Tomorrow's Trip to The Beach is Cancelled: Panthers ALL, Hawks NONE

Blackhawks Postcard Home: 
Went to Florida and spent three hours in The Panthers' litter box.

Oh, so much yapping, pushing & punching and other assorted bullshit, but precious little else.  When the fourth line are the only guys to turn in consistently good shifts you're going to be up against it.
As disinterested and, eventually, distracted as the bulk of the forward corps were, the D were even worse, caught standing still or nearly so on most of the Panthers' goals.  The only exception that springs to mind is the fourth FLA goal, in which Soupy jumped up on the rush, leaving no responsible adults guarding the store and a Panthers two-on-oh. Okay, it was a two-on-one, but the "one" was TVR and his one-man tragic-comedy that I will spoil the ending of: he fucked it up.  Even if TVR knew that he has to take away the pass he hasn't got the tools to pull it off, anyway.  What NHL defenceman allows a gap like that?  Spoiler #2: None.

But it's not on TVR.  The Panther's first three goals were all scored from the same spot, give or take six feet, and all on a sharp pass from the opposite circle whilst The Hawks' D moved only their heads & necks to observe the puck whizzing through the slot.  "Hey, that's our play," they might have said, yet Panarin had only a single chance from his usual shooting area and he topped the puck, anyway.

We also saw all of John Hayden's shortcomings on display and none of his good qualities, as he struggled mightily to keep up, often resorting to a desperate lunge to try to close a gap, only to lose more ground as his speedy prey easily eluded him.

                           Yeah, well, I made that face just watching the game, pal.

Now that we have this mini-meltdown out of the way can we please get serious again? I expect that Coach Q has their full attention now and at the inevitable 0800 hrs skate.