Probably Not The Right Place Midwinter Break

In a perfect world this week's activities would have coincided with The Hawks' midwinter break but, alas, The NHL Scheduling Dept. failed to respond to my request.

As it is, I'm busy with my father's 80th birthday celebrations this week.  I didn't even realize The Hawks played last night (and, by the looks of the boxscore, perhaps that's just as well).

We'll catch up, soon enough.

One Minute Away From a Proper Trouncing: Hawks 4, Canucks 2

Alright, before anyone gets too excited, let's just remind ourselves that this was The Canucks and that they're garbage.
On the other hand, results aside, Jonathan Toews having a dominant performance this evening IS pretty exciting.
I'll offer one other point / counterpoint before I rack out: Corey Crawford wasn't great.  Not awful, but far from tip-top, and he was fortunate on a few occasions, such as when one of The Creepy Twins missed the net with 4+ feet of mesh in full view, as well as a couple of pucks that he failed to track but hit him, regardless,
On the other hand, Kempny had a few minutes that were exactly what has sometimes kept him on the outside looking in and, tonight, had him benched for much of the third period.  On the flip of his unarguably dumb penalty and being completely pantsed by Horvat, he had an otherwise pretty good game.  As a Very Smart Guy I once knew used to say, though, "It takes ten 'attaboys' to make up for one 'oh shit'", and that's what went down for Kemps tonight.

Well, duh.

Wicked Something: Hawks 1, Bruins 0

Once again, The Hawks were outshot, outskated and struggled mightily at the dot, yet came away with a fortunate victory.  In contrast to their usual scheme, though, which is to start alright, have a crap second period and see what happens in the third, The Hawks got marginally better as the game wore on.  I'm not sure that's important.
As has been the case so many times in games in which The Hawks struggled to compete it was a series of "small" plays, base hits rather than home runs, that led to their one and only goal; a turnover forced by a defenseman, followed by a hard charge up-ice, two short, accurate passes and the trailing winger has most of the net to shoot at.  Sounds like a vintage Keith-to-Kane-to-Toews-to-Hossa kind of play, doesn't it?  Well, part of that is right, as this play began with Michal Kempny pinching off Frank Vatrano and chipping the puck ahead to Vinnie Hinostroza who made The Bruins blue line in about a second, swerved around a Bruin or two as well as his linemate, Kero, who somehow ended up ahead of Vinnie Hinnie to the right of the net.  Hinostroza hits Kero with a short pass and Kero quickly goes cross-crease to Hossa.  Bingo.
Of course this is not suggesting that Kero & Hino are the next Kane & Toews - it just pleases me immensely that, in a game in which the Old Boys couldn't get much done, it was the young fellas putting on a tribute act that got them the win.  They're not always going to be able to pull that off so let's just take it when we can get it.
Da Bits:
Tanner Kero has had three pretty good games in a row.  I'm not ready to say he's The Answer, but he may be better than I had at first envisioned, and certainly greater than the sum of his parts.  Overall, he didn't have the best night, as his line was trounced possession-wise, but he still managed to do some good things.
The Bruins appear to be in a similar position as The Hawks in that they have a handful of dependable veterans, a couple of very fine Young Fellas and a bunch of Guys.  On this night our Guys were better than their guys and almost everyone else was incidental.
Kane & The Arthurs were an utter non-event for the second game running. They held the puck a lot, actually, but didn't create much in the way of quality chances.  Apart from on the power plays they weren't hitting their passes very well and, even then, they weren't great in that department.  It felt like a lot of cycling, cycling, cycling and then no one open or in position for a pass.  One more game like this and I'll bet we see this line shaken up.
Michal Kempny had an eventful evening, with a roughly equal amount of solid plays and WTF plays. About once each week, it seems, he floats a pass to absolutely no one.  Happily, that and a couple of other goofy things, did not get him stapled to the bench, as he had a very solid second half of the game and, as mentioned, started the play that resulted in the goal.
Ryan Hartman is doing just fine, in general, but he HAS to stop it with the shots from on or behind the goal line.

