Happy new year, H.G.s! Let's hope 2014 is as good for the Hawks as 2013 was.

So the Hawks are off to New York to play the two suburban teams but not the Rangers, whom I guess they're saving for later. Instead, they're out in Nassau for a game with the terrible Islanders. Oh, Isles. Isles, Isles, Isles. This was a team that was supposed to contend for a playoff spot and build on last year's breakout season, in which they finished eighth and gave the Pens hell. They even traded Tavares's trusty sidekick Matt Moulson to the Sabres to get Thomas Vanek, a sign that they were ready to get real. Then what happened? They lost like four games in a row, and then ten games in a row.

So what the hell happened? Well, as amazing as their forwards are, they're kinda young at defense, and they're relying on a first-year starter and old-ass whinypants Evgeni Nabokov in goal. The really scary part is it's not even as if their games are '80s-style track meets where they were scoring as many as they'd give up. The offense has blown, too. My only guess is that when you're that bad on defense, it doesn't matter how dangerous your weapons are if you're always losing possession and always failing to get it back. There's also the fact that such an inchoate group of defensemen just can't kill penalties, which the numbers certainly bear out. It's only been the last week that they've turned a corner on offense, winning 3-0, 5-4, and 5-3, but I fear it's too little, too late for Tavares and friends, which is really sad, because Tavares is one hell of a player and he deserves better than this crap.

But you know what's crap in a good way? The Nassau Coliseum. I love that there are still a few arenas left that are just dingy old barns for watching hockey games and little else, and that's what the NVMC is. There are rumblings that the Isles are trying to get out of the Brooklyn relocation and stay in a renovated Nassau Coliseum, which would be terrific, as it would maintain the concept of a distinctly Long Island team and actually be a place where you can go to the game and see the game being played, something you couldn't do in Brooklyn if you tried. Until such time that they sneak out of the lease, this is the penultimate Hawks game in the old barn. For people here who don't watch a lot of low-level Eastern Conference (hah!) hockey, you'll note that the main camera is stationed at a low angle on the visitors' blue line, which looks a little unorthodox when the play is in the other end, but I like it. I like Edmonton's bench-side camera, and that not every place looks the same. The only one I don't like is San Jose's vertiginous perspective where you're practically looking down from an observation deck or something. But anyway, games here look odd, so recalibrate yourself a little bit.

You gotta worry about Tavares and the Olympic-snubbed Okposo, as always, but it's a bit of a drop from there to Vanek and Frans Nielsen, and then Long Island production pretty much topples off a cliff from there. The only active defenseman on the right side of +/- is Thomas Hickey, with a +1. PLUS. ONE. Goaltending is awful across the board, with Nabokov's sv% just a mere three thousandths over the unofficial Goalie Mendoza Line of .900.

Six points in the last eight are encouraging for them, with the come-from-behind against Boston particularly so, but conversely, I'm tempted to downplay the 5-4 win against recently (lake) woebegone Minnesota, to whom you really have no business giving up four goals when they're only averaging 2.1 a game. The interconference picture isn't pretty: Long Island won five of their fifteen games with the West thus far with seventeen left to go, and you can't imagine they're going to take too many more of those. This is also one of the rare times we'll see a team whose penalty kill is more incompetent than ours. A lot more incompetent. Savor it.

Guessing this is the last dance for ol' Antti Raanta before Crawford and his bad glove make their triumphant return to the crease. HE'S ON THE TEAM FOR [THIS] YEAR, though, don't worry.

Hawks: 28-7-7 (63), 24-9-9 adjusted (57), 56.772 expected
Isles: 13-21-7 (33), 9-25-7 adjusted (25), 29.229 expected (pretty big gap here!)

Hawks: 3.667 scored (1st), 2.619 allowed (13th), 1.048 differential (2nd)
Isles: 2.512 scored (21st), 3.293 allowed (29th), -0.780 differential (27th)

Hawks: 34/140 24.3% on the power play (3rd), 97/127 76.4% on the kill (28th)
Isles: 23/134 17.2% on the power play (19th), 93/126 73.8% on the kill (30th)

Looks like the win against the Kings pushed the Hawks' PP%+PK% juuuust over 100%, which is kind of the rule of thumb for where your special teams ought to be. So that's good.

Finally, I really hit the bullseye on both songs for Islander threads, huh? Two Long Island artists, two lyrics that represent the passing of happier times and inevitable doom. That pretty much sums up the New York Islanders experience, one would have to think.

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Oh, I guess Crawford is starting. Okay. Raanta against the Devils, then, I suppose.

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Have the Rangers at home next week...don't play in MSG until next month...ending the Disney on Ice month long jaunt on the road (I know the Olympics are killing 2 weeks of the schedule, but still).

The Islanders suck. A lot.

Going to this dump reminds me of the Lifter Puller song Nassau Coliseum.

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There's a blizzard hitting the New York area (no word on whether Mike Francesa said it wouldn't), so the place might be a little emptier than usual. Of course, it's the Islanders, so...

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My friend is a diehard Islanders fans and treats these games vs the Hawks like it's the Cup Finals. So it's always fun for me to see him be dissapointed.

There's something about a girl with a heavy, sorta-raspy Lawn Guyland accent that's bizarrely fetching.

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Inexcusable

Thread sucked, game sucked. Can't lose to the second-worst team in the league. Go beat Jersey now.

Blues are going to win their game, too.

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Well you could see where that game was going based on the 3rd period. Entertaining game to watch though, lots of end to end, Crawford was outstanding. They didn't deserve to win this game anyway.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Tavares played out of his mind over the last period and OT.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

That's what he does. He's being wasted on the island. Top-3 or 4 player in the whole league.

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He's Jay Cutler with talent

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I want the Isles to do well so that they can have the renaissance we had. The problem is that they're not as interested in this as I am.

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MOving in to the city is going to help them on this quest big time.

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What's the point of making it easy to get to the games if you can't see the game once you get there? Arena revenue notwithstanding, I have a really bad feeling about this. Did you see what the preseason game there looked like? It was an abomination!

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I didn't see it, but its gotta be better than what Phoenix was doing for years.

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No, it's similar but worse.


Look at that big void behind the net. Prime seats anywhere else do not exist here. The upper deck in that entire end is pretty much obstructed-view to comical extents:



This is really bad.

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It's still better than Nassau. That place is bad for a college program. And its in the middle of nowhere.

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It's by Hofstra and right in the thick of some high population density. There's nothing directly around it but parking and expressways, but it's hardly at the levels of buttfuckingnowhere seen with the Palace of Auburn Hills, Gillette Stadium, or whatever we're calling the Ottawa Palladium this week. The one infrastructural flaw that I'll freely admit is that you can't get there via the Long Island Rail Road. That's a problem. All the LIRR lines (or most of them) stop at Barclays, but again, that does little good if you get to the game but there's nothing to see.

My concern, which I admittedly don't have the empirical data to bear out, is that the Islander fan base consists of the suburbanites who live and work in Nassau/Suffolk -- i.e., Long Islanders -- and don't really have New York City as a big part of their lives, the way we have people who are perfectly happy in Schaumburg or Naperville or Batavia and don't like going downtown. Sure, there are more people in the city, but are they this business's customers? Let's say you live in Nassau and work in Nassau. How are you going to get to games in Brooklyn? So you have to drive home from work, get on a train into the city, take a train back (driving to Barclays doesn't seem like an option) and do all this on a weeknight? I'm just having trouble with the logistics here.

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