Chicago Blackhawks at St. Louis Blues 7PM Eastern NBC Sports
THE BUZZ
So this game is fairly loaded with emotion and relevance. It’s St. Louis in St. Louis. Getting late in the season. The Hawks sit two points ahead of the Blues with same amount of games played. At this stage of the season, games like these directly impact playoff position and home ice advantage.
Various reports have it that Marian Hossa might make his return tonight. I have heard nothing specific. But I will go with that for now.
PROJECTED LINEUPS
Chicago
Ladd Toews Hossa Panarin Anisimov Kane Desjardins Teravainen Fleischmann Mashinter Shaw Weise
Keith Hjalmarsson Gustafsson Seabrook Van Riemsdyk Rozsival
Crawford
St. Louis
Schwartz Lehtera Tarasenko Fabbri Stastny Brouwer Berglund Backes Jaskin Upshall Brodziak Paajarvi
Bouwmeester Pietrangelo Gunnarson Shattenkirk Edmundson Parayko
Allen
STANLEY LOVES THE KRUGER
3 years, $9.25 million.
For 2-3 seasons now, I have heard some experts on my board and elsewhere on the internet write Marcus Kruger off as a “fourth liner,… “replaceable,… “ordinary,… “doesn’t produce points.… Etc.
In fact, I just read a blog on this very topic where Kruger is again consigned to “fourth line… mediocrity. Some will never get it.
Taking my personal opinion of Kruger out of it, meanwhile, all I’ve heard from my sources close to the Hawks, especially over the last several months, is that the team’s assessment was quite different.
What the Hawks have in Kruger is really a classic third line center, even if his line is often fourth on the depth chart: a shutdown pivot who is over 50% on faceoffs, tough as nails to play against (ask Ryan Kesler and Corey Perry), plays bigger than his size, skates very well, is a monster pound for pound along the wall, drives crazy offensive zone possession, one of the league’s best penalty killers. He’s probably still going to get bigger and stronger and tougher to play against too.
Also has pretty high hockey sense and maybe even some unrealized offensive upside. Although “brace yourselves,… to paraphrase those Sean Bean memes on Facebook, there will be three solid years of lamentations over Kruger “only having five goals dis year.…
Oh, and he’s 25, and has two Stanley Cup rings he actually helped earn.
There never was a Philip Danault/Marcus Kruger “tradeoff.…
The Hawks liked and wanted to keep Danault—but he was the price of two important forward acquisitions for this stretch run. And he might not have had a position going forward in Chicago.
Because Kruger was never going anywhere.
There is no Kruger/Andrew Shaw tradeoff. Kruger is a center, Shaw is a wing who can play C in a pinch.
What this deal and other developments in the Hawks’ salary cap mean is somewhat above my pay grade.
But understand this: this deal, signing Artemi Panarin next summer, as well as possibly even extending Andrew Ladd pretty much/sort of conforms to the plan the Hawks entered the previous summer with. They wanted to;
1) extend Brandon Saad at around $4-4.5 million per season 2) find a 2nd line center to replace Brad Richards—or re-sign Richards 3) extend Kruger (definitely) 4) keep Johnny Oduya (if possible) 5) lose Patrick Sharp’s salary 6) deal Bryan Bickell 7) sign Panarin next year (the Hawks knew he’d be good-and that his price would go up
Obviously, a funny thing happened (a few of them actually) on the way to the UC. The larger point is, if the Hawks lose the last year of Bickell’s deal this summer, ande the cap adjusts along they lines they’ve anticipated, they are still somewhat on the same plan they were on—money-wise.
By now, generally speaking, Bickell’s albatross of a deal aside (which is now three years old), this team has shown time and again it knows what it’s doing.
Relax. Love the Kruger. Coming to an arena near you in a few short weeks.
I’ll hopefully recap the Blues game tomorrow.
FOB (good peeps, good reads)
Chris Block Al Cimaglia http://www.thethirdmanin.com
Frank Nova http://www.hockeenight.com
Greg Boysen http://www.letsgohawks.net
Puckin’ Hostile Crew http://www.puckinhostile.com