’s all-offense, all-the-time strategy.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Nylander does what he’s always done: flatters to deceive. He’s caught scratching his ass when the puck isn’t on his stick, which forces Toews to revert to the defensive side of his skillset, essentially neutering Kane’s playmaking. But the Hawks keep him in the Top 6 for half the year, because Stan Bowman is a trade genious who was in the GM chair for three Stanley Cups, which is definitely not something a cold glass of orange juice could have done with the rosters Uncle Dale served him on a platter.

As the Hawks sink farther into the abyss as the year slogs on, Nylander ends up in the AHL in favor of, like, John Quenneville.

Prediction: Nylander will get every chance to stick on the top line because DAT DYLAN STROME WUZ BAD BEFORE DEY TRADED FERIM MY FRENT. But he’ll end up on the third line with Saad and—fuck I guess Kampf?—because Kubalik is the actual guy who belongs in the Top 6. He’ll be Brendan Perlini II: showing flashes of the potential everyone keeps saying he has that are overwhelmed by lackadaisical off-the-puck and defensive play.

We want him to succeed. We want it to be a just-needed-a-change-of-scenery situation. But Alex Nylander’s career thus far has been a lot of peeing on the seat. It’ll be a Grimey ride.

Stats from hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Previous Previews

Robin Lehner

Corey Crawford

Adam Boqvist

Carl Dahlstrom

Calvin de Haan

Erik Gustafsson

Duncan Keith

Slater Koekkoek

Olli Maatta

Connor Murphy

Drake Caggiula

Ryan Carpenter

Alex DeBrincat

David Kampf

Patrick Kane

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Brent Seabrook

By John Pullega 1999 0

Five more years.

2018–19 Stats

78 GP – 5 G, 23 A, 28 P

46.77 CF% (-3.5 CF% Rel), 49.8 oZS%

46.46 GF% (-5.92 Rel GF%), 45.32 xGF% (0.45 Rel xGF%)

Avg. TOI 19:06

A Brief History: There are so many ways to measure what a negative effect Seabrook had when he was on the ice last year. Let’s start at the most obvious, which is his defense.

All Charts by Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath)

On the left is WITH Seabrook. On the right is WITHOUT. Both are bad. But it’s somehow and exceedingly worse when he’s out there. The analysis here is simple: Seabrook gets mauled when he’s forced to play in his own end.

The only Blackhawk D-man whose threat percentage while on the ice was higher than Seabrook’s (higher is worse on defense) was Gustav Forsling, and he won’t ever see the ice inside PNC Arena, barring a glut of Hurricanes injuries. Defensively, Seabrook is slightly better than Gustav Forsling. Ringing endorsement.

Worse than being bad by yourself is making your teammates worse. Seabrook excels at this aspect of the game.

This chart shows score-adjusted shots per 60 minutes, both against (inverted y-axis) and for (x-axis). That red diagonal line is the 50% point for shots for and shots against (i.e., the breakeven point). The blob of blue in the middle is Seabrook on his own, which leans toward bad. The black squares are a given player WITH Seabrook. The red squares are the given player WITHOUT Seabrook.

Aside from reiterating how bad this team is at defense as a whole, this shows that when Seabrook is on the ice, opponents take more shots than give up. When you take Seabrook off the ice, literally every single Blackhawk ends up facing fewer shots.

In short, Seabrook is a black hole for defensive performance, and there’s nowhere to hide him. He sucks so much that he has his own fucking event horizon. That’s fucking something.

You bet your sweet crimson ass there is. Perhaps the worst part of Seabrook’s game is his penalty killing.

Jesus Christ, just look at how bad the PK is when Seabrook is on the ice (left). He played just 21 seconds fewer than the Hawks’s leading PK time getter, Duncan Keith, on by far the worst PK in the league. This is an utter dereliction of duty on Colliton’s part. There might not be a worse regular-time-getting penalty killer in the league than Brent Seabrook, and yet there he is, almost leading the team in playing time out there.

Maybe you’re sitting there buying the myth that he’s still useful on offense. But guess what?

That’s not really true. In terms of shots at 5v5, Seabrook is entirely replaceable. The offensive threat (higher is better on offense) is the same whether he’s on the ice or not. Combine this with his GF%, and it’s even worse. Of Hawks who played at least 41 games, only Gustav Forsling (there’s that name again) had a worse GF% among Hawks D-men.

“Well, he’s still got a booming shot and can be useful on the power play,” you might say.

