Hawks signed Adam Clendening to his ELC. He went 36th overall last summer, drafted with the 2nd round pick the Hawks got from the then-Thrashers in the Buff-Eager-Ladd trade. 5'11''/187 defenseman, but still only 19, so there's room to grow. He's an American college player, so it's off to Rockford with him; no pesky feast-or-famine call-up rules like with Brandon Saad. I don't think we'll see him this year for any amount of time that will cause his three-year clock to start.

In mildly troubling news, the Hawks didn't agree to terms with their second-rounder from 2010, one Ludwig Rensfeldt out of Sweden, and have forfeited their rights to him. Not a crushing loss, because they got the other Hayes and Stephen Johns out of the first two rounds in 2010, but it looks bad when you whiff on a second-rounder like that. Watch the Red Wings draft him in the seventh round or sign him undrafted.

I was worried that we also lost Stephen Johns back to the draft, but then I researched a little bit and it turns out that college players don't have the two-year deadline that Europeans and juniors have. Though with that in mind, why, then, are they rushing Clendening out of BC? Hmm.

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Next year should be an interesting year given that fans have really grown restless with the upper management and Ill be curious to see how Leddy and Olsen play out. Seems with Clending that they are continuing with scoring defensemen. Part of me wants to see Hjalmersson go, but I am worried that they dont have another prototypical stay and at home defenseman who can block shots as part of a second or third pairing. Bowman's picks will start coming up in the next year or two and we will see what they accomplish.

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Hjalmarsson's metamorphosis into a $3,500,000 shot-blocker is puzzling. I hate this Coyotes/Rangers "everyone is a shot-blocker" thing, too. Life was better when it was only Brent Sopel's job to be a human shield and the rest of the defensemen were charged with, you know, being defensemen.

Checking in on the 2011 class:

#18 Mark McNeill - Work in progress. Went up to Rockford after junior season was over and failed to impress anyone. Questions about work ethic and fitness, as I recall. I'm guessing he'll be in Prince Albert for another year before we even think about him again.
#26 Philip Danault - Also only 19, but seems to be coming along more quickly than McNeill. Longshot to be on the team as a #4 center if they finally get tired of Marcus Kruger being 90 pounds soaking wet.
#36 Adam Clendening - Played for Boston University, not College, my mistake! The NCAA kinda sucks for developing anyone who's not an clutch-and-grab artist, so he'll probably be in Rockford for a year or two. Again, 19, and I don't know of many defensemen who are ripe by 20, or even 21.
#43 Brandon Saad - Virtual lock to make the team, and possibly in the top six. Has lapped his draft class and multiple power forward prospects (Morin, Beach) already. What a steal he was.
#70 Michael Paliotta - I have no idea
#109 Maxim Shalunov - Yeah lots of luck getting a Russian to come over. Remember Igor Makarov? Of course you don't.
#139 Andrew Shaw -
#169 Sam Jardine - we're getting into Junior A guys now good lord
#199 Alex Broadhurst - I think we also signed his brother, Terry Broadhurst, and I want to say they're both Chicago guys. Playing junior hockey in the US, which is unusual.
#211 Johan Mattsson - no idea who he is but I bet he's already a better goalie than Crawford

So we already got Shaw out of last year's draft, Saad looks ready to pan out, Danault is coming along nicely, and people have high hopes for Clendening as he starts actual development. If McNeill gets it together, Bowman will have had one hell of a draft, the kind you need to have if you're using picks that cost you Brouwer and Byfuglien.

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Watched Clendening play in the World Juniors, he was the worst defenseman on the ice for the US. Two years ago in the Juniors Olson was the worst defenseman on the ice for Canada. Nice little motif the Hawks have going there.

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Call up Kyle Beach. With his 30 goals last year they would have won the division.

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Dylan Olsen's development should be a case study in What Not To Do for all parties involved. Despite having the upside to play major-junior, Olsen instead played in Junior A, which, unlike major-junior, doesn't give players the stipends that make them ineligible for the NCAA. So he willingly played in a lower league than he should have been playing in so that he could go to college (Minnesota) and play there. What happened there? Well, he flunked out, which meant that the Hawks had to sign him right away and send him to Rockford, which started the clock on his service time well before they had planned for it to start. He's coming along fairly well now, but it's been a rockier road than it should have been.

