On the news front, the Hawks host the Bruins in an Original Six matinee today. Scott Darling is your goalie, Tuuka Rask for the B's, Marian Hossa is back in the lineup. Gametime is 12:30 Eastern. TV on NBC, TVA and RSN in Canada.
With four games left until the playoffs, it's all but certain the Hawks will face the St. Louis Blues on the road in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs.
It's no time to look past the next four games. But it is high time to start playing the style and intensity of playoff hockey—something the Blackhawks have not really done much this year.
Again, just look at the 5-on-5 statistics, something that matters more in the playoffs, and the case is made.
But then, there's the title of this blog.
During Friday night's Blackhawks-Jets broadcast, tucked somewhere in the usual banter about soft-serve ice cream, Hawk announcers Pat Foley and Eddie Olczyk remarked that we had not yet seen the physical side of Dale Weise in a Hawk sweater.
True.
Why? Could be he's getting acclimated to a new system, could be he hasn't played enough, could be a combination of the above and he just hasn't gotten in a groove.
But the rest of the saying goes like this: "when the crusher becomes a rusher . . . he will soon become an usher." I think it was Don Cherry who said that.
This blog is not about Dale Weise. But it is about the style of play of this Hawk team. I have heard, over and over again, that the Hawks are coached to be "non-physical." Well, that is an extreme over-exaggerration. They are coached not to run around looking for big hits. And they are a possession-style team. For sure.
But they are also a team that has been at its best in the playoffs over the last several years, when they are the hunters and not the hunted. It's a mentality. A mentality that a team must have to win in the postseason. A physical team that punishes opponents, especially deep in their end—and skates and passes and scores.
Take the 2011 Blackhawks, a team that has some parallels with the current one. A defending Cup champ that had to sell off a lot of talent the prior summer, add a lot of new faces. They sort of limped in to the playoffs. And were it not for a 12-game winning streak earlier in the season, it is questionable whether this Hawk team would even make the playoffs.
In the first period of game 1 of round 1, on the road in Vancouver, they were checked out of the building. Destroyed. They also fell behind. And although they came back in that game (and in the series) they lost both. I would argue, losing that first period of the first game of the series may have cost them the series. Because they played that well once they woke up and started answering. Physically.
Which leads me back to Weise. And Andrew Ladd. And Andrew Shaw (day to day, upper body), and Andrew Desjardins, and Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Brent Seabrook.
These are the guys who need to start delivering some lumber and lethality, and soon. This version of the Blackhawks does not have a wide margin of error. If this team falls behind in the playoffs, it can't hope for a tie in regulation and 3-on-3 or a gift power play—as it has relied on quite a bit in the regular season.
The mentality of this team needs to begin to shift now—not after getting destroyed in Game 1 of round 1. Not by taking a suspension for a dumb retaliation with a stick. Play clean, play hard, play like you want it.
Again, no one is advocating throwing the Hawks "style" out the window. But it is time to begin to adopt the attitude and style of epic Cup runs in 2010, 2013 and 2015. When there was plenty of crushing to go with the rushing.
In the NHL playoffs, that's how it works. It's a war of attrition. No room or quarter for anyone not fully committed with heart, soul, bone and sinew. Say what you want about the Blues. I can pretty much guarantee you, after years of frustration, they want it. And if they've been scouting the Hawks, they know this is a team that has not played with boatloads of intensity the last several games.
Another quote to close the blog, from author Steven King: in the playoffs, "you either eat the world, or it eats you."
It's a choice. Let's see where this Hawk team falls.
I'll recap the game tomorrow.
JJ
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