Pretty much any power play with Seabrook on it dies on this “still useful, booming” shot of his. This shot directly produced AT BEST 10 power play goals if you want to include the possibility of tips (two goals, three first assists, five second assists). That’s not nearly useful enough to make up for everything else he makes bad.

The only positive thing that happened with him last year is that he played under 20 minutes per game on average. That’s a start, but he really should be playing about 20 games per year.

It Was the Best of Times: Boqvist breaks camp and takes Seabrook’s spot. Seabrook plays 20 games all year as a 7th D-man, along with Dahlstrom.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Seabrook plays more than 20 games.

Prediction: Seabrook’s gonna get second-pairing minutes and look terrible doing it. Everyone’s gonna keep going back to the undefinable “leadership” he brings, saying, “You just can’t understand it unless you’re in the locker room.” Everyone will make excuse after excuse for his performance. It will be agony because none of this is really Seabrook’s fault.

This is just what he is now: a bad all-around hockey player. As much as I want to hem and haw about how a real leader would take himself off the ice, that’s not fair. It’s stupid, in fact. Instead, that’s a decision his coach—a man who likely has the same sort of respectability in Seabrook’s eyes as a soiled diaper—needs the stones to make. But Colliton probably doesn’t have the stones to do what anyone with even a cursory understanding of hockey would do: scratch Seabrook more often than not.

The only thing that Colliton, Bowman, and every other decision maker should be afraid of regarding Seabrook is how much damage he does to the Hawks as a direct result of playing ice hockey. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. Brent Seabrook is not a good hockey player anymore. He’s a sunk cost. You get nothing for continuing to ice him, except a below-replacement-level performance.

They’ll retire his number one day because he deserves it. We’ll revere him as a cornerstone of the Hawks revival, because he is, was, and always will be. The first time he comes back after his retirement, he will get the raucous standing ovation he’s owed. That’s what makes watching him be quite possibly the worst regularly playing defenseman in the NHL today as agonizing as it is.

We’re just as tired of this as you are. And it really doesn’t have to be this way.

Five more years.

Stats from HockeyViz.com, hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey.

Previous Previews

Robin Lehner

Corey Crawford

Adam Boqvist

Carl Dahlstrom

Calvin de Haan

Erik Gustafsson

Duncan Keith

Slater Koekkoek

Olli Maatta

Connor Murphy

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Robin Lehner

By John Pullega 2106 0

The one wrinkle that Stan Bowman missed while ironing his brain this summer was signing Robin Lehner. With Corey Crawford in a perpetual state of ouch and a blue line more horrendously conceived than Waldo’s Dad’s wall, finding a Robin for the Batman Bowman thinks this backend is was quite the steal, if not a bit on the nose.

2018–19 Stats

46 GP – 25 W, 13 L, 5 OTL

.930 SV%, 2.13 GAA

.934 EV%, 1.000 PP%, .888 SH%

28.7 Shots Against/Game

A Brief History: Lehner had a career year last year. He won the Jennings after Barry No-Neck reinstituted his “hockey should feel like a botched vasectomy” defense on the Isle/Brooklyn. He won the Masterson for performing well after confronting and addressing the hell of bipolar disorder. And he was second runner-up for the Vezina. For all the pants shitting Bowman did in the off-season, he managed to fling at least one diaper onto Lou Lamoriello’s cue-ball dome by signing Lehner to a one-year, $5 million deal.

Lehner consistently ranked in the top five among goalies in ALL situations last year.

  • Second overall with a .930 SV% (behind only THE BISHOP!)
  • Third overall with a 2.13 GAA
  • Third overall with a .854 HDSV% (high-danger save percentage)

Lehner also only gave up 93 goals on the year against an expected 109 (ALL situations), which simply means he played better than expected.

You may remember that the Blackhawks were the absolute worst team in HDCF% and a bottom-10 team in HDGF% last year, which is just a fancy way to say that their high-danger defense was a plastic bag of sun-drenched mayonnaise. So, that HDSV% should pop out as promising.

Lehner was pretty good on the PK last year, too, with a .888 SV%. For a team that portends to piss itself on the PK again this year, you’ll take any improvement you can get there.

It Was the Best of Times: If Lehner plays at just his career average rate, then the Hawks have a pretty comparable albeit lesser replacement for Corey Crawford.

Career

Games

SV%

SH SV%

5v5 HDCF%

5v5 HDGF%

5v5 HDSV%

Crawford

448

.918

.869

.501*

.529*

.852*

Lehner

265

.918

.892

.498

.479

.825

Postseason not included

* = 2007–19, NaturalStatTrick.com

And over the last four years, Lehner’s been the better of the two on the PK, though inferior in terms of HDSV%.

