Hey, that was 15 minutes of great hockey by The Hawks. What a pity it is that a period lasts 20 minutes.
A little different lineup tonight, with Hjalmarsson healing, Crawford ill and Desjardins in for Rasmussen, but the lines that are supposed to matter remained intact. Lacking Moose on his wing, Kruger was left to take the draws for his line, which he's not been doing much since returning from injury. Krugs spent a lot of time on the bench late in the game, so is that his hand/wrist bugging him or was this merely fallout from Coach Q endlessly shuffling the bottom six in the late going?
Tomas Jurco made his debut as a Hawk. He tried some things, mostly involving barging up the middle with a clumsy deke thrown in. None of them worked.
The Hawks had two lines running rich: the Toews trio and the presumed fourth line of Kero, Hartman and Desjardins. These units consistently had The Blues pinned in their own end and were creating chances left and right. Fortunately, one of those lines have scoring potential, and that was realized with another fast breakout, a two-on-one and Toews cashing in to open the scoring.
The other lines were not bad but failed, really, to mount any kind of threat. Kane scored to put The Hawks up two goals on a nice, if basic, give and go with Toews. Everything was more or less going to plan.
That is until 57 Varieties of Bad became confused and believed he was Raymond Bourque, inevitably failing to stickhandle past...any Blues player, it doesn't matter because a fifteen-year old rec hockey player could have flipped that play on TVR. Anyway, turnover and goal.
Chapter Two: The Second Period
Hey, that was among the worst periods The Hawks have played since 2007. Is it good, at least, that they were following their usual script, i.e. play a strong first frame and then mail it in for the second? Probably not. Pietrangelo tied the game midway through the period while - guess who? - TVR was in the bin, assisted somewhat by Anisimov falling all over himself after being literally shrugged off by Patrik Berglund. The Hawks were, at least, not a nightmare defensively, but they could not get anything real happening in The Blues zone, what little offense they conjured up arose from shots from the points that actually got through....but no one was able to pick up a rebound or get a stick on it for a tip-in.
Chapter Three: The Third Period
Good thing this was The Blues and not a team with any momentum or depth. The Hawks were better in the final period but could not replicate the excellent puck moving they displayed in the first. With five minutes remaining Panarin and Anisimov completed a play for the first time in two weeks, with Small Arthur hitting Large Arthur with the sort of pass we had taken for granted until recently, and Anisimov finishing the job with a sharp-angled shot past Jake Allen. The Blues poured it on in the late going but men such as Kero and Hartman were up to the task when STL pulled Allen for an extra skater. Kero would salt it away with an empty-netter with only seconds remaining.
Yes, Bits.
The NBC crew were sure to mention this was The Blues first game after their break week, as well as the poor record that teams have had in said first game back, but I thought The Blues shook the rust off by the end of the first period. For much of the game it was The Hawks that appeared sluggish; not so much physically but rather not fully engaged mentally, with positioning problems, weird decisions and generally poor execution too much of the time.
Scott Darling was fine, however. Neither goal against were unsavable, but he was acrobatic in preventing The Blues, Paul Stastny in particular, from catching and passing The Hawks.
The Hawks Defence were hugely inconsistent and, no, Rozsival was hardly a concern. Keith had another iffy game in which his passes were slow, or short, or slow and short. Seabrook just plain gave the puck away a couple of times for reasons unknown. TVR was....TVR, only moreso, tonight. Throughout the game The Hawks' D chose to backup, back pass and restart their breakouts, giving the STL forecheckers all the more opportunity to get after them. That power play in the second period....what a mess...and that was ALL On The Hawks' D.
Coach Q chose to deploy Toews' line against Steen, Tarasenko and Stastny and, for the most part, it worked. Panik and Schmaltz are not exceptional defensive forwards, so it was left mainly to Toews to keep Tarasenko subdued, which he did admirably well, limiting The Blues' finest to a single shot. Stastny, as mentioned, had some glorious chances while not being adequately covered by Panik/Schmaltz but, otherwise, that top line of STL had little doing until later in the match when Q inexplicably stopped sending Toews' line out against them.
Given the lackadaisical approach by more than half the team I reckon The Hawks were somewhat lucky to have prevailed in this one. Fortunately, the Hawks who were good were very good: Hartman, Kane and Kero stood out, with Desjardins putting in a good effort mitigated by his limited skill. Best of all, though, was The Captain, man of the match yet again.
Trade Deadline Postscript:
Well, Minnesota improved up the middle, adding Martin Hanzel and Ryan White from The Coyotes. It's probably not worth mentioning that they vastly overpaid 'cos that's their cross to bear, but it's clear that The Wild are all-in this year. Hilariously, NBC Suit-behind-a-desk Jughead Jones declared Ryan White to be "a very good hockey player", confirming my suspicions that Jones was concussed out of the NHL.
I don't even know what to say about The Kings and The Lightning swapping backup goalies. Seems like a push to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment