You Can't Get What You Want: Blues 7, Hawks 3 (Hide The Knives)

Almost entirely disappointing, that one, especially being that this flat effort took place in Garbagetown, whose inbred denizens will get a shit-ton of mileage out of their massive victory.  Hell, they'll probably hang a banner or some damn thing.

Only Patrick Kane had a truly good game.  Even Anisimov, with three points on the night, bookended his great middle part of the game with some pretty shoddy passing and failing to transition to defence in time.  Kahun and DeBrincat both played lazy games. Jokiharju was decent, overall, but made a bad/weird choice abandoning O'Reilly on that first goal.  Kunitz was a disaster.  Keith had one of those nights when the simplest pass was beyond his capacity and his decision to stand idly by while Maroon screened Crawford, unopposed, was a poor choice.  And so on...
Crawford was not sharp, even if a couple of The Blues' goals were simple tap-ins, or made possible by defensive shortcomings in front of him.  He got himself ridiculously out of position before Bozak scored, but we'll spread the blame a bit by mentioning that a) that goal was moments after The Hawks committed an unforced icing and b) Manning was, as usual, being worthless.
I saw Rutta commit one obvious giveaway but was there more than that?  Is that why he was benched for half of the game?  If so, I'd be happy to gin up a lowlights tape of Manning, one that will make Coach Q never stop vomiting.
Passing Was Poor in general.  Breakouts were not crisp and O-zone passes were largely off target.  Even Gustafsson, who has been on-point nearly all the time thus far, was passing behind guys and not putting enough muscle on his passes.  They can be better, they just chose not to, tonight.
I'm Still Not Sure What Luke Johnson does, exactly, but he somehow reeled off 72% Corsi tonight, so I guess he did it properly, whatever "it" is.

Edmonton tomorrow, with The Oilers emboldened after defeating The first-place Predators earlier today.  With last change, I wonder who Q will match up against McDavid.  Can he afford to "waste" Toews to try to cover McD?  What about Draisaitl's line, then?  Some tough decisions are in order and, no matter what direction The Hawks choose, it's likely going to come down to them needed Kane & Co. to score a few.

Joe Jackson: You Can't Get What You Want (Til' You Know What You Want)