Peter Himmelman song seems like an appropriate title with the Hawks in the Twin Cities without Handzus and Bickell but with Morin and Nordstrom. That Shaw didn't travel concerns me quite a bit, and I hope it's that they just didn't want to send him up on a one-nighter if they think he probably won't play. I really hope it's not a concussion from the fight with that fuckhead Roussel.
Fortunately, the Wild are a little bit banged up themselves, which has caused them to stop matching the Hawks win for win and tumble to playing .500ish hockey. They shut out the Flyers out the other night, but the Flyers didn't start averaging 2 goals scored until a couple weeks ago, so BFD; shakes could shut the Flyers out. Granlund is out, Parise has been hurt, and Brodin keeps getting jacked up for some reason, but seems to be in the lineup for now. Still, Backstrom and Harding have been impossible to score on, especially Harding, so that's pretty scary with our lineup in the enfeebled state that it's in. Also, Suter is leading the league in ice time, averaging 29-and-a-half minutes a game. That's still not as bad as when Keith was made to break 30 every night when our third pairing had, like, Jassen Cullimore. Suter is only a -1 on the year, which really surprises me given his TOI and the general paucity of goals scored against Minnesota.
No word that I've seen on whether we're following up Crawford's 14/18 night with "we're going with Raanta so Corey can get a rest" or "we're giving Corey another shot to get some momentum going," but the point is that I really don't want to think about a 14/18 line for either one of our goalies ever again. If you're a believer in the old trope that teams tighten up for their backup goalies -- which I'm not, at least not for this team where for better or worse it's always more 1 and 1A than 1 and 2 -- then maybe this is a night to squeeze out an extremely risk-averse 2-1 win and go back home, but like I said with the goalie thing, you might want that to be the gameplan no matter who's backstopping.
Oh hey! I've finally made good on my promise to compile all the songs from game threads and make them available!
Here they are. I had to fill in the Vancouver one, quite appropriately, with "Twin Cinema" by local indie band the New Pornographers, because SOMEone can't spot a trend. But anyway, here are games 1-29. Maybe you'll find songs/bands you like among the not-so-familiar tunes.
Hawks: 20-5-4 (44), 16-7-6 adjusted (38), 36.972 expected (I'd think of the Stars game as getting the Flames game back :/)
Wild: 16-8-5 (37), 13-9-7 adjusted (33), 30.946 expected
Hawks: 3.483 scored (1st), 2.690 allowed (18th), 0.793 differential (4th)
Wild: 2.310 scored (23rd), 2.172 allowed (6th), 0.138 differential (12th)
Hawks: 19/95 20.0% on the power play (10th), 60/81 74.1% on the kill (29th)
Wild: 19/94 20.2% on the power play (9th), 75/95 79.0% on the kill (23th)
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.