Just A Couple of Issues: Canadiens 2, Hawks 0

Despite being almost a full day removed from the end of this game I am nevertheless compelled to sound off.  Just a little bit.
Only a few things went wrong:
* The Hawks Cannot Score.  They shoot a lot and, in this game, had a lot of A+ chances, but no joy?  I have no idea what's going on with that.  Bad luck?  Chucking at the goalie?  Saad, Toews and Panik all failed on point-blank attempts.  I don't know but, until some shots start going in, The Hawks are gonna be looking at lot of nights like this one.
Saad has one assist in his last six games, and has not scored in over three weeks.
Panik has one goal and one assist in that same timespan.
* They Did Kinda Get Goalied.  Charlie Lindgren came outta nowhere and threw a perfect game, so there's that.
* Another Brief Let Up let them down.  The Hawks were the better team by some margin...except for a seven-or-eight minute spell in the third period in which everything they touched turned to crap.  Keep it somewhat together for the full 60 and it's a different story.  Probably.
* Connor Murphy played a pretty good game...except for two plays.  He rocked a gaudy 76% Corsi at even strength, had good gaps and made safe, careful plays out of his own zone, but he was on the ice for both goals against.  On the first GA, things started going wrong when Kempny failed to keep the puck in the MTL zone, although that was complicated by an official in the way.  Murphy then tripped all over himself trying to change direction and chase down Drouin, who he was never going to catch, and managed to get in the way of Sharp who *might* have something for the speedy Habs forward.
Sometimes it just goes like that.
On the second GA Murph took way too much time tracking the puck down in the corner, gave it up to Pacioretty and - boom - 2-nothing.  And that's why he'll sit on Thursday in favour of (ulp!) Forsling.

At least Corey Crawford was named the NHL First Star of The Week, for what that's worth...

Blessings from Jonathan Drouin

Whether he's an underachieving malcontent or a bona fide star-in-waiting is still yet to be seen. Whatever the case, we can thank Jonathan Drouin and his agent for two things.

1. After refusing to report to AHL Syracuse, and now under indefinite suspension, it's pretty clear that The Hawks should take a pass on the guy.  Who needs the drama, along with having to give up The Sun, The Moon and The Stars for a player who might someday be as good as, I don't know...Alexandre Daigle?  As an aside, I've been to Syracuse and I can't say I blame him.
2. This dispute between The Lightning and Drouin's camp have distracted the gang of fatsos at TSN from spending literally hours debating who Steven Stamko's wingers will be when (not if) he dresses for The Maple Leafs next season.

Oh, just shut your big fat mouths and, while you're at it, stop touching yourselves under the desk.

So, thank you, Jonathan Drouin, I really do appreciate what you're doing.

Waaay Late on This: Hawks 3, Penguins 1 But We Won't Talk About That (much)

Yeah, so The Hawks dominated a pretty tired-looking Penguins squad, Artemi Panarin continues to deal a hot hand and more precious ground is made up on Dallas.  Despite it really being a 2-1 game with a gimme, The Hawks rarely seemed troubled in this one, although those are occasionally the types of games that don't end well, so let's take the two and move on.
Once again, though, it was essentially a three line effort, with the Rasmussen line getting only a handful of shifts.  More on this in a bit.

The chatter today largely revolved around a player yet to arrive with the team and a player yet to be obtained at all.  First, Richard Panik's Hawks debut has been delayed because of Visa issues.  The word is, though, that when he arrives he'll get a look alongside Toews and Hossa.  I'm not sure what to think about that, as it seems like a pretty high pressure introduction to the squad, one in which he just as likely to fail and, well, we know how that goes.  I guess we can all just hope for the best but it seems a longshot that Panik will make the leap from the minors to Toews' combo entirely smoothly.

The other story that keeps popping up is The Hawks making a deal for Tampa's Jonathan Drouin,  I resist this, first, because the price will be too high; if Tampa were prepared to accept any old thing for Drouin that deal would have done a month ago.  Sideways from there, if Drouin were to fail to make a near-immediate impact we end up with another Rundblad situation, in which the GM coughed up who-knows-what in exchange for a guy that Quenneville won't use.  The Hawks have to pass on this at least until the Panik experiment runs its course.