Everything Else

It’s Movement, But Is It Just Deck Chairs?

By Sam Fels 1899 0

Well, let’s state this at the top. If you take the non-NHL quality defensemen out of the equation–or at least the ones who aren’t worthy of a top-six most nights–and the Hawks were to open the season with some iteration of Keith, Maatta, Murphy, de Haan, Jokiharju, and Gustafsson on the blue line, it would be better than they ended with. I don’t know that it would be good, but it would be better. I also highly doubt that’s the plan.

So let’s start here:

This is true. Now everyone knows I don’t like Maatta at all, but I do like de Haan. And the Hawks do need to get better at actual defending without the puck. These two…well, at least de Haan, are improvements on that from Dahlstrom and Forsling and Koekkoek. And if this were Quenneville, you’d see the actual layout. These free safeties would be paired with the more free-wheeling Keith, Jokiharju (maybe?) and Gustafsson (if only he had wheels to be free).

But this isn’t Wayne’s basement. This is Colliton, whose “system” isn’t really dependent on positioning and angles, but on harassing and chasing all over the zone. At least that’s what we’re led to believe. Is that changing? Being tweaked? Sure, de Haan helps no matter what, but blocking more shots isn’t the problem. Well, it’s not THE problem. It’s stopping those shots from being taken at all.

Oh were you now?

Because what I saw was some shitty goddamn metrics whose specific task is to tell us what kind of transition team you were. And who’s getting this team up the ice now to avoid all those shots against again? In theory, de Haan is the perfect partner for Jokiharju to show off whatever transition and offensive flair he has (which I have to be convinced is there at all). So there’s one. It’s not really Keith’s wheelhouse anymore, and it probably never was. Maybe in a lesser role Keith can do some of that the way he used to, but then you’re implying someone can take the major minutes. That person is not here. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be here anytime soon, unless you believe that absolute most in Adam Boqvist. And brother, I want to see the world the way you do if that’s the case.

The Hawks still have this “logjam” on defense which again, is just a clogged toilet. In any rational world. Koekkoek, Dahlstrom, and Seabrook don’t even enter this discussion. The first two are in Rockford, the last one is eating pressbox popcorn most nights (and almost certainly way too much of it, topped with carnitas). So how do you solve that?

One rumor or feeling is that Murphy will go. But slotting in de Haan for Murphy is at best the very definition of a lateral move, except you’ve gotten older, more expensive, a touch slower, and with the same injury and health concerns. As always, it depends on the return, but to me that just keeps your defense spinning its wheels.

Gustafsson, given his numbers and contract should have as much if not more value for this season to a team, and if you really believe in Jokiharju’s offensive upside he can do most of what Gus did on the power play. And he might be a better weapon there in some ways, given that he’s right-handed and could one-time Kane’s passes from the boards. But that’s another hole to be filled, and you don’t have the answers.

Again, nothing about this solves the long-term outlook of the top pairing. Now, you could sit here and say the last three Cup champs didn’t have a real top-pairing d-man other than John Carlson and the one year Kris Letang was healthy. But all those teams featured four 1b-2b d-men. How many do the Hawks have right now? Murphy maybe? The absolute best version of Jokiharju? Can Keith claim that anymore? de Haan now but in a year or two? Boqvist really?

The Hawks passed on solving a big portion of this by not drafting Byram, which is fine if Dach is really their top of the board guy. They passed on this in the short term by not making an offer for Subban or Trouba. But now how is this solved in the next three years? Do you see a path? Little hard, isn’t it? Seems like a lot is riding on the very slight shoulders of Boqvist.

It’s good that they recognize the problems. And it’s good that they’re trying to do something about it. It’s good they’ve been aggressive. My fear is that it all signifies nothing, though.

Everything Else

Maybe They Don’t Have A Plan So They Can’t Keep Changing It

By Sam Fels 2007 0

As the weekend wore on, I sold myself more and more on the Kirby Dach pick. We’ll never know, but my hope is at #3 the Hawks wouldn’t ever pick for need. Those picks come around maybe once or twice a decade (unless you’re the Oilers), and you take the best player on your board. If for the Hawks that was Dach, fine. Any argument for Turcotte there seems equal to me as Dach at this point, and at least Dach was playing in the realest junior league. He also seems to have a higher ceiling, and I’m always here for guys who make the game look easy, as Dach does, than go-go-motor guys like Turcotte kept being advertised as. That “making it look easy” can easily devolve into just remaining on the perimeter and fading into the background of games, which is why the Getzlaf comparisons are frightening. It’s up to the Hawks to make sure that doesn’t happen.

But what bothers me about the whole drafting policy is that it seems a whole new sense of direction, and a dumb one at that. We’re only two years removed from THAT press conference after the Predators had left tire tracks all over the Hawks where Stan Bowman definitely wrestled total control of personnel from Quenneville and his cronies, and promised that this team would and had to get faster. Saad-for-Panarin didn’t really make the Hawks faster, but you could see the logic (only kind of). Murphy-for-Hammer did make them more mobile on the blue line.

And their draft kind of reflected it. Jokiharju is hardly big and is supposedly mobile, though I haven’t really seen that yet. Ian Mitchell is definitely mobile. Altybarmarkyan is small and fast. Evan Barrat isn’t even that quick and he’s small too. Same goes for Tim Soderlund.

Last year’s offseason moves are barely worth talking about, because all it really included was Bowman spiking Q with Brandon Manning. But signings like Kampf (admittedly earlier) and Kahun and other Euro signings stuck to the “getting quicker” theme. And at the draft it was Boqvist, Beaudin, Kurashev. All meant to get to playing at a quicker pace in the future, especially from the back end. They even reached on Boqvist to do that.

And now we’re here. Dach at #3, Vlasic at #43, who just happens to be 6-5 with skating concerns. Michal Teply is 6-3, and he doesn’t have the skating worries that Vlasic does but the “good speed for his size” doesn’t make you think he’s a burner.

This goes along with the rumors that the Hawks are hot after Anders Lee, who is a good player and has a fit here but is also something of a big plodder. So has there been a gear shift? And why?

The why you know, even if it is complete horseshit. I don’t know how the Hawks could buy into the theory that the Bruins and Blues grunted and farted their way to the Final through the use of viking warlords or something. Here’s the Blues top players from the playoffs, and that’s even if you think you should be using a team that missed the playoffs last year and then got sweetheart matchups all the way to the Final as some sort of model:

Schwartz, Schenn, Tarasenko, O’Reilly, Perron, Pietrangelo, and Parayko.

