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Anaheim Ducks (7-2-0) at Chicago Blackhawks (5-2-1) 7:30 Central/5:30 Pacific United Center/Chicago CSN-CH, PRIME
THE BUZZ
Tonight the Hawks face Western Conference and Pacific Division leading Anaheim, a good team last year that got better in the offