The One-line Ripoff: Hawks 4, Oiler 2 and Sunday's Big Boys

As usual, I'm exhausted so it will be points again so as to maintain some degree of coherence.

- While I wouldn't go so far as to describe the first and third periods tonight as "textbook", they were very good, at least.  That second period, though...woof.  To say that hot mess was all down to The Hawks is disrespectful to The Oilers, as they're only a couple of forwards and...well, a bunch of defensemen away from being a huge nuisance for a long time, but The Hawks just seemed confounded for all but a few minutes of that period.
- It appears that Corey Crawford's couple of recent sub-par outings were just a blip, thank goodness.
- Unfortunately, I noticed Trevor Daley tonight. He did skate his way out of trouble there, once, but he couldn't seem to get rid of the puck fast enough in this game, whether it was "passing" it to no one in particular or turning a scoring chance into a shot that missed by 10 feet.
- Erik Gustafsson, though...I don't mind this guy,  He shows remarkable poise for a lad who has played only a dozen or so games in N. America and I've yet to see him make a truly poor play.  He's not the quickest guy and he's rather small (6', 176#) for an NHL d-man, but he's shifty and times his actions well enough that he doesn't need to be faster or larger than his opponent.  It's a shame that he's buddied up with Daley, because...
- ...Viktor Svedberg doesn't really belong in this lineup.  Perhaps he's a slightly better option than Rundblad but it pains me to consider that replacing Mr. 6'8" with Rozsival will be an upgrade.  Svedberg has done nothing to merit playing 20+ minutes per game, apart from being partnered with Seabrook.  Ideally, Gustafsson should be alongside Seabrook, but then you have Daley and Svedberg which would be enough to cause spontaneous diverticulitis to anyone unlucky enough to behold such a horror.
- Hossa sure fought the puck tonight, but it always seems to take him a few games to get his mojo working after missing some time.  His line had only a handful of okay shifts, I thought, which sucks because that probably means Teravainen gets scratched in favour of Garbutt on Thursday.
- That said, maybe the third line could use Teravainen to inject some skill/sense/patience into that group.  The Shaw-Kero-Dano combo were not terrible but never appeared to have a plan tonight, with Kero and Dano often just lurking around while Shaw did Shaw things.  They had a few good looks but the ratio of effort to scoring chances was not positive.
- I just wish to point out that tonight's fourth line have zero points and are a combined -18 in 40-man games, so far. 
- Eddie Olcyck cracks me up.  When he droned on about Taylor Hall not keeping his feet moving on a backcheck it made me wonder who told Edzo about backchecking?  He certainly didn't bother with it when he was a player.

The Hawk's second line continues to be among the top combos in the league.  It's hard to believe that Artemi Panarin has adjusted  so quickly to "the N. American game" as well as the smaller rinks.  That kid is so fun to watch and it's amazing to see he and Kane work their magic together.  Anisimov has been spot-on, as well; he's not nearly as scorey as 72 and 88 but he's deceptively effective, as he's quicker than he looks, has incredible reach and threads a nice pass, as well.  Oddly, some of his best moments have come at times when he was separated from Anisimov and Kane, but nevermind.  If Quenneville tinkers with this line I will hire Steven Seagal to punch Q in the groin.

      The two little guys once again combine for a big game and share the belt tonight.