Hossa was there when he was most needed and Vinnie Hinnie and Kero did some neat stuff to set him up, but a handful of decent shifts is not enough to impress our Swedish friend.  Think back to the first period when Boston was chucking like mad and The Hawks D couldn't clear a rebound to save their lives....Scott Darling kept The Hawks in it with a chance to win it.

A Couple of Young Men, Running Wild In The Mountains: Hawks 6, Avalanche 4

Oh, good gosh, that shouldn't have been so difficult.  LUCKILY, Coach Q tinkered with his forward lines a little and found THE ANSWER.
Well, that's probably not true, but it worked tonight, barely.
Real Quick BITS:
Corey Crawford made a few very good saves and, I believe, played better than his stat line suggests.  No chance there on Duchene's tip-in, maybe a bit too deep in the net for Comeau's and Duchene's second (although he had a recovering Kempny confusing matters) and, although Nieto's tally was probably savable, if Seabrook doesn't cough the puck up in the first place....
The Second Period continues to be The Hawks' nap time as, yet again, a strong first was followed by an indifferent effort in the middle frame.  As frustrating as it is for viewers to behold it's probably causing Q ulcers, spastic colon, etc.
The Avalanche made what appeared at first to be some odd deployment decisions, pitting their top two lines against The Hawks top two units whenever possible, it seemed.  Mistakes and power plays aside, Colorado only really saw those lines get their chances when they were not facing the Toews or Anisimov lines.  Meanwhile, however, The Hawks' bottom six absolutely kicked in the teeth of their Avs' counterparts, with the Moose - Dez - Schmaltz trio dominating to the tune of 80%+ Corsi.  I guess, then, that this is all Colorado has; if their bottom six are gonna get pummeled like this by The Hawks' "Guys" it's sure to be even more of a mess if it's left to them to try to shut down Chicago's scoring lines.  They did what they could with what they have.
That said, Kane and The Arthurs could only put together intermittent bursts of pressure and Toews' line was rather haphazard, creating occasional chances on mainly individual efforts, yet not really working as a unit.
Hossa only seemed to warm up to his new linemates in the second half of the game, just kind of doing his own thing until then, and he managed to tally three secondary assists, but...

...the heavy lifting was done by Tanner Kero and Vinnie Hinostroza.  Kero scored his first on merit of good positioning and being quicker on the rebound than Iginla (who was brutal in every way tonight - take note, Stan Bowman) and, later, made an outstanding pass to Vinnie Hinnie to give The Hawks the lead for good.  For his part, Hinostroza was at his charging, darting best, and managed to combine that with some great finish.  In a dead heat for St. Stormare's affection, Vinnie edges out Kero.

Area Man's Single-handed Effort Comes to Nought: Wild 3, Hawks 2

                                    Patrick Kane after logging 27 minutes tonight

It certainly feels like January now, does it not?
After a pretty decent first period it all kind of slipped away.  The Hawks continued to roll up the shot count but, apart from a few quality chances (Hinnie, Hoss, Kane, Kane and Kane) there was often no support, no screen, or no one around for rebounds.
Individually, a few Hawks looked troubled: Hoss appeared tired, Keith was yippy again and even Panarin, though he kept his feet moving, was just slightly on the wrong side of it all night.  Crawford looked like he was putting together a nice bounce-back game, particularly after the bang-bang by Granlund & Zucker, but that goal by Stewart...not so great.
The coulda won it, but were just 10 or 15% off their Max Potential, and that's what made the difference.
Coach Q got a bit bold, dressing only eleven forwards (THANKS NBC TEAM FOR SO SUBTLY INFORMING US OF THAT 38 TIMES) and filling that blank spot up front almost exclusively with P. Kane.  It ain't the worst idea in the world - certainly preferable to Tootoo or even Dez - but if this is going to be a thing, now, he's gotta spread those extra few minutes out between Kane, Panarin, maybe Hoss....or Kane is going to be ruined by the time playoffs roll around.