Sucks that Clendening sucked, though. I hope it's not too much of a harbinger. Conversely, I'm sure guys have torn up the World Juniors and never panned out.

Nevertheless, HockeysFuture says we have the sixth-best farm system in the league! Hey, that's swell! But of course, the Blues are 8th, the Predators 9th, and the Red Wings 10th. Sharks are dead last, to no one's surprise. They actually draft in the middle of the pack this year for the first time in a while. Watch them trade picks/prospects for Rick Nash and continue to forestall their inevitable nuclear meltdown.

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I agree that the Hawks probably won't win the trade if they move Kane. I'm conflicted on the Thornton comparison. Boston moved Joe Thornton for a number of reasons, two of them being that he's soft and he was never really a leader. They didn't win the Thornton trade, but eventually they freed up enough money to get what they need and win a Cup. Meanwhile, the best San Jose can say is that Thornton has made them a consistent contender.

Kaner has his issues and isn't exactly a leadership-type. I don't think I'd consider him soft. Kaner had a pretty solid season for as much as he got jerked around between center and right wing. And his impact was obvious during the Cup season. If you're not on board with moving Kane, what's your solution for curbing his off-ice behaviors?

Okay, but I don't want to make a superstar trade that I know we can't win because maybe in five years we'll have the cap space to assemble another Cup team. I don't want to trade Kane for, say, some Jamie McBain/Chad LaRose/Patrick Dwyer package, thinking that now we have some Good Character Guys who maybe we can eventually trade or something. I'll take my chances with Drinky.

As for how to curb his off-ice behavior, god, I don't know. Hope he outgrows it? Maybe it'll take some tragedy close to him to make him stop. Maybe the team should send him to rehab for real this time. I don't know, but it is a problem.

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Whole-heartedly agree with you on the trade. They shouldn't dump him simply because he's a belligerent drunk. However, if they can get value in return, then I can be persuaded that it's a wise move.

Assuming they do keep him, at what point do they stop the center experiment and keep him at wing?

Look who's the highest pick of his draft (#11) never to have played an NHL game. We could have had Erik Karlsson or Jordan Eberle.



lol

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Hmmm...by next Friday, I should be sufficiently bored enough to go watch the Portland Winterhawks play the Everett Silvertips in the WHL playoffs in Everett. Portland has Hawks prospect G Mac Carruth who went 30-7 this season, plus a few other 1st round draftees.

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Not a mult.

Also, are Kyle Beach's 23 points and 173 PIM in 54 games enough not to give up on his ass?

let's see: .43 PPG vs. 3.2 PIM/G.

Discuss.

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Not a mult.

Went to the Wolves/Ice Hogs game a month back (missed the recent one with the bench brawl at the end!). The Ice Hogs have a lot of talent. I thought Clen looked like Keith, small but steady with the puck. The goalie Karlsson was the biggest surprise. He is as big as Rinne, and appears very athletic with the glove and dropping to the butterfly. Beach was the biggest disappointment as he was invisible the entire game. The rest of the folks looked like the big club with speed and puck movement. Hayes was in that game and looked his usual big self. I felt like there's a lot of depth in the minors. Some of the guys like Ben Smith and St Pierre (ugh 29 years old) are probably too small to stick in the NHL, but they look great in the minors due to their speed.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Kyle Beach sucks. I Corey Pattersoned him. I Feliex Pie'd him. Would like to forget that post.

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Team Cutler.

I already have Beach marked down as a bust.

As you should. Hindsight being what it is should have moved him when he had any value whatsoever. Classic change of scenery is his last chance type guy.

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Team Cutler.

Beach for Goc, make it happen.

http://www.hockey-reference.com/draft/N ... entry.html

Other zero-gamers:

#29 Daultan Leveille, Thrashers:

GEE I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY A GUY DRAFTED OUT OF FUCKING JUNIOR B DIDN'T QUITE PAN OUT. God, the Thrashers were something else, weren't they?

#26 Anton Gustafsson, Capitals
Meh, the Caps whiff on flaky foreign draft picks a lot. Their '05 first never made the NHL either, and he was at #11. Move along

#24 Chet Pickard, Predators
Goalie + Predators = don't hold your breath

and then Beach. I had high hopes, too. Sigh. Ah well, send him off.

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It's a really good thing that Tallon took Toews at #3 in 2006. Sweet Jesus Christ, he had eight other picks and not a single one made the NHL.



