Everything Else

Something In The Way – C.I.’s Season Preview: Finnish Baby Jesus

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If it wasn’t for all the bullshit that surrounds the Hawks right now, I would have to say the development of Teuvo Teravainen would probably be the most fascinating aspect of the Hawks this year. We have a player who took over a 3rd period in Game 1 of the Final at the age of 20 (and also the 2nd period of Game 5 of the Western Conference Final). He can play wing or center, and even the Hawks don’t seem quite sure where he should go. Once he was finally cemented on the roster, which took too long, he had one play each game where you weren’t so much blown back that he did it, but that he even thought of it in the first place. If the Hawks are intent on producing a new batch of a core to support their old one, or one to replace the one they had behind the old one (*cough*Saad*cough*), Teuvo is most likely the leading light of that.

Everything Else

Going Teuvo – A Look At Teravainen’s Passing Stats

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Our friend Ryan Stimson is back with some of his neato passing stats stuff. He works for InLouWeTrust.com, or whatever they’re going to change their name to now. Follow him on Twitter @RK_stimp. 

Hello Chicago fans! Congratulations on yet another Stanley Cup. As you may recall from my last trip over to the Indian, I have been leading a project on tracking passing statistics. I tracked about sixty of the Blackhawks games last season and have some help finishing up the rest of the schedule – Regular Season only. I wanted to dig into some of the data and share it with you all. Today’s focus with be Teuvo Teravainen.

A few words on Teuvo’s context before we begin. Since this represents the final forty-three games of the regular season, it’s important to note how he was deployed and the quality of his competition and teammates. Generally, zone starts and competition will wash out over the course of a season, but since we’re dealing with slightly over half-a-season, be sure to keep this mind. All data is from 5v5 situations.

Everything Else

The Road Never Ends And The Party Never Stops

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While us fans are still going to bask in the glow of Monday’s victory and Thursday’s parade (or in my case, Wednesday’s and Thursday’s Kyle Schwarber performance), this week is when the Hawks front office has to start to pivot toward next year, and namely to the point clearing out cap space to get Saad, Kruger, and whoever else they might like into the fold so we can attempt to do this all again in a year’s time.

Watching this unfold, I have to say I’ve been impressed with the local media’s reserved, optimistic tone about what the Hawks can do next year while the national — both here and north of the 49th — have been forecasting doom and gloom and it’s 2011 all over again! As it’s our job to piss on national and local narratives alike, let me poke some holes in this latter view, if you don’t mind.

Everything Else

You’re Jammin’ Me: Lightning 1 – Hawks 2 (Series Tied 2-2)

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Box Score

Event Summary

War On Ice

Natural Stat Trick

That was something of a departure.

We saw last year against the Wild that the Hawks can struggle against a team that changes its style from a previous game (or in Minny’s case, the previous period). The Hawks probably expected the Lightning to once again come out flying as they had basically done in the first three opening frames of this series. Instead, the Bolts in trying to protect their rookie goalie being dropped into a near impossible situation tweaked their system a bit. Instead of those pinches along the wall being meant to keep offensive zone time going and force openings, the Lightning basically used them as time to get their forwards back to clog the neutral zone. If chances came they took them, but they certainly weren’t going to force anything that might leave them exposed at the back. Constantly, whenever the Hawks did actually manage to break cleanly out of their zone ( I think it was twice), they saw three or four Bolts simply lined across the red line.