Midwinter blahs.  We'll get 'em next time.  Probably.

Pack It Up, Get Outta Town: Capitals 6, Hawks 0

I won't perform a complete post-mortem on this one, I won't even inspect that stats pack even if I could because after over a year NHL.com is still not working worth a damn.
After the fourth goal against, The Hawks already had one foot on the step of the bus. They actually had a good go there for awhile in the second, and I wonder if Vinnie Hinnie's non-goal had counted would that have boosted morale enough to keep pushing.   
Water under the bridge. Here are the quick and very dirty bits:

TVR.  I've not bitched about him much, lately, 'cos it hurts my heart to even consider that this worthless skinbag is even a thing, but allow me to vent a bit.  
1) On Goal #1 that was the most half-hearted, pathetic attempt at a poke check I've ever seen.
2) The Washington TV crew (more about that later) slagged Panarin for putting a pass in TVR's feet and, yes, the puck did end up in the feet, but only because TVR attempted to receive the pass with the blade of his stick pointing at the puck.  Seriously....
3) This power play duty has to stop.  TVR has zero guile, telegraphs his intentions and limits the team's chances because he takes so long to do anything.  And by "anything" I mean "nothing".
I know Kane was dead tired on the fourth goal but he cannot be a spectator on that play. That was his guy even though it should not have been because TVR was allegedly on the ice, as well, yet nowhere to be seen.  Who knows what that idiot was doing or where he was doing it.
Did The Hawks manage a single pass in the slot area before the game was out of reach?  The only one that comes to mind is Toews' & Hossa's half-hearted "rush" with four minutes remaining.
Keith simply could not break out tonight.  Between poor decisions and failures to execute his game was a horror show.  I've mentioned this before but this is becoming serious and far more frequent. Something is up with him.

Here's the Later: I had to watch the Washington feed, which I was completely unfamiliar with. The play-by-play guy was okay, I guess, but Craig Laughlin, the colour man, is possibly worse than Darren Pang, complete with inane comments and the obligatory "Jarmalson" nonsense.  Making matters worse, his voice is so high & whiny I think I'd rather drag my fingernails across a chalk board than endure that again.  He sounds like Jim Gaffigan on helium, but with nothing of any value to relate.  Where's that volume control....?

Pre-game Wrap?

Since I won't be watching tonight's game vs. Dee-troy-it until late tomorrow I'm not counting on typing anything about the game.
Unless something truly alarming occurs, of course.
Like, I dunno, Tootoo makes himself useful, or something.

Until then...

There, But For a Slew of Goalposts, Go I: Hawks 5, Predators 2

Well, that was kind of strange.  I've become rather accustomed to The Hawks having to come from behind in the third period, in a close game, anyway, so what happened tonight was off-script to say the least.  The third period was not without its challenges, however, and was concluded in a pretty unusual way.
Panarin got things going for The Hawks after each team had a few feeling-out chances, with a laser from squarely within the NOBODY SCORES FROM THERE zone.  Hawks fans barely had time to enjoy the goal as The Preds stormed back on the next shift with Ekholm snapping a shot that actually looked pretty savable, made possible by a nifty give-and-go with Mike Fisher.  Later in the period, after several strong shifts by The Hawks, Duncan Keith cocked to shoot and, thankfully, instead chose to dish a few feet to Hjalmarsson ('cos you know Keith's shot was gonna hit legs). Hammer double pumped before shooting, as well, which gave Large Arthur another second to establish a Large Screen in front of Pekka Rinne, and boom, Hjalmarsson pots his career-best 5th goal.
On to the third period when, early on, Nashville tied things up with an annoying goal, one that began with a slapper leaking past Crawford and then shuffled in by some guy called Austin Watson. Nashville really took over in the middle of the final frame, hitting the post a total of four times, by my count, so it was a relief when Ryan Hartman "scored" to give The Hawks the lead once more. Richard Panik received a pass in the low slot from Kero, attempted a tweener and then smashed at the puck a few times before it finally deflected in off Hartman's hip.  Or Yannick Weber.  Or Hartman's hand.  Who knows?
After enduring more intense pressure late in the period, Hartman and Panik teamed up once again for an empty-netter that, at first, appeared to have been helped across the goal line by Panik but, apparently, Panik only prevented Nashville's Forsberg from reaching the puck.  Hartman finished off one of the oddest hat tricks I've seen when he lobbed a second empty-netter in from center ice