2015–19

Games

SV%

SH SV%

5v5 HDCF%

5v5 HDGF%

5v5 HDSV%

Crawford

180

.919

.875

.475

.520

.864

Lehner

179

.919

.891

.502

.477

.815

Postseason not included

This will be Lehner’s first real year since 2013–14 behind a team whose offense isn’t reliant on gas station enhancement pills for even a spurt. (Did you know Ottawa had a top-10 offense in terms of goals scored that year? I sure forgot.) Even with all the woe we throw at this team, the offense has been in the top-10 in terms of goals scored four of the last five years.

So, best case, Lehner performs at a career level or better, which improves the PK despite the fact that it’s somehow going to be slower than it was last year. With the Hawks scoring at a top-10 rate, Lehner can hide some of the trouble he’s had in allowing high-danger goals as the Hawks simply go with an air raid strategy all year. Lehner takes a 60/40 split of starts and the Hawks eke out a playoff spot on the backs of their offense and 1A/1B goalie tandem.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Robin Lehner played for one of the best defensive teams last year. You saw the numbers he put up behind that. The year before, he played for one of the worst defensive teams in Buffalo. His results weren’t pretty, as he threw a .908 SV% and 3.01 GAA. His HDSV% was an abysmal .796. The latter is closer to the kind of defense that Lehner can expect coming to Chicago.

Worst case, aside from an injury, is that Lehner can’t make up for how bad the Hawks blue line is. His HDSV% plummets behind a blue line that, again, managed to somehow get slower than it was last year. He drowns even splitting time with Crawford, and when Crow inevitably gets hurt, Lehner turns into the pumpkin we called Cam Ward last year. The Hawks don’t make the playoffs, don’t get a lucky bounce in the lottery, and no one learns anything.

Prediction: Lehner will end up as the 1A goalie as Crow’s tenure as the Hawks’s resident Rodney Dangerfield winds down. He won’t wow like he did last year, but we’ll get a serviceable, slightly-below-career-average line from Lehner. Let’s say, .908 SV%, .880 SH%. But the Hawks blue line and Lehner’s career HDSV% will pair as well as puke on a pile of shit, and none of the problems the Hawks had last year will really be solved.

Here come the Hawks?

Stats from hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com

 

Hockey

Here They Come With This Happy Horses**t Again

By Sam Fels 1772 0

Y’know, I thought we were done with this kind of story about the Hawks. It had at least been a while since the Hawks came out to proclaim they’re ahead of the curve when it comes to analytics, even though I’m fairly sure they can’t even spell “analytics.” And then everyone would lap that up while they continue to run their team in almost purposeful spite of what analytics would say. And then we would spend the season screaming until your eyes bled about how what they’re doing makes no sense. Then they would come out and say they’re ahead of the curve on analytics and just trust them, and the whole cycle would start again.

I guess I missed it.

First of all, if you were so “ahead of the curve,” you would boast about how big your analytics department is. That you had a team of people working on this and presenting it to the GM and coach. You would show off your computer room or something. Fuck, look at the Cubs and all the bleating and boasting they did about their “pitching lab,” which still has produced dick when it comes to pitchers but hey, they’re at least showing you they’re working on it.

The best part of this article, a deep focus on the Hawks trying to blow themselves, is that the counterpoint to it is right in the goddamn middle. The Hawks have one guy, ONE, listed under “Hockey Analytics” on their website. Their department that’s so fucking cutting edge has one dude, and like, maybe an intern or two. Al MacIsaac, who’s basically been a fucking plague in this front office for a decade, mentions “young people.” You know what that means, right? Kids they don’t pay who also get lunch and help the marketing people stuff the blimps that drop t-shirts or whatever. This is not a department. It’s a dude in a dark room with some students sentenced to go visit him once a week for credit.

“Everybody is at a certain place right now,” MacIsaac said, “but they don’t know if they’re in front or they’re way behind.”

They sure don’t, Al.

If the Hawks paid any attention to analytics, they wouldn’t have traded for Olli Maatta. They wouldn’t have thrown in Teuvo Teravainen merely to get Bryan Bickell off the books. They wouldn’t have traded for Andrew Ladd. As mentioned in the article, they wouldn’t have given Brent Seabrook a million years on a contract. They wouldn’t have spiked Q with Brandon Manning (well, knowing the dysfunction in this front office, that still might have happened). They wouldn’t have traded Henri Jokiharju. Good god do you know how long this list could go on? I’m not going to do that you with so little summer left.

