The Blackhawks return home today at the end of their (final) annual Circus Road Trip.
Typically a bellwether for the season, I'm not sure you can say that this year—the Blackhawks are probably a better team than they showed on this long road trip. Another way you can look at the season is there have been three distinct phases thus far.
In the first 7-8 games, the team struggled to reach or maintain .500, assimilating lots of new faces (including 5 rookies), play was very uneven and inconsistent.
In the next 7-8 game phase, after getting some solid lins and pairings in place, the Hawks were literally unbeatable.
In the the last, all on the road, dogged a bit by injury, and mostly against good teams, the Hawks again played .500 hockey.
Overall, you pretty much know this is a better team today than it appeared after 7-8 games.
At the same time, you can't feel it's as great as you did after the team ripped off a long win streak a few weeks ago.
So in a larger sense, what's going on here?
To my eye, there's a long-term trend at play here: for the last 2+ seasons, the Hawks have increasingly become a less reliably strong possession team, while the goaltending has actually gotten better. Or, you can say the team is now relying a lot more on goaltending, and Corey Crawford and Scott Darling have been more than up to the task.
A win is a win, right?
Yes and no.
The Hawks are 3-1 this season in 3-on-3 OT, and 1-1 in the shootout—or 4-2 in games that are decided in a way that games are not decided in the postseason. This follows the trend from last season.
A big difference this year is that the Hawks are 40-27 in goals for/against 5-on-5—a huge improvement versus last season's 134-142 total. And conversely, a very positive indicator for the postseason.
All good news right? Well, the power play is middle of the pack so far this season, and the penalty kill is a league worst 70%. So those are two areas that can improve (good news), especially the penalty kill, which has steadily improved after a horrible start to the season.
Where is the 5-on-5 improvement coming from? One obvious source is outstanding goaltending, especially when you consider the Hawks' shots for/against has been consistently underwater all year, including last night's 2-1 OT loss in LA.
Other factors may be bounce back seasons (thus far anyway) from Marian Hossa and Brent Seabrook, significantly improved defensive depth, and a surprisingly good and improving (most nights) contribution from five rookies.
Harder to quantify, but definitely noticeable, is that this team seems to handle adversity better than last year's. The last two games in Southern California, as a microcosm, have shown a team missing its captain and best center in all situations, at the end of a long road trip, battling to take 3 of 4 points against good teams, while not playing its best hockey.
In a larger sense, as I've pointed out in previous entries, this is a team—because of all the rookies and roster turnover, as well as the first long summer of rest in 4 years—is evolving toward an identity. As this happens, the team's overall good start (in wins and losses at least) has afforded the team the luxury of a learning/adjustment process.
This isn't like the Red Wings on 2008 or 2009, where you know how good it is, but it's also not going to get much better.
In my opinion, this Hawk club might not have been as good as its record shows thus far—but it can also get a lot better. Continue improving the penalty kill, work the power play into a top 10 unit, keep working off the rough edges in the rookies' games while finding the right lines and pairings. And all that assuming Jonathan Toews injury is short-lived and non-recrrent and there key veterans stay relatively healthy
So there's a lot to be encouraged about with this team, but at the same time, nothing is guaranteed. This team, as a whole, is still a work in progress, not a known commodity.
All I have for now, look for a Florida preview in the next couple of days.
JJ
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