Wait!  I've got Bits:

Despite being hemmed in several times during the game, particularly in the third period, The Hawks played alright.  Lately, I've felt the need to call out this player or that player but, apart from occasional slip-ups, no one really stood out as having had a weak game.  Crawford was perhaps fortunate with all the goalposts the Preds clanked but, hey, those aren't even shots on net.
Toews fought the puck all night, just being on the wrong side of the inch whether he was shooting, passing or receiving a pass.  With a good bounce here or there he could have salted this thing away at the midway point.
Tanner Kero's best game thus far.  I still regard the kid as marginal, at best, but tonight he racked up a helpie on the game winner and had a few excellent shifts on the PK.
Patrick Kane quietly notched three helpies of his own in what looked to me like a low-key game for him.  
The Fourth Line put together three quite good shifts in which they either a) flipped the ice immediately, b) penned the Predators in their own end, and/or c) created some good scoring chances, which is about as much as we can expect given that only one of those three guys have any finishing skills whatsoever.  And even that's debatable.

Yessir, it was the most peculiar hat trick I've yet to see, as Hartman didn't have to beat a goalie on any of his three markers, but there's nothing like the first time, even if it is a little weird.

Weathering The Storm: Hawks 2, Hurricanes 1

Once again, The Hawks pulled out a win that they didn't really deserve but, despite their gaudy shot count, The Hurricanes didn't deserve it any more.  Does that even make sense?  How about this: The Hawks gave up far too many chances and a combination of Scott Darling's exceptional effort and Carolina's lack of finish allowed them the victory.  On the flip, when your best idea is to simply hack and slash at loose pucks, you can take all the "shots" you want but, most of the time, that ain't gonna get it done.  Both teams had their moments, and The Hurricanes did a fine job of getting and keeping the puck, but neither team exactly shone in this one.
The Hawks scored the only goal of the first period, an absolute gem by Toews after some fine passing by Vinnie Hinnie and Hossa.  Carolina outshot Chicago 19-9 but, to be fair, 23 of those shots came on a single power play, and half of those were desperate whacks into Darling's pads.
Chicago went up 2-1 on a PPG by Small Arthur, who rifled a wrister from his Special Place during an otherwise uninspiring power play.  The Hurricanes closed the gap to a single goal with 4 seconds remaining in the period, a tap-in by Viktor Rask  to conclude a sequence that had The Hawks spinning to try to find the puck.
The Hawks endured a full court press throughout much of the third, but did a good job of limiting quality chances, hanging on for the win.
A Promising Start to the game was undone by several mistakes and poor choices that let momentum slip away.  Hartman ruined a 4-on-2 with a sloppy pass that resulted in a Carolina rush, Tootoo and Campbell made messes of what should have been easy clearing attempts and Panik wasted a fast breakout with yet another selfish shot from a ridiculous angle that soon had the puck heading back to Chicago's end.
Toews, however, was well and truly dialed in, opening the scoring and just missing on several other high quality chances.

Kempny was mostly fine but a little less on point than in the last four games.  He helped create a great chance midway through the first and, a little later, sprawled to intercept a pass on a 2-on-1.  Unfortunately, the play that may have stuck in Coach Q's memory was a bizarre pass to no one late in the frame.  He didn't play a lot more after that.

Vin Hinostroza had what is becoming a pretty typical but quite acceptable game at this stage of his career, highlighted by his quick, short pass to Hossa that soon led to Toews' goal, as well as a determined charge to beat out an icing call, come away with the puck and create a scoring chance. The rest of the game...pretty much up and down the wing.