Still, the Hawks were one of the worst expected goal teams in the league last year, and the year before that, and yet all they’ve tried to do to turn that around is acquire road-graters on the blue line to block more shots. They just traded one of their d-men who can, supposedly, transition the team from defense to offense, which is what they don’t do well at all and the analytics tell you that. Their hopes to turn that around are pinned to Adam Boqvist and basically Adam Boqvist alone. They will try and sell you that Duncan Keith can still do it, even though he has been declining in possession for a while now. And you expect us to believe they actually pay attention this?

Of course, all this is topped by MacIsaac pretty much dismissing player-tracking. Now, he can get away with this, barely, for now because no one is quite sure when player tracking is actually going to be ready. And when it does roll out, it of course will have some kinks.

But if you’re so far ahead of the game, as the Hawks want you to believe without actually doing anything to back it up, why wouldn’t you gobble up all the data you can? Try and get out ahead and figure out where the kinks are first, but more importantly glean what is viable from it before anyone else? Wouldn’t that be your attitude instead of waving your grandpappy hand and dismissing it at gobbledygook, as MacIsaac does here? How can you be that advanced when you’re not even paying attention?

Once again, the best thing the Hawks front office does is telling you how great they are at something, without actually doing it. They’ve been doing Trump’s act longer than he has. “Oh we’re the best at this, you can’t believe how good we are at it and we really are the envy of the league when it comes to this.” And then you don’t actually do that thing.

McDonough is going to be president in like 2024.

 

Hockey

Only In The NHL

By Sam Fels 2296 0

Maybe it took me a week to really come to terms with this breakdown of Paul Fenton’s firing in Minnesota. Maybe I needed a week to remember why I should care about the Minnesota Wild (and I still don’t). Maybe it was just the time of year and things are moving more slowly. But if you haven’t read Michael Russo’s article here, you really should. Just not for the hilarity or schadenfreude of it–and there’s plenty–but then come to realize that it’s probably hardly unique in the NHL.

I can’t decide what my favorite part was. The immediate dismissal of a pretty impressive analytics team that’s so NHL it seems too scripted to work. The never actually scouting Viktor Rask before trading one of your best players for him. The being at the Pats Super Bowl parade mere weeks before the trade deadline while the Wild were self-immolating. The constant fear of leaks. The fascination with players who suck, and have clearly proven they suck.

And it’s easy to point and laugh…but can’t you see some elements happening here? Especially the fascination with certain players, i.e. ones that have played for them before. While I don’t think the Hawks just skip the due diligence part of players they trade for…Kimmo Timonen would like a word. Yeah, that was a long time ago, and recent trades like Caggiula have worked out ok (though they seem to have soured on Perlini pretty quickly, but he was the throw-in in that deal). Still, their fascination with players they already know has a very familiar ring to it.

Also you could probably make a link to the dismissal of analytics here as well, as there’s simply no way the Hawks have paid any attention to it, otherwise you wouldn’t be trading for Olli Maatta.

What’s kind of amazing is how bad Fenton was allowed to be at his job. Can you imagine some of this going on in any other sport? I mean, maybe with the Pirates or Knicks or Raiders or something, but those are known basketcase organizations. The Wild aren’t supposed to be that. They’re not the model franchise or anything–even though they loved to tell people that–but they haven’t been moronic. They just haven’t been all that noticeable. This is noticeable.

And this was hardly Fenton’s first job, and you can easily see where he’ll get another because this is the NHL. No one ever dies in the NHL, they’re just moved to a different office…or wherever Bob Pulford is now.

I suppose the question I have to ask is where was any of this when it was actually going on? I know the answer is that people are way more willing to talk when the dude has already been canned and there’s no fear of repercussions, but surely someone or someones knew about some of this while it was happening. Wouldn’t an outing and reporting of it had a chance of stopping the idiocy to come?

The protection of information is hardly germane to the Wild and Fenton. We see it with every team in hockey, and increasingly sports. These days, when teams have their own bullhorns–website, twitter, instagram, facebook, all with their own staff and writers–there’s little need to get anything to the press unwillingly. You can spin anything how you want before anyone even knows it’s a thing. Still, you have to feel that Fenton’s trip to the Pats’ parade from his job in St. Paul is something that should have been a big deal at the moment. What happened there?

You can’t help but think of the dysfunction in the Hawks’ front office, and yet we’ve had to (get ready Fifth Feather) read tea leaves to even suss that out. It was clear that Q and Stan Bowman couldn’t get along at the end, and were only getting along before because the team in place was winning. But we had to put it all together. Somehow, they were able to keep that all in house, and only after Stan basically admitted to spiking Q with Brandon Manning did we get official confirmation of how deep the dysfunction went. Five or ten years from now, the tell-all book is going to be comedy on a Python-esque level.

We know that the consolidation and shrinking of media is bad in a lot more important areas than sports. We know that everyone having an Insta or Twitter means players or anyone else can talk directly to fans with whatever message they want (that sometimes ends up way worse). We know teams have gotten better and better about keeping everything under wraps, even with all the avenues we have now.

I guess that’s how some of this patently ridiculous shit can go on with a team like the Wild even over as short of a span as a year. But I can’t imagine this level of mismanagement is unique to St. Paul. And you wonder how goons keep getting jobs…

Hockey

The Scorpion Poses Are Out For Seabrook

By Sam Fels 2540 0

It’s the dead time for Hawks coverage now. There’s almost no chance of a deal or signing now. The convention is over, so we sit and wait six weeks for training camp. Or five weeks for Travers City, depending on how thirst the desert of hockey summer has made you. So it’s these human interest-like stories on Brent Seabrook that you’re going to get before we basically adjourn.

The thing is, we’ve read this story before. Seabrook already got the best-shape-of-his-life treatment last training camp, and now everyone is trying to walk that one back saying a second summer with Paul Goodman will lead to the shape he was supposedly in last fall. It’s getting harder and harder to keep track. We’ll circle back to this.

Mark Lazerus goes to talk to Seabrook (a risk in itself), and Jeremy Colliton, and Paul Goodman, and Stan Bowman. And all of that is reasonable. It’s what they say that I quarrel with.

First Colliton.

“It looked to me like it was difficult for him,” Colliton said to me during a quiet moment at the convention. “You play one way for so long, and you’re just used to a certain style of coach, of system, all those things. It’s hard to change your habits on the fly. You end up thinking instead of reacting. And we just didn’t have enough practice time. You need a week or two weeks to get things in, or even just three days of practice. And we just didn’t have it. Once the schedule lightened up (the Blackhawks played 33 games in Colliton’s first 66 days as head coach), you saw the change in our play. We were much better. We’ve just got to spend time on it. And now we have that time.”

Some of that may in fact be true. But the overriding factor here is that no matter what shape Seabrook finds himself in, the “system” Colliton wants to employ is never going to suit him. If indeed Colliton wants his guys chasing forwards all over the zone instead of passing them off when they go high or leaving them be in the corner and boards, Seabrook is never going to be able to do that. In fact, neither will de Haan or Maatta, come to think of it. Seabrook can know and be as comfortable with the system as he likes, it will never mean he’s built for it. Unless Colliton is going to tweak this and let Seabrook play a game where things more come to him, it’s just not going to work. It’s not what Seabrook can do. I’m not sure it was ever what Seabrook could do.

Still, Colliton’s assertion that Seabrook got better in the back half of the season holds some truth. Both shots against and goals-against per 60 were down for Seabrook in the second half of the season from the first. But the attempts against and expected goals against were up, and by bigger margins than the others were down. Essentially he got bailed out by better goaltending and worse marksmanship. Colliton may have a nugget here, but he does not have a foothold.

The next section goes to Goodman, and even I would have to admit that working with one guy your whole life another can be an adjustment, as Seabrook did with his trainers. Still, we were remarking as far back as 2013 and especially ’13-’14 how sluggish Seabrook looked. We blamed the former on not playing during the lockout. We really bent over backwards (just wheel posed) to explain the following campaign away by citing the shortest summer possible, though as the Kings were slicing and dicing him into paste even that felt hollow. Still, it’s been at least three seasons where Seabrook has looked off the pace, and one summer just isn’t going to change that in his mid-30s. I mean, Goodman seems pretty sure it will, and I guess he knows more about it than anyone.

But that won’t fix a system meant for the exact opposite of Seabrook’s game.

Even Bowman was getting in on Seabrook’s physical condition, which tells you just how much of a problem everyone thought it was. From there we get all the normal rigamarole about leadership and his voice in the room, and that’s not to be totally discounted.

But what they really mean is that they need Seabrook on Colliton’s side, which we’ve already labored. Duncan Keith has already declared Colliton an idiot. Jonathan Toews will always try and make anything work because he’s the captain. Patrick Kane is harder to read, but is at least somewhat placated by getting 25 minutes per night. It’s not that Kane doesn’t care about whether the Hawks win or lose, but that’s a salve either way. It almost feels like Seabrook is a deciding vote. They have to have his back. Because even Toews isn’t going to try and swim against everyone else in the dressing room.

And then where would they be?