Catching Up, Getting Down: Jets and Sabres Many, Hawks Few

Due to mandatory attendance at a Bilderburg Meeting I only managed to watch Thursday's hot mess on Friday and today's game tonight.  Emboldened by said Bilderburg get together and inspired by their unofficial slogan "don't mail it in, bro" I'll make an effort to make some sense of The Hawks' latest disasters.  Which is more than I can say for The Hawks.

The high point of Thursday's match in Winnipeg, Canada's Worst City™, came at the 11 second mark when Saad barged into The Jets' zone and rifled a smart shot past Connor Hellebuyck.  It was all downhill from there, however, as Hawks starter Anton Forsberg allowed a rather dodgy goal that he failed to recover from, subsequently coughing up two more soft goals before being dispatched.  Middle-inning sponge JF Berubé fared little better even if he actually played reasonably well, as the rest of The Hawks had lost whatever little wind was in their sails, eventually falling 6 - 2.
And that was the essence of that game: Forsberg comprehensively shat the bed and the rest of them simply packed it in.  There was nothing encouraging about that game, no brightsides nor positive takeaways.

Surely a trip to Buffalo, home of the NHL's last-place team, would be exactly the tonic for a demoralized squad.  Well, not if every damn mistake The Hawks would make, and there were plenty of those, ended up in their net
Outshot, outskated and well behind in the Corsi game, Buffalo nevertheless made their A+ and even B- chances count thanks to The Hawks' inability to win a faceoff in their own end, as well as the worst defensive coverage they'd put forth all season.  Spicing up this mélange of futility was The Hawks' failure to get out of their zone reliably; this went on all day but, in one five or six minute span, late in the third period with the game tied, The Hawks had nine missed or intercepted breakout passes...before I stopped counting.
The Hawks' broadcasters keep pitching these last few weeks as an opportunity for the team to put some miles on the younger Hawks, some of whom may or not be required next season, but I'm not sure about how they're going about it.  With the roster as it is there's little competition for ice time with a single "healthy" scratch and all indications are that Duclair is day-to-day with an ankle injury.  So we have the same four or five Guys out there, game after game, competing for next year's roster spots that had better not include four or five Guys.  With Keith and Seabrook winding down (despite being under contract until forever and Keith's assertion that he think he can play until he's 40) our best prospects on the back end are Jan Rutta and Erik Gustafsson, which is a scary reality.  Rutta, I think, will be fine if Coach Q doesn't destroy his psyche, but Gustafsson is another story.  For all his offensive acumen he's not really very good at playing defense.  Coach's pet Jordan Oesterle is even worse in that vein; how can a player log a team-best Corsi and still be -3  for the night and fail to make any passes?  The stats, they lie...

At this point the likes of Jurco, Hayden, Highmore, Kampf, Oesterle, Dahlstrom, Gustafsson and even Murphy are practically interchangeable and, if The Hawks are forced to lean on these Guys (or Guys like them) next season we'll be in for another long year, again.  I know that affordable, quality depth players are pretty much unicorns, now, but if The Hawks go to war with this kind of lineup again I can tell you how that movie ends without even buying a ticket.