Bad high stick by Kane (he seems to do that a lot) lets the wings out of another shorthanded situation.

Fuck.

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Not a mult.

what a fucking shit 2nd period.

Listening online now. The "Detroit Sucks!" chant is kinda silly these days, isn't it?

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Not a mult.

This fucking embellishment rule needs to go - if the opposing player is penalized for a trip, then there IS no "embellishment". Embellishment should be the sole penalty called if that's the case.

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Not a mult.

You can embellish a genuine foul, but the league needs to make more standalone embellishment calls.

Hartman creates another goal. Cool.

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WHEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

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Not a mult.

Are you fucking kidding me?

These fucking late-period goals/against getting a little too frequent again.

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Not a mult.

The first-place-in-the-West Blackhawks, who are in first place in the West, ask anyone, are really struggling to put away one of the worst teams in the league. It's not that Athanasiou and Larkin aren't talented, they are, but the Blackhawks are in first place in the West. This isn't supposed to happen when you're in first place in the West.









first place in the West











(they're not really in first place. Minnesota is)

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Seabrook is terrible. He has to go.

1:45 of 4-on-3 coming up in overtime. If the Hawks can't score one there, that'd be shameful.

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There you have it, won all four of their home games. Great. But answer this: what do the Hawks do this year that's exceptional?

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Two of the top six point leaders in the entire NHL?

As a team. They're middle-of-the-pack in goals, goals against, goal differential, and shot differential, aren't they? The power play is good, the penalty kill is abhorrent, I think they're last or next-to-last in infraction minutes, so there's that.

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Let's hear it for Jordin Tootoo and his seven shifts of under six minutes with two shots and God only knows how many shots against.

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Do you ever shut the fuck up?

Last year while limping into the playoffs you say they suck and hell is coming. This year atop the conference they suck and hell is coming. Sure they are far from perfect but please breathe once in a while.

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Elections have consequences.

CH isn't a motor mouth. The Blackhawks are his thing, and he takes the pessimistic view on their performances. There are a lot of question marks for those paying attention. It's nice that they're high in the standings, but you have to be concerned about Toews and Seabrook and the back end of the roster. However, the second line is great, and Hartman has been a find.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Sure there are concerns. All teams have them. The standings are indicative though. At least when compared to last season one should clearly be less pessimistic.

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Elections have consequences.

I didn't say that just now. I think they have as good a chance as any contender to win the Stanley Cup (and better than quite a few).

Goals for: 11th, 2.272
Goals against: 6th, 2.409
Shots for/60: 19th, 29.0
Shots against/60: 14th, 55.0
Shot differential/60: 14th, 54.5
Save percentage: 4th, .923
Power play: 13th, 19.1%
Penalty kill: 27th, 76.3%
PIMs/game: 29th, 6:24 (that's good!)

So on paper what you appear to have is a pretty good team that stays out of the box and keeps the puck out of its own net. The penalty kill is getting better but even ignoring the first few games it's still not great. You could be in much worse condition for the playoffs, definitely, but I believe possession stats still correlate strongly with championships and the Hawks just aren't controlling play enough. Short of Tanner Kero, I don't think anyone's coming up from Rockford to save us (in fact, we've had more guys go down than come up), and I don't know what we're going to do at the deadline if everyone but the Avs and Coyotes think they're still in it and we're up against the cap anyway.

My hope is that Forsling and one of Schmaltz/Motte do get the big minutes in Rockford they need to develop their respective games, and they can rejoin us this year in better shape than we left them. I also hope we can make a trade along the lines of the Smith-for-Desjardins trade in 2015, which turned out to be a pretty good depth trade for us before Desjardins became the worst player on the team this year. Failing that, we could get by with Kruger coming back and bumping one of the black holes out of the lineup. Most of all, we once again need the mythical Left Wing To Help Toews, because as much as Hinostroza is overachieving at the moment, you can't feel good in your heart of hearts about going into the tournament with Vincent Hinostroza at #2L. So if you end up with

Panarin - Anisimov - Kane
MLWTHT - Toews - Hossa
Hartman - Kero - Panik
Hinostroza/Motte - Kruger - Rasmussen/Desjardins replacement

that's probably about as good as it's gonna get, which this year is about as good as it needs to be before rolling the dice against Pittsburgh, Washington, Montreal, or New York.

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Ok Better. I wouldn't worry too much about the East. Sure concern but they are not super.

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Elections have consequences.

Well, you only have to worry about them insofar as they'd be the team you have to play at the end.

I think there are four legitimate contenders in the East (plus Tampa, if they can actually make the field, which sounds crazy) where all you can do is throw up your hands and see what happens in a best-of-seven. This year isn't like Philadelphia falling ass-over-elbows into the playoffs and defying the odds until the Final, or Tampa coming out of the East because somebody had to. This year, the Hawks would come into a Final more like the Bruins or Bolts they saw: good enough teams in their own right but underdogs all the same.

I'll try not to read too much into this upcoming Caps game because if memory serves, the Hawks come out on the ass end of just about every Caps game they play, whether it's them legitimately getting kicked around or having decided to take the night off.

EDIT: they've "only" lost five of the last seven dating back to 2013-14.

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that's not true, but I hear what you're trying to say. The new rule should be that any embellishment waives off the original infraction. So you trip a guy and he takes a dive only the diver goes to the box. That's how it should be.

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Don't forget they're loaded with All-stars like Johnny Toews!