I guess Pietrangelo and Parayko are big and the latter plays like it, but where are these crushers at forward? Do the Hawks really think Pat Goddamn Maroon is such a difference maker they need like four of him.

Now the Bruins:

Marchand, Bergeron, Pastrnak, Krejci, McAvoy, Krug, Grzelcyk.

Chara was a fucking anchor all playoffs. Where are the monsters here as far as size? Back it out to the conference finals and you have the Canes, who simply battered Lee’s Islanders, and the Sharks. Again, where are the heathen hordes on those teams? Or on the Lightning, who did manage to be one of of the best teams ever in the much larger sample size of the regular season?

I don’t know where the Hawks think they’re going to go by getting slower. What are you going to do about Colorado on the five nights you’re lining up against MacKinnon, Rantanen, Makar, Byram, and Girard? If Nashville does sign Duchene, he is pretty damn quick if nothing else. Did Winnipeg lose speed? You’re still trying to catch up to all these teams, and you’re going to do it with Anders Lee and Olli Maatta?

Having your finger in the wind isn’t a plan, and maybe that’s why the Hawks have told you they don’t have a plan.

-The Hawks were making it seem like they really want Dach to take a spot this season, though most experts think that’s a stretch The thing is, they can shelter him just about as well as any team could. A center at 18, you’d want to keep him at the offensive end as often as possible. Which means you’d have to have Kampf and Toews take most of the defensive zone shifts. And you can do that, but is that what Toews is anymore? He could do it, but you’d lose a fair amount of offense from him because he’s no longer the guy who can continually flip the ice. Maybe he’s got one more year of doing that in him, but I’m skeptical.

And who would Toews do that with? Saad in theory, but then who? Would be a waste of Kane (and don’t be surprised if you never see Kane and Saad on a line together ever again) or DeBrincat. Is that what Lee would be for? That involves flipping Saad over to the right, which he’s never really taken to. It’s an odd fit, though I guess you could scratch it out.

Then one wonders who plays with Dach. Kane? You want shooters with Kane, and Dach isn’t that. Just give him Kubalik and like, Sikura and shelter them as heavily as possible?

The problem for Dach might not be what he can do, but what the Hawks can give him. Still, I find it hard to believe that there’s that much benefit from beating up on children he’s already played with for another season, and because the AHL isn’t an option you might as well keep him here. At least show some urgency. You just said it’s not like you’re waiting for him to grow.

 

 

 

Everything Else

So Much For That Plan

By Sam Fels 1911 0

It was never likely, as the Hawks were under the impression they didn’t need him or couldn’t afford him, but it was also a good plan. Erik Karlsson has re-upped with the San Jose Sharks for $11M a year for eight years, pretty much getting the “max” deal we didn’t think his exploding red crotch dots wouldn’t allow for. Sure, it’s too many years, but this is Erik Karlsson after all. The Sharks are all about the next two years right now, you’d think, and Doug Wilson probably isn’t around anyway when Karlsson’s age becomes something of an issue. Not that Doug Wilson will age, because he can’t.

With Karlsson off the market, that means there’s basically nothing on defense in free agency. We’ll go over these again I’m sure next week after the draft, but Tyler Myers sucks, Dion Phaneuf is even worse, Alex Edler is old and useless, and Jake Gardiner is like, a person who stands behind the forwards. You can probably talk yourself into Jake Gardiner, but the acquisition of Maatta makes any acquisition of Gardiner nonsensical. Which is maybe why the Hawks would do it.

So it’s either a trade or nothing, then. Though god, can’t we see the Hawks being smitten by Myers’s size? You can see it, can’t you? I’m going to see how far I can get this spoon down my throat.

Which does put a slightly different take on the draft, though doesn’t alter it that significantly. The Hawks are saying that what their pick an do next season isn’t really a factor on what their choice will be, and that’s fair. A pick this high should be around for a decade and that’s the view you take. Still, immediate improvement on the blue line, if the Hawks even conceive that they need it, basically can only come through another trade or Byram now. That shouldn’t be the only factor, but if they can’t split Byram and Turcotte, perhaps it’s a deciding factor?

As far as trades, it’s hard to believe the Hawks think they’re done. But as we’ve said all season, and last season, and will probably be saying all summer, we have no idea how they view the upcoming season. It it urgent they leap back into the playoffs? Do they see it as one more developmental season before Boqvist, Mitchell, Jokiharju, maybe Kurashev and others are ready to make a real impact in ’20-’21 and beyond? Do they know? Are Keith, Kane, and Toews willing to toss away another season in a limited amount of them left? Have they talked to them? Have the players talked to the front office? Was last season a developmental one or a massive cock-up from a team that doesn’t know how to build a defense? We’ve been asking these questions for about two years and we still don’t know.

Maatta’s arrival means making a move for Ryan Murray is a touch redundant, as they do the same thing (though the latter far better than the former, and we don’t even know if the latter is all that good either). Calvin de Haan was another name mentioned, but that’s the same again. And even if the Hawks have called the Canes about de Haan, or Faulk, or Dougie, the Hawks don’t have what the Canes need, which is frontline scoring (not wanting to use Schmaltz to get Faulk last summer is looking a real swift decision now).

So even the trade targets are limited. I would think HAMPUS! HAMPUS! is worth a phone call, but after the hiring of a new coach it’s hard to know what the Ducks think they are doing, and they may be more interested in trying to stick you with Perry or Getzlaf and that spoon is only getting deeper now.

You can’t force what’s on the market, and teams get in deep trouble making moves for the sake of making moves. It’s starting to look like the Hawks might have to readjust whatever their sights were. Then again, they just made one bad trade, so who knows anymore?

Everything Else

There’s No Plan, But There’s A Process

By Sam Fels 2087 0

Dear reader, I want you to remember those words as the Hawks go through the offseason and whatever they do. Repeat it to yourself after every move, every pick, every move that isn’t made. That’s what John McDonough told The Athletic right after the season, and I think it’s important to understand how the Hawks operate. Or don’t operate, as it were.

It’s hard to parse what the Hawks are thinking after the acquisition of Olli Maatta, itself we covered here. The fear is that the Hawks think their problem is they didn’t block enough shots. When the actual problem is preventing those shots at all, or gaining mobility or skill or…you know this could keep going and I’m going to get upset. And I don’t want to do that.

