Tuesday 23 January 2018

Give It Away Give It Away Give It Away Now: Lightning 2, Hawks 0

Let me just mention the worst offenders to kick off the fun.
Toews.
Keith.
Oesterle - twice.
Gustafsson - and that one was spectacular.

Passes to no one, or even nowhere, most of the time with no particular pressure 'pon them. 
Only one of these egregious turnovers actually resulted in a goal against but all of the others, at best, slowed The Hawks attack, caused them to regroup and took away their momentum.

With the many changes in the lineup I guess I'd concede that at  least the coaches are trying stuff, but  the fact that guys like Kampf, Jurco, Gustafsson and even Hinostroza and Oesterle are A) in the lineup and B) granted the amount of icetime they've received tells you everything you need to know about how fragile and....ordinary The Hawks have become.  From time to time Gustav Forsling looked as if he would be a player who had made a giant step forward - now he's in Rockford.  Ditto for John Hayden.
The fact is that it doesn't really seem to matter who suits up.  We'll get some good games from some of these Guys just as we'll get stinkers from The Core, but the results end up the same.
Toews and Oesterle each played 23+ minutes tonight.  Were either of them any better than Hinostroza or Kempny?  I'd argue that they were not.
And I don't mean to take anything away any of The Guys when they do have a good outing.  Jurco and Hinostroza both had a good game, but the fact remains that even when Jurcs and Hinnie play out of their skin it's still never going to be enough.

The Hawks laid a beating on Tampa in the possession dept. tonight, but what does that matter when it generates almost no quality chances?  Jeff Glass lost the game yet made five or six saves that were tougher than any shots Vasilevskiy faced.  Two A+ chances and a goalpost - that's what The Hawks mustered up in 60 minutes.
Toews entire line had the puck in their feet all night.
Sharp was late to almost every attack and couldn't hit water if he fell out of a damn boat.
Oesterle's fall-back tactic whenever he was out of options or ideas was to pass to Keith, regardless of where Keith was, which direction he was facing or whether he had a forechecker bearing down on him.
Etc.

Yeah, The Hawks got screwed when the officials failed to catch the glove pass leading up to Kunitz' goal but, even discounting that, they still lose 1-0.  Outside of Kane and the occasional player who gets hot for a short while, they've got nothing.
And I fear that things will get worse before they get better if there is no significant change, and the change that needs to made most does not revolve around a player.



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