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...on the back of a truck doing 90 up the interstate.
Gotta get these in early these days, huh? Anyway, the Maple Wings are in town for another chapter of extended interconference play. Washington's power play was lethal and this one is almost as scary, with Steven Stamkos and the apparently ageless Martin St. Louis ready to strike.
The Bolts are a weird, weird team, in that they have the firepower of a Stanley Cup contender, but are bumbling fuckwits in every other aspect of the game. Get this: they scored 147 goals last year, just short of Pittsburgh and the Hawks for third in the league. They also gave up 147 goals, just behind hapless Winnipeg's 141 and just ahead of lottery-winning Colorado's 150 for 26th.
So what's the deal? Well, the Bolts had been using a defensive system called the 1-3-1, where basically you sit back and keep three guys across your own blue line to prevent zone entry and keep the game gurgling away in the neutral zone. This had gotten them to the third round in 2011 and was rolling along fine until one night against the notoriously defense-abhorring Flyers, Peter Laviolette fucked the whole thing up for Tampa by simply not sending a puck carrier down the ice, basically resulting in a very large and very expensive staring contest: the Bolts had no attacker to choke off and the Flyers had no zone to try to gain. I don't remember how that sequence ended, but it didn't end well for the Lightning in the long run, as suddenly this whole great thing Steve Yzerman allegedly built came crashing down hard. There was also the whole weird part about entrusting goaltending to Dwayne Roloson, who was like 60 years old. In an ironic twist, the Bolts lost Vincent Lecavalier to cap compliance, where he wound up with the Flyers on an even dumber contract than the one his last team just had to buy out.
I guess things are looking better for the Lightning now that they can't look much worse, but there are still holes up and down their lineup, and as long as Stamkos doesn't go crazy, the Hawks really ought to win this. They replaced Lecavalier with The Valtteri Filppula Project, and maybe this will be the year he really breaks out haha no. Outside of Viktor Hedman, their blue line is awful. I'm pretty sure they're relying on Sami Salo for 28 minutes a night. Good luck. They've lost their only game of the year, a 3-1 loss to dear old Boston in which Jarome Iginla had to beat the crap out of someone.
Ben Smith is going to dress, and it sounds like it'll be at the expense of Jimmy Hayes, which is just as well, seeing as he was more or less invisible against the Caps. Kruger practiced at #2 center in lieu of Handzus, who Q says will play, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't. Gonna need big games out of Smith, Kruger, and Nordstrom, but it'd be even better if the Hawks just minimized the amount of penalty-killing that needs to be done in the first place. I really don't want to see The Stamkos Spot.
Final note: I hate this team's uniforms so much. It's Detroit's template in Toronto's colors. Step off the Original Six, you sandal-wearers. You don't get to affect classic austerity. Warm-weather expansion teams should have to wear ridiculous uniforms with shiny silver stuff and weird armpit patches and all that cheesy stuff. The Hurricanes are in on this bullshit now too. What a bunch of assholes.
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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