There’s also a fear that the Hawks think they’ve created this “strength” by having a logjam on the blue line. But they don’t. They have a clogged toilet. Remember, and I can’t stress this enough, Olli Maatta was nothing more than a third-pairing d-man on a team that’s been much better than the Hawks for two to three seasons now. Maybe even four. And last season ended with Maatta not even on their third-pairing. He’s not a difference maker. He’s a warm body, and that’s something he can barely claim because he’s a generally a pylon when he’s even upright.

And he’s just another third-pairing-or-below player. There are maybe two d-man amongst the NINE(!!) that are in contention for spots next year. And that’s not even counting Boqvist or Byram (a wish) pushing in training camp. Keith can still probably give you second pairing minutes and assignments with the right partner. Connor Murphy definitely can. That’s it. So seven players for what should be two spots. Good work there.

Do they think they can package some amount of this crap and get anything in return? Who thinks anything more of Slater Koekkoek than the Hawks do? The answer is no one, because if anyone did they could have gotten him from the Lightning for a song, too. They didn’t. Gustav Forsling? Everyone has seen what that is. And of course the main problem is they’re terrified of a demoted to a part time player Seabrook causing hell in the dressing room, so he’s going to be in the top six. His play has forfeited that right, but saying it out loud in the organization is somewhere around saying, “BEETLEJUICE!” three times with them.

More worryingly, although every GM says this after whatever team wins, is that Stan today was beating the, “ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS GET IN AND ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!” drum, which is horseshit. Yes, a team from nowhere does occasionally win. In fact, before the Blues won the last team to win a Cup that wasn’t consistently at the top of the standings was…hang on, I’ll get this…I’m sure it’s there…the Hurricanes? Except they had 112 points that year. Oh here we are, the Canadiens in 19 NINETY-FUCKING-THREE.

The myth of any NHL team being able to win once the playoff field is set is perhaps the most annoying in the sport. That doesn’t mean you have to win the Presidents’ Trophy or even a division. The league’s gimmick-heavy standings system makes it hard to distinguish between 100-point teams, really. But you do have to be near the top. The Cup-winner generally comes from a group of five or six. The Capitals had been around the top of the league for basically a decade. Same the Penguins. The Hawks, the Kings (and don’t start with the ’12 Kings because they were a preseason favorite that played with their head up their ass most of the season, and then were consistently near the top of the standings for the next three seasons). The Bruins were kind of a surprise, but then spent the next few years at the top of the standings too.

Simply “getting in” isn’t a sustainable plan. it’s not a plan at all. It’s the absence of one. Being a consistent, 100-point team or more is, and then maybe things break your way in the playoffs. And you need less of them when you’re actually really good. Look all it took for the Blues. A team quitting on its coach, a team not trying to score and a Game 7 OT, a team where everyone was hurt, and then that again in the Final. That doesn’t happen every year.

On the other side, it’s hard to tell what you need on the blue line anymore. There are many ways to skin a cat, so it’s very possible a team with a great blue line can and will win again. The Hurricanes look poised, the Predators have been contenders. But the last four Cup-winners have had suspect or underwhelming collections of d-men. Letang was hurt for one, remember, leaving Dumoulin as the only genuine, top-pairing guy on that Penguins team. Fuck, you could argue he’s the only one of the last four, though John Carlson and Alex Pietrangelo have strong arguments. Maybe you just need a collection of guys who won’t self-immolate at the first sign of trouble.

But the Hawks don’t even have that. They’re not even close to that! And the acquisition of Maatta doesn’t convince anyone they know how to get to that. Whatever our complaints about the Blues defense, and there are tons, Dunn, OrangeJello, and Parayko aren’t concrete-shoe slow. The Hawks are. Maatta only adds to that. What are they searching for?

And the worrying thing is they might not even know.

 

Everything Else

I’m Not Sure I’m Ready For A Corey Crawford Farewell Tour

By Sam Fels 1789 0

This is probably not the time to discuss it, as there will be plenty of opportunity starting in training camp. And whether Corey Crawford is Vezina-level again, or can’t find it at all, as the season moves toward the expiration of his contract at its conclusion, that question is only going to get bigger. But we’re not doing anything at the moment, so let’s at least get it started.

What prompts this is Kevin Lankinen’s gold-medal winning performance at the World Championships. Now, a hot two weeks doesn’t a prospect make. Lankinen only had 19 games at Rockford last year, and he wasn’t particularly good. He even spent some time in Indy. Then again, the year before, Collin Delia spent some time in Indy, had a hot few weeks in the AHL playoffs, and he’s something of the Hawks main prospect in net now.

Backing this up is that generally, Stan and his front office have been pretty good at identifying young goalies. That’s how I’m going to get around the whole Cam Ward thing. Stan has cycled through Antti Niemi, Crawford himself (only sorta but he did get the starting job under Stan), Antti Raanta, and Scott Darling, who have all had at least reasonable NHL success at times. They did salvage Ray Emery. A bunch of others haven’t worked out, but the ones that get to Rockford tend to be something.

Whatever, the Hawks likely will enter camp with Lankinen and Delia to battle it out for the backup spot. And anyone in the backup spot to Crawford these days has to be trusted to take the wheel for a stretch or two at least. This is a spot where the Hawks can save some cash, because any viable, veteran backup might eat up two to three million that can be used elsewhere.

But the question that will come with whoever wins the job (and you can see where they’ll rotate between the backup and Rockford and both gets starts on the top roster) is whether or not they’ll be ready to take over the following season. Or whether they’ll get the chance.

Crow is entering his age-35 season. And you’re hard-pressed to find too many goalies who go beyond that. I don’t think it’s fair to compare anything to Tim Thomas, as that appears to be a strange, tin-foil hatted, bunker-filling anomaly that won’t happen again. He came out of nowhere, which isn’t the story with just about anyone else, especially Crawford. Pekka Rinne just finished his age-36 season, and it was pretty all right in a total .918 and more encouragingly, he closed strong in March and April. Roberto Luongo had solid seasons at 35, 36, and 38. Beyond that though to find really good seasons past 35, you’d be hard-pressed. Good seasons, yes. Mike Smith had one (that’s not a name that will make you feel better though), Ryan Miller had one, one or two other names.

