I'd heard, before last night, the Pittsburgh Penguins have been a bit dinged up—but I didn't realize until last night's game versus the Blackhawks that they were basically rolling out an AHL defense.
The result was a 5-1 Chicago win, highlighted by some gorgeous fast break goals—the kind of opportunities you get when your opponent is really struggling on defense. And so be it. It likely boost the Blackhawks' confidence after a couple of fairly dreadful outings in South Florida, and going into tomorrow night's showdown with the upstart Blue Jackets in Chicago.
I think we also saw what will essentially be the Hawks top 3 lines (swap out Artem Anisimov for Tanner Kero) come round 1 of the playoffs:
Schmaltz-Toews-Panik
Panarin-Anisimov-Kane
Hartman-Kruger-Hossa
The fourth line? Probably a grab bag of spare parts that the coaching staff will pull from depending on the game and the opponent, not to mention injuries. Expect Kero to be in the mix, and he and Kruger could swap out at 3C, again depending on situations. Dennis Rasmussen, Jordin Tootoo, Andrew Desjardins.
Do Tomas Jurco and John Hayden see the ice, much or at all, in the playoffs? That's harder to say. Hayden is looking more and more like a college kid and less and less like the revelation a typically over-anxious Hawk media machine hyped him as a couple of weeks ago. Not playing bad, per se, but definitely not an impact player either. Jurco, who I recently dubbed Passenger 13, has definitely been showing more effort and willingness to engage around the net. Still, honestly, I don't see either of those players being playoff factors. But you never know.
Still, the top 3 lines all seem to have some chemistry and give Joel Quenneville the depth and matchup capability you need to go deep in the playoffs. Same with the defense, where the pairs seem to be clearly coalescing.
All this gets put to the test tomorrow versus Columbus, a team that, unlike Pittsburgh, is fairly healthy and playing well again of late.
It's understandable that some still remain unconvinced on Columbus. I get it. Having seen them play a half-dozen times this year in person and probably 40 or so games overall, I am a believer.
I've heard many of those who dismiss the Jackets alternately defend the Hawks with "all teams have holes in the cap era."
Truth, until the Jackets win a couple of playoff series, they were just a very good regular season team this year. My take on them is they are OK on the blue line, Seth Jones and Zach Werenski are really nice players with upside, Jack Johnson is a pretty good player. David Savard has improved. Where I really like the Jackets is upfront, where they have a lot of quality depth (Saad, Foligno, Wennberg, Atkinson, Jenner, Karlsson, etc) that is not appreciated outside of Columbus or perhaps more knowledgeable Eastern Conference fans, and in net, with Sergei Bobrovsky.
Tomorrow should be a good measuring stick for both teams. I'll preview in the AM.
JJ
Chicago Blackhawks Blogger • 
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