In 2008, every player was a bust except Ben Smith at #169, and when a fifth-rounder with fewer than 20 games played is the best player you got in the draft, you basically didn't have a draft.

Maybe it was more than forgetting to sign Kris Versteeg on time.

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The problem with Beach is (at least on the AHL level) he's a tough guy, but only against guys it's a total mismatch. He'll take a run at the smaller skill guys, turtle when an enforcer comes near him, then take a run at the smallest guy on the ice after the whistle. I've never seen a supposed "tough guy" that cries to the officials as much Beach.

Morin has been a good skill guy down there and will fill a decent role up with the Hawks if another spot opens up, although that horse shit on Sunday soured me on him a bit (I sit center ice between the benches). Smith is Smith. He's gonna be a back and forth injury fill in and that's it.

You sure? Because you just described the Canucks' roster.

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Just for the record, I hate the Nucks. I cheer for the Wolves until they get called up. Then they are dead to me. Up down or in between. Once they've worn that stupid fish, dead to me. The happiest day of my life will be when this season ends and those fuckers can pack their shit and move to Abbotsford.

And yeah. Case in point from Sunday. Beach is being his usual bitch self. DiDiomete (if any of you remember him from the Express last year, yest the same, and certifiably INSANE) lines up next to him during the face off. Beach has both of the linemen and the ref come over he's so upset that DiDiomete was just chirping at him. Puck drops, Beach takes a run at Davies who makes Kaner look big, and then heads for the bench as soon as DD moves towards him. Beach is a taller less skilled Bieksa / Kessler.

Beach could make a good Flyer, and their farm system is so bereft that they could benefit from a low-risk/high-reward sort of guy like that. Anyone we could get from them?

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I thought this was going to be about KS making a conjugal visit to his old pounding grounds.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

The East Coast teams rarely come to town, but a quick glance at their AHL roster doesn't show them having a whole hell of a lot. Gustafsson would look decent in the Brookbank slot on D. Wellwood doesn't suck, but isn't an upgrade over the Hayes, Morin, Smith, St. Pierre crowd. I don't see the Hawks parting ways with Beach for a future 6th D or 4th line guy. Maybe Beach will eventually get his head right and make the impact up here that he was supposed to. But the last 3 years in the A I haven't seen any signs of that happening

I was thinking of Philly's NHL roster, seeing as they are most likely not going to make the playoffs. Anything we could do with Matt Read?

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I like Read and he's cap friendly (only 900k signed through next season) So then when healthy the lines would look like

Saad/Toews/Hossa
Sharp/Bolland/Kane
Stalberg/Shaw/Bickell
(Bolling,Carcillo,Mayers)/Krueger/Frolik

With Hayes in the mix as well depending on how he does. A bag of pucks is an upgrade over Bollig, but is Read better than Hayes in that spot?

Isn't it a great problem that Hawks fans are debating the last spot on the 4th line as a worry.

I just saw that the Hawks agreed to terms with Drew Leblanc out of St. Cloud State who apparently just wont the award for collegiate hockey player of the year.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Eh, why not? Low-risk low-reward move.

By the way, teams can now carry more than three scratches, so the Hawks may, if they feel so inclined, call Morin back up without having to worry about Brandon Bollig going AWOL on the Northwest Tollway.

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Hockey's Future ranked the thirty developmental pipelines at the end of the year. Hawks are all the way at #4, behind Buffalo (duh), Anaheim, and Detroit.



Interesting that Mark McNeill has become a question mark. He was the first pick in the 2011 draft that also yielded Saad, Shaw, Clendening, and Dahlbeck. I've wondered for a while if he might be a piece to move. When you draft in high volume like the Hawks tend to do, sometimes you gotta move those guys or the pipeline gets clogged.

Panthers fell to #11, probably in large part due to graduation but also because some of those heralded picks of Uncle Dale's are looking kinda not good. Who could imagine that the guy who took Jack Skille and Kyle Beach might whiff?

Blues ranked #30.

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Buffalo could either have 2 top 5 selection this year or 3 1st round picks in the 2015 draft.

Buffalo really made out like bandits in their trades of Miller and Vanek. They definitely get a '15 1st for Miller and Islander choose whether to give their 1st in '14 or '15. The '14 pick is 5th overall but if Islander shit the bed yet again (highly possibly) their pick would give Buffalo two great chances in the lottery.