On the flip side, Henrik Lundqvist, perhaps the best goalie of the generation and one that Crawford has, y’know, the same lifetime SV% as, started to go stale last year at 36. To be fair, he was behind a horrible Rangers team, and his actual save-percentage at evens was higher than his expected, so maybe he was just drowning thanks to his defense. We’ll see next year.

It’s not that I’m worried about Crawford turning bad in the next year or two. That’s purely tied to health, and as we saw in March last season that a healthy Crow still put up a .920 behind one of the worst defenses of the decade. Even that Crow is still going to leave the Hawks with a decision.

The scenario you easily see, given what you know about the Hawks’ operating history, is that Crow has a blistering October and November, and is handed a two- or three-year extension right then and there. We know the Hawks like to take care of their guys. We know they don’t like to let anyone important get into the last year of their deal at all. Only Crow’s health has allowed him to get this far into his contract without an extension, I’m sure.

In a vacuum, you’d let it all play out. You see how Crow plays, you see how the kids play, you decide next summer. But we know the Hawks don’t operate in a vacuum, and they’re utterly terrified of facing questions like this during the season. They never really have. Keith was locked up to prevent that ever happening. Toews and Kane were re-signed as soon as possible. Seabrook signed his deal before the last year of his previous contract ever started. Going back farther, Patrick Sharp was extended before getting close to free agency. Hjalmarsson was signed to his last extension before the last season of his previous contract started as well. The Hawks just don’t do this.

But none of them were 35, or going to be in-season. None of them had the health industry. None of them, pretty much, had the sometimes dicey relationship with the organization that Crow has had in the past.

As we’ve previously discussed, the Hawks will have some big checks to sign next summer to Alex DeBrincat and possibly Dylan Strome, with smaller but possibly not insignificant checks to go to Dominik Kahun or Dominik Kubalik (and possibly Erik Gustafsson if they want to make a huge mistake). Savings have to come from somewhere.

I’m just not ready for any of this.

 

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying To Kill Me And The Toaster’s Been Laughing At Me – FFUD’s ’18-’19 Player Reviews: Jeremy Colliton

By Sam Fels 1558 0

In truth, the whole season, or at least the last 67 games of it, was referendum on Coach Cool Youth Pastor. The Hawks kind of telegraphed their intentions with their quotes and moves last summer and at the end of the season before that. You knew from the moment they brought him over from Sweden this was a guy they really liked, even if Chris Block made him cry. You knew the relationship between Joel Quenneville and Stan Bowman had gone beyond the breaking point, and everything pointed to Colliton being their hand-chose replacement. The Hawks backed themselves into a corner of having to hire him, when it was clear that Quenneville was never going to finish the season unless by some miracle. Colliton almost certainly wasn’t ready for this, but the front office isn’t going to be around for another coaching hire. At least you wouldn’t think. So it was a shotgun wedding. Did we learn anything? I’m not sure. But we had a lot of fun along the way, and in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer is no.

It Comes With A Free Frogurt!

The first thing that Colliton supporters will use to highlight their case, if these things actually exist, is the power play. Honestly, the power play was never a high priority for Q, as the Hawks won three Cups with a malfunctioning one either in the regular season or the playoffs or both. The PK and even-strength were given far bigger priority. So the Hawks’ power play languished, last in the league and by some distance. It was painful to watch, if not truly soul-destroying.

Look, there was clearly a lot of talent that was going to waste on it. But Colliton is the guy who got Duncan Keith off of it, trusted Erik Gustafsson to run it by himself, got it moving everywhere, and by the end of the season it finished 15th. That sounds disappointing, as it was flirting with the top-10 there for a hot minute, but when you think of where it came from, running at below 12% for awhile, to finish at 20% and to run at near 40% or above for six weeks or so is really an accomplishment. It went stale toward the end of the season when the Hawks really could have used it, but hopefully a more stable second unit and Patrick Kane not dying of exhaustion next year will curtail some of that. It was the only reason the Hawks go anywhere near a playoff spot.

To give Colliton only that would be a touch unfair. Connor Murphy played his best hockey when not being used as a blame-pawn by Q, and ascended to the toughest responsibilities. It was Murphy and Dahlstrom who closed out a fair few number of games at the end, with Keith and Seabrook on the bench. Similarly, Dylan Strome was provided an atmosphere to flourish, which you can’t guarantee would have happened under Quenneville (who was much more fair to young players than his rep suggested, however). Drake Caggiula looked useful, if not dynamic, though that could just be being freed from Edmonton. For the most part, not always, Colliton put players where they could succeed. If that meant Saad on the third line because that was his best fit, then that’s where he went. When it didn’t work, it could be argued it was because that player is just utterly talentless.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

You can’t go any farther without talking about the defense. It was the worst in the league, the worst in the analytic-era, and didn’t improve really at all. Was this all Colliton’s fault? No, because he was given about a defenseman and a half to work with. Jokiharju barely played for him, and when he did is when it was becoming clear he was overmatched. Still, there didn’t seem to be any sign of an upturn, and the excuse of not having a training camp ran thin after a while. He wasn’t installing Matt Nagy’s offense here. It’s hockey. If the Hawks were grooming a batch of youngsters to play the way they are going to when they matter again, you could maybe see it. But there really wasn’t. And there was no tweaking of anything to compensate for what the Hawks didn’t have, namely mobility in defense.

And Colliton’s system may be stupid anyway. It was infuriating seeing Murphy or Keith or Dahlstrom or whoever end up at the blue line in their own zone chasing one guy. Any team with any advance scouting knew that simply having a forward come high and a d-man go low would bamboozle the Hawks, and at worst leave a forward trying to defend down low with a d-man out covering the points and getting nosebleeds. It didn’t make a ton of sense. Even if the Hawks had the talent, we don’t know that this would work.

Colliton also suffered from not really acting like the boss. Brent Seabrook was never scratched, even though he was no more effective than Koekkoek, Dahlstrom, or Forsling. From what I can gather, that was merely because he and Colliton played together on a WJC team and the Hawks wanted the coach to have another veteran ally in the room. Especially as Keith couldn’t have made it any clearer he thought Colliton was a moron from day one. Kane was used for 25 minutes a night, and yes this was just about the only weapon the Hawks had, but it left him paste by the middle of March. It also showed no other plan.

