pittmike wrote:
Curious Hair wrote:
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?
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.
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.
_________________
Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.