I'm Not Convinced that Campbell and van Riemsdyk should be paired together, as I'm unsure if Soupy feels he can wheel the puck through the neutral zone when he's unsure if TVR is where he's supposed to be.  Even IF TVR is in position, can he cope with the pressure on his own if Soup gets caught up-ice?  Kempny and TVR were, unbelievably, both better when paired up, and I've liked Soupy with Seabrook whenever they've played together.

Spencer Abbott and Gustav Forsling were both dispatched to Rockford earlier today.  I don't mind these moves, actually, in which Schmaltz, Motte and now Forsling have been demoted, presumably to play more.  They've each had a taste of what it's like to play in The NHL and should have a sense of what they need to do to get back there and stay there.  Results may vary depending on how well each of these players accept this challenge.

Toews was really quite excellent tonight, if a little bit unlucky but, once again, without some fine netminding this W doesn't happen.  Stormare's Star is Scott Darling.

Just Good Enough: Hawks 4, Sabres 3

After a late night & early morning I'm a wee bit late with this, so I'll dispense with the play-by-play and get straight to The Bits.
So, Spencer Abbott got a second cup of coffee in The Show.  Good for him, but if a 28-yr-old small forward who now has a total of two NHL games under his belt is the very best The Hawks organization can conjure up....well, they'd better stay healthy.  I'm puzzled as to why he was inserted on the wing alongside Toews & Hossa, but this is also the gang that seems convinced that TVR deserves ice time, so I give up, there.  So is that it for Tyler Motte, or was he sent to Rockford simply in order to play more?
Still preferable to Tootoo, though.
Hossa hit the ground running after missing a week+.  He had no marks on the score sheet but was busily doing Hossa things right off the bat.
Corey Crawford had a game to forget, with a softie by Foligno and a failure to close a gap to prevent Okposo's goal.  He was just good enough, so let's leave it at that and move on.
Tanner Kero: not a good skater, not at all quick, no shot to speak of and plays even smaller than he is. Yet he played 15+ minutes.  See Abbott, Spencer, above.
Seabrook has had two iffy outings on the trot, now, with last night's indiscretions being a pair of unforced giveaways and, more disappointing, being unable to track down Jack Eichel who was barely able to skate after being trapped in his own end for well over a minute. Seabs was far fresher at that moment, yet far slower.  Yikes.
Kempny continues to shoot and get results.  His one-timer is working really well at the moment, so maybe he's been working on getting his body squared up for those passes, or maybe the passes have just been better than usual.  Either way, his play has been a bright spot as late.
Desjardins was an unsung hero in Kruger's absence, starting 2/3 of his shifts in The Hawks' end yet posting Corsi north of 80%.

Kane netted the OT winner, but it took Anisimov to get them to the bonus round in the first place.  With two timely goals, Large Arthur IS GOOD.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Blues 4, Hawks 1

The Good
There ain't much to say here...
Kempny had another decent game, probably enough to keep him in Coach Q's good graces for another game.
Seabrook was dialed in properly.  He's been The Hawks' best all-round D-man this year, IMO.
Toews battled hard all afternoon, but...

The Bad
...Hartman & Hinostroza were having none of it, as they seemed to exist in separate vacuums than The Captain, just kinda doing their own things, whatever that entailed.
The Big Line showed up for the first period and then disappeared.
Tanner Kero.  Not an NHL player, I'm afraid.

The Ugly
TVR jumped into the rush three or four times which, half the time, flipped back to an odd-man rush for St. Loo-is, as old 57 huffed and puffed, vainly attempting to catch someone, anyone.
Nik Hjalmarsson's Third Period: not a criticism, just an acknowledgment that he and everyone else would like to forget that half hour of his life, with two stingers on one shift and an unlucky own-goal. Man, he's blocked so many shots this year he won't be able to wear shorts until August.

Ah, well, it was always going to be tough today without Hoss and Krugs, and The Blues were geared up for this game more than any other they've ever played.  So congrats, dummies, you won a game in January, so get your plaque, bask in the warming basking glow of the most important win in your sad franchise's history, and get lost.