The penalty kill was historically bad, and again, that was a matter of lack of talent, but there didn’t appear to be many changes to try and help it out. Teams could get passes through the box whenever they wanted. The Hawks never altered to either sink deeper or try and play with more pressure. They just kind of floated in the middle, which wasn’t working.

Also his wife doesn’t like us (though this is generally the norm among my friends and acquaintances).

Can I Go Now?

It doesn’t really matter, because Colliton will be here as long as Stan is, you would think. On any logical level, that’s what will happen. The rosy picture is to say that we’ll get a much clearer read on Colliton with an improvement in talent levels on defense. But it’s not clear that the Hawks will, or even can, do that. He’ll get his vaunted training camp to install the ideas that apparently have to be decoded by the Rosetta Stone, so that won’t be a crutch he and the team can wield any more.

Colliton is also going to have to win over the vets. Kane didn’t care or rock the boat because he was getting 25 minutes per night, and Toews is Toews and the captain and will always try and hold things together. You wonder how much longer any of these last if the Hawks don’t get off to a good start. How he gets Keith to play without both of his middle fingers extended is another mystery. Whatever the actual relationship between Colliton and Seabrook is, it probably has to be put under the test of Seabrook ending up in the pressbox some nights. You can’t improve this defense with #7 playing every night. At least it’s impossible to see how. If Crawford is finally fully healthy he’ll have a say as well. Can Colliton avoid a full out rebellion if some or all of this comes to fruition?

If Colliton’s strength is bringing along young players, we’ll have to see it more this year. Kubalik is coming over. Outside chance Kurashev is here. Sikura needs to go from threatening to actual usefulness and actual goals more to the point. Whatever d-man who is actually good, or even just ambulatory, needs to be harnessed. The penalty kill has to be something other than a war crime. And there have to be tweaks to a defensive system when called for.

It’s a lot. It was always a lot to deposit this coach with barely any experience in the middle of an organization that is thrashing wildly looking for any shore or bank. It was unfair. But there are far less excuses now. Stan has his guy, and he has to give him whatever they both decide they need for both to succeed. If Keith or Seabrook aren’t on board, then they have to go or it has to be clear that Colliton is the boss and they’d better get in line.

Good luck.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Carl Dahlstrom

Brendan Perlini

Alex DeBrincat

Chris Kunitz

Artem Anisimov

Marcus Kruger

Dylan Strome

Jonathan Toews

Brandon Saad

Dominik Kahun

John Hayden

David Kampf

Patrick Kane

Drake Caggiula

Dylan Sikura

Everything Else

Wait, They Get It? No, Surely Not No

By Sam Fels 1879 0

I guess at this point of the offseason, all we can really do is take the stuff Mark Lazerus and Scott Powers write, and others, and comment. We’re still three weeks away from anything interesting happening, and a month away from the draft when we’ll get some real answers. So here’s Lazerus’s piece from yesterday at The Athletic that’s essentially an interview with Marc Kelley, the Hawks director of amateur scouting. I sort of wonder if Kelley won’t be allowed to talk ever again.

The main debate we’ve had here about the Hawks #3 pick is whether or not they can add another d-man at that spot, and specifically Bowen Byram. He’s the only d-man mentioned in the discussions. Every other player around there is a forward. And the Hawks have sort of projected this idea that they already have too many d-men in the system and they’re all so precious and they just can’t figure out what to do. Which leads one to worry the Hawks will reach for a forward that won’t be worth that third pick, that won’t be here soon anyway, and whatever the Hawks do to improve for next year is going to have to be through trades and free agency. Or worse yet, they’re not all that concerned with improving next year.

Kelley seems to go against the grain on all that. First, there’s a comparison to Paul Coffey about Byram from Kelley, which isn’t a name you just toss around (though if Paul Coffey were a player today and was a Hawks, a large section of Hawks fans would hate him including the two in the booth. This is my fear/excitement about Karlsson. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED). But here’s a money quote for you:

“If you feel that a defenseman is going to project out to be that No. 1, then you go that route,” said Kelley, who was careful not to reveal his cards and say Byram was necessarily that guy. “With all these defensemen we’ve drafted, it’s not our plan that they’re all going to play for the Blackhawks. The defensemen we’ve taken have all held their value, or increased their value. That’s what you’re looking for.”

So there’s a couple things there. One, he’s basically saying that if the Hawks think that Byram is going to be a true foundational piece, then they’ll take him. Kelley recognizes you don’t get a shot at this very often, and if one comes around you don’t miss. They’re obviously not going to say what they’re going to do, just in case they scare some team behind them that HAS to have a guy into trading two top-liners for the Hawks pick or something ridiculous like that. I don’t know if Byram is that guy. A lot of scouting reports seem to suggest he is. You’ll never know for sure until he gets here, obviously.

Second, Kelley for the first time makes it clear that the Hawks know they’ll never get all of their prospects on the blue line onto the UC ice, and even seems to relish how adding Byram opens them up to trade possibly one or two more of them. If that’s the route they go. We can debate all day which d-man should go (Jokiharju), but while they’ve hinted at it before around the edges, this is clear that something will happen. And very well may happen this summer.

Which is fine. Jokiharju’s or Boqvist’s value are probably still high as they can be. Maybe the latter has to prove he won’t drown at the professional level, but we’ll get there. Still, I was encouraged by something someone in the front office said. When was the last time that happened? This is why he’ll be silenced forever I’m sure.

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Carl Dahlstrom

By John Pullega 1633 0

Carl Dahlstrom is a nice #7 D-man. He’s neither so good nor so bad that you notice him. I would stop the review right there if I could, since that’s about all worth knowing about Dahlstrom, but they’re going to take my thumbs if I don’t expound. So let’s shit on Stan Bowman for a little while.

Stats

38 GP, 0 G, 6 A, 6 P

47.32 CF%, 43.72 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

The Hawks had to ask a lot of Donald Dahlstrom in what was technically his second time in the NHL. This is a thing that happens when your GM is too much of a sniveling, mealy-mouthed coward to fire the coach he so desperately wanted to fire before the season began. Never forget that Stan Bowman unironically signed Brandon Manning in a passive-aggressive salvo against Joel Quenneville, leaving Colliton frantically searching for bodies to throw on the blue line in response.

Dahlstrom happened to be one of those bodies.

Given the situations he got thrown into, Dahlstrom was fine. According to Corey Sznadjer (@ShutdownLine) and CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil), Dahlstrom was good at cutting off play at the blue line this year, but the sample sizes are small, both for this year and his career.

Playing dungeon shifts with Our Large Irish Son, his CF% at 5v5 was 47+. That’s pretty good when you consider that he started just 38+% of his time in the offensive zone.

He played on the PK and was a guy out there, on the ice for 10 PK goals allowed in about 71.5 minutes. He also had the highest PDO among all Blackhawks: 103.8 at evens.

But buddy, if we’re hanging onto an unsustainably high PDO and small-sample-size entry-defense stats as highlights, there’s not much behind the curtain.

Dahlstrom isn’t useless. He played 38 games and was OK. He’ll have a cap hit of $850,000 in each of the next two years. That’s not terrible. He’s a depth guy that should be splitting starts with Seabrook. That’s all.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

It’s important to restate that Dahlstrom got thrown into the deep end because Stan Bowman thought it was more important to give Quenneville a defensive monolith than to sign literally any other D-man than Brandon Manning. The only way it might have been worse is if he’d signed Roman Polak, and I assume the only reason he didn’t is because “Ric Flair of the Offseason” Jim Nill managed to get on the phone with him first. Because of that wretched signing and eventual trade, Dahlstrom had to pick up the pieces, and it wasn’t always pretty.

Among all Hawks D-men, Dahlstrom had the worst High-Danger Corsi For percentage at evens, with a 36.92%. That means he was giving up a shit-ton of high-danger shots while he was out there. But given the dungeon shifts he and Murphy were expected to take, typically against better competition, that number makes more sense. It’s still not good, but it’s not as awful as it seems in context.

In trying to think of other examples of any outlandishly bad play, I’ve come up short. He’s not particularly fast, which means he’s more inclined to play conservatively. His conservative play and positioning mean he’s usually not terribly out of position, but it also means he’s never going to contribute offensively. Given Colliton’s lust for run-and-gun, man-to-man defense, it’s hard to picture Dahlstrom having any sustainable success here, outside of spot starting.

Can I Go Now?

Donald Dahlstrom is here for another two years, barring a trade. You’ll hardly ever notice him, given his ghost-like features, and that’s fine.

In an ideal world, he and Seabrook would split starts right down the middle. But that would require Colliton to have the spine to scratch Seabrook, Bowman to have the mental wherewithal to trade for a true #1 D-man rather than vainly and embarrassingly comparing his team to the Islanders, and Brent Seabrook to be the leader everyone trips over themselves to say he is and swallow the scratches for the sake of the team.

I don’t like those odds, and you shouldn’t either.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Brent Seabrook

By John Pullega 1719 0

When we divvied up who was going to write about whom a few weeks ago, we totally forgot to include Brent Seabrook in the mix. Call it wishful thinking or a Freudian slip if you must, but we can all agree that we all want to forget about the year Seabrook had. Strap in. This one’s long, and it’s gonna get weird.

Stats

78 GP, 5 G, 23 A, 28 P

46.77 CF%, 44.71 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

One good thing that happened is that Seabrook was close to his career average in points. Another thing was that as the year went on, Colliton started pulling back on the number of minutes Seabrook played. Whereas Seabrook was posting 20+ minutes with regularity in November and mid-December, once mid-December hit, the minutes started falling off.

The last time Seabrook played 20+ minutes in 2018 was on December 14. From that point on, he eclipsed 20 minutes just five times in the next 45 games he played. This has long been the argument that Hawks beat writers and talking heads have foisted upon us. If Seabrook only played less, he’d be more effective. Well . . .

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

From December 15 on, here are some of Seabrook’s stats:

  • 47.07 CF%. Only Dahlstrom was worse among D-men with at least 500 minutes (47.03%), but Dahlstrom also started in the oZ about 39% of the time, compared to Seabrook’s near 50%.
  • 40.07 HDCF%. Only Dahlstrom (37.24%) and Murphy (38.41%) were worse among D-men with at least 500 minutes. Again, the zone starts weigh heavy, with Seabrook starting in the oZ almost 50% of the time, while Dahlstrom and Murphy sat at around 39%.
  • 44.44 HDGF%. Worst among Hawks D-men with at least 500 minutes. If you include Forsling at around 465 minutes and a 37.50%, Seabrook bumps up to second worst. Joy.

Even with less time AND sheltered time, Seabrook was still getting exploited by opponents, so I’m not so sure that the “Seabrook can still be useful with less time and more sheltering” argument is a valid one.

It only gets worse when you look at the season as a whole.

Among 209 D-men who played at least 500 minutes on the year, here’s where Seabrook ranked in the following categories:

  • 170th in CF% [46.77]: Of the players who had worse CF%s, only seven spent more time in the oZ than Seabrook: Ilya Lyubushkin, Dmitry Kulikov, Jack Johnson, Jordan Oesterle, Joe Morrow, Cam Fowler, and Madison Bowey. Fucking woof.
  • 147th in GF% [46.46]
  • 189th in xGF% [44.71]: I’d like to note that this was worse than Brandon Motherfucking Manning, and better than both Gustav Forsling and Carl Dahlstrom. So anyone who says the Hawks can/should prioritize forwards over defensemen this offseason and outscore their problems can suck the shit out of a stray dog’s ass for all I care.
  • 198th in HDCF% [42.11]: Amazingly, three Blackhawks were worse than him: Murphy, Dahlstrom, and Forsling. Murphy and Dahlstrom were victims of zone starts (38% and 39% oZ starts, respectively). Forsling (52.11% oZ start) just fucking sucks.
  • 173rd in HDGF% [41.51]

And that’s just at 5v5! Seabrook also played the second-most minutes on the Hawks’s league-worst penalty killing unit, just behind Duncan Keith. In case you didn’t know, the Hawks’s PK finished with a 72.7 PK% despite being the sixth least-penalized team in the league. (Only the Leafs finished with a PK% lower than 80% among teams with fewer penalty minutes, and they finished at 79.9%. That’s fucking something.)

And the turnovers. Seabrook’s -53 giveaway/takeaway differential was worst on the Hawks and 15th-worst among all D-men. Only Alec Martinez and Scott Mayfield had worse differentials in less TOI.

Did I mention that Seabrook’s CF% Rel of -3.5 was only better than Andreas Martinsen (-6.0), Brandon Motherfucking Manning (-5.7), and Brendan Perlini (-3.8)?

I can’t go on. But the point is, there’s no metric that shows that Seabrook can play even third-pairing minutes anymore. Even if you go back to the bash-your-head-in-with-a-rock plus/minus stat, Seabrook’s -6 was tied for worst in his career. Combine all this with the eye test, and hoo boy.

All of this fucking sucks to look at. Pointing out that Brent Seabrook—who will go down as one of the most recognizable and venerated Blackhawks of both his generation and all time—sucks isn’t fun.

What’s even less fun is pointing out that he got to play minutes over Henri Jokiharju, whose performance was the polar opposite of Seabrook’s. While it’s not his fault that Colliton made that decision, it’s nonetheless frustrating. If the Hawks didn’t have anyone better to throw out there, you’d live with it a little more. But they do have at least one guy who’s better, and he got to finish in the AHL. That’s fucking stupid no matter how you slice it.

Now, let’s get weird.

Within every retrospective of Seabrook I’ve read, there’s always a paragraph or two dedicated to how much Seabrook means to the team off the ice. Everyone says he’s a great leader, the heart of the locker room, and so on. Fuck, one of the NBC talking heads quoted Patrick Kane as saying he thinks Seabrook is underpaid for what he brings in terms of heart.

I don’t think any of that narrative was of Seabrook’s own making, and thus, that narrative isn’t his fault. But a good example that he takes leadership seriously goes back to comforting Toews in the penalty box against the Wings in 2013. It goes back to Seabrook being the spokesman during the Keith–Sharp kerfuffle in 2015. And it runs through recently: When Seabrook was a healthy scratch last year, barrels of ink were spilled, including by me, about what a big deal it was.

Brent Seabrook matters, and he always will in the annals of history. But maybe his slide into badness could come with a bit more dignity if everyone would stop shoveling the LEADERSHIP narrative so hard.

I’m not in the locker room and never will be. I don’t doubt that the players see Seabrook as a strong leader. I don’t doubt that they love the guy for the things he says and does behind the scenes. I don’t doubt that he’s still important to a lot of the players, both young and old, on and off the ice. What chaps my ass is the idea that because he’s likeable and says things that pump his teammates up, he needs to be on the ice at all.

I don’t give a fuck that he’s getting paid close to $7 million a year. I’m anti-“Pay Him, Play Him” when the play isn’t worth the pay. Sunk costs blow, but the best way to handle them is to cut bait as much as possible. With all those fucking degrees from Notre Dame and whichever other institutions are at a perpetual up-their-own-asshole critical mass in the front office, you’d think they’d know how to avoid a sunk cost fallacy. But here we are.

Seabrook obviously carries a big stick, since anyone else who turned in his performance would regularly be scratched or in the AHL (the latter of which isn’t an option for Seabrook, obviously). And while I know that this goes against how hockey players (and athletes in general) only know how to compete and will never ask to be taken out, I wonder whether Seabrook, as a leader, would ever say, “Look, I’m obviously not as good as I used to be, and I’m sometimes hurting the team, but I still want to play. How can we split the difference between me playing every game and not playing at all?”

If he were to say something like that (if he hasn’t already), you have to imagine it would resonate. At that point, the entire organization can stop dancing around the fact that Seabrook isn’t good anymore and justifying playing him with this leadership narrative. They can stop filming five-minute videos about how Seabrook is in the best shape of his life in the offseason, only to retreat to his leadership when everyone mistakes him for Obese Homer trying to shoo kids away with a broom handle five games in. And we can all stop bemoaning the very public crumbling of a legitimate Blackhawks legend’s performance.

But at the end of the day, that’s on Colliton, Bowman, and McDonough, who are either too scared to tell him themselves or too arrogant to see that this isn’t the Brent Seabrook that won three Cups. That’s the real problem. Seabrook shouldn’t have to be the guy to take himself out. That’s the whole point of coaches and management. Yet another exhibit in the case that this Brain Trust was born on third and has no clue how to handle adversity.

Can I Go Now?

We have five more years on this contract, and with each year that goes by, it’ll be easier to forget what a horse Seabrook used to be. He’s not gonna be traded, so let’s snuff that out right away.

The guys over at Second City Hockey did a breakdown of what a buyout would look like. It’s not pretty, but it’s an option if his play continues to slide beyond redemption. It’s not Bobby Bonilla bad, but it’s reminiscent.

It’s extremely unlikely that Seabrook will leave close to $35 million on the table to retire and walk away from everything. It would be the easiest out, since there’s no recapture penalty attached, but Seabrook doesn’t owe anyone that.

My crazy idea would be for Seabrook to retire on the condition that the the Hawks immediately transition him into a coaching position of some kind for a salary that’s close to or equal to what he’s making now but doesn’t affect the salary cap. It would be the best of all worlds: Seabrook gets to stay around, get paid, and have an important role on the team, and his play doesn’t cost the Hawks goals or games anymore.

I’m sure what I’m proposing is impossible and stupid, mostly because Seabrook obviously still wants to play. But if the Hawks want to make one last run with this Core, it’s going to be impossible and stupid to take it seriously while this version of Brent Seabrook is still skating real, meaningful minutes. And that’s a shame.

Seabrook had a shitty year, but he will always reside in the tabernacle of our hearts. He’s a fading legend, an exploded supernova. For all the shit we toss his way, we’ll always remember and love all the good stuff he did.

I’d just rather not have to weed through half a decade of trash to remember it.

Stats from NaturalStatTrick.com, hockey-reference.com, and tsn.ca

Everything Else

You Can Spew Anything When No One’s Listening

By Sam Fels 1582 0

In one sense, this is the easiest time to be Stan Bowman. Your draft position is set, the exit interviews are done, and thanks to the playoffs (both NHL and NBA) and baseball, no one’s really paying attention to you. Throw in the fatigue most Hawks fans had from watching and thinking about their team, and that’s even more indifference and apathy that keeps them in the dark. Nothing can really be done until after the Final is over. While the Hawks would prefer to win, I’m sure that if you asked them honestly they would tell you one silver lining of being bad now is the shroud of anonymity it’s provided them. These are people who would prefer to not be looked at too closely.

So it was again when Bowman granted the Sun-Times’s Jason Lieser a lengthy interview, and boy is there some Grade A horseshit in here. Even better it came out on a Saturday, to lower the odds that anyone would see it to just above nil. But it didn’t escape my eye. Nothing does. I am Sauron. Let’s dive in, shall we? And I want to start with the end of the article first.

“Having the opportunity to start the season with a training camp and to have the time to establish a standard, that allows you to be a little more direct and aggressive about enforcing how we need to play to win,” he said.”

This is a narrative I was sick of by March 1st, and it’s one that both Bowman and Jeremy Colliton are going to pedal until the next training camp to try and save their ass. Plain and simple, Jeremy Colliton was in the job for five months. He had 67 games. While he may not have been able to do everything he liked, the idea that he was trying to install Matt Nagy’s offense on the fly is just laughable. Yes there were changes made and it’s not totally simple but it does remain hockey and it’s not that hard.

If making changes is that hard midseason, why was Colliton allowed to switch the defensive system at all then? Because he did, and you saw the results. If he can perform this massive switch the moment he shows up, and provide us with Connor Murphy roaming around the blue line by design, then why couldn’t he tweak it in February and March when it was painfully obvious that the team couldn’t run what he wanted? Or if changes are so hard…why fire Quenneville at all?

You have to hope Stan knows, and this isn’t encouraging either, that he put together a blue line that was simply unacceptable and there was no saving it. But he can’t say that, otherwise he’d be signing his own pink slip if McDonough weren’t so busy either patting himself on the back or yelling at low-level employees or both. But you wonder if that’s what Stan really thinks when you get to this mess…

“That’s something people have a hard time grasping,” he said. “What was is not always a perfect indicator of what will be.”

He’s acutely aware of every team’s trajectory at all times, and just in case everybody hasn’t been studying the New York Islanders’ defense the last two years, he’s happy to offer a quick sketch: same defensemen, new goaltender, new coach — substantial improvement.

The Islanders were way out of the playoffs a year ago, but leapt to 48-27-7 and swept the Penguins in the first round last week. They went from dead last in goals allowed, shots against, penalty kill and five-on-five high-danger chances against to average or better in every category. They allowed the fewest goals in the NHL this season.

Their situation wasn’t that different than the Hawks’ other than they were slightly younger.

Their top seven defensemen this season were already in the organization, and the only newcomer was a rookie. The Hawks have Adam Boqvist, the No. 8 overall pick last year, in the pipeline.

Robin Lehner was second in the NHL in save percentage this season and was a major upgrade at goalie, but the improvement in shots against and high-danger chances didn’t have anything to do with him. The Hawks might get a similar boost if Corey Crawford stays healthy next season.

Bowman believes coach Barry Trotz was instrumental after taking over for Doug Weight, and the Hawks are heading into Colliton’s first full season running the team.

It’s not a step-by-step guide for the Hawks, but it’s plausible to Bowman that his team could pull off that type of transformation.

“People would say that sounds good but that doesn’t ever happen,” he said. “And my point would be that it can happen — it just did happen.”

I nearly passed out when I read this. Let’s see if we go through it together if we can survive or this becomes digital Jamestown.

To compare the Hawks to the Islanders is so incomprehensible I have to put my head through the drywall just to feel anything again. One, while the Islanders might not have any stars, Adam Pelech, Ryan Pulock, Scott Mayfield, now Devon Toews were all highly regarded prospects and already in the NHL or right on the doorstep (Toews). Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuck have been plus-NHL d-men for years. Thomas Hickey has at least been serviceable most of his career.

Who on the Hawks fits any of these categories that’s going to be on the roster next year for sure? Connor Murphy and Erik Gustafsson are solid NHL-ers, and maybe nothing more. Henri Jokiharju might be the prized prospect, except really all he did was look better than the trash heap Bowman foisted upon the world in some Joker-esque prank. Forsling and Koekkoek are simply not NHL players. Dahlstrom can maybe has a crimp-hold on being a #6-7. Brent Seabrook may not be an NHL player either. Duncan Keith gave up. What’s left?

Second, Barry Trotz has been coaching in the NHL for two decades and has made three different teams into solid defensive outfits. Jeremy Colliton has one season at the AHL-level and four-fifths of one at the NHL-level. You really want to bet your future on his transformational abilities?

Third, Trotz teams get their defensive prowess from basically stripping any offensive impulse and creativity from their system. You’re not going to do that here with the forwards you have. Remember, the Islanders had one player over 60 points. The Hawks had four and another in Strome who was just off a point-per-game pace since arriving. Those two simply don’t line up.

At the season wrap-up, Bowman swerved from a question on Seabrook’s play by pointing to Toews’ resurgence. The message between the lines was that the Hawks need Seabrook to have that type of offseason and come back somewhere near peak form.”

This is rich, considering the Hawks were pushing the “best shape of his life” stories on Seabrook last training camp and he still looked beached orca-like during the season.

I don’t want to rule out Seabrook changing his body and game for next season. Maybe professional pride kicks in, though it hasn’t in about four years. And Toews wasn’t out of shape, he was in the wrong shape. Toews kept bulking up for a game that was getting faster. The change he had to make wasn’t working harder or finding motivation. He just had to change how he went about it.

I have no idea what Seabrook’s offsesaon regimen looks like, if it even exists. But we’ve been talking about his sluggishness since 2013 and it’s been consistent since 2015-2016. I understand he can’t really go anywhere, at least in an organization that doesn’t seem to have any balls, but this is truly the most wishful of thinking.

This is from earlier in the article:

Playing the results, the Hawks could’ve used Panarin and Teravainen this season. But based on the circumstances at the time, Bowman doesn’t second-guess himself.

“The makeup of our team and the makeup of our competitors — you wouldn’t redo those deals,” he said. “I think we were one of the first teams — I guess you could say Los Angeles as well — where this became a big issue for managing your assets. There are some other teams that are bumping right up against it now.

“It’s hard to navigate that without something giving. The whole hope is that you can manage it well enough that you don’t flounder for a long time.”

I understand no GM is going to admit a mistake on a player currently on the roster, and I say this as Brandon Saad’s last remaining fan, but if you wouldn’t redo that Panarin deal then you’ve got the wrong combo of medication. And the Hawks can’t squawk about how much cap space they have now and then turn around and claim they never would be able to re-sign Panarin, combined with the half-hearted noise they’ve made about trying to do it this summer anyway. Same goes for Teuvo, though not wanting to badmouth Bryan Bickell is understandable.

Isn’t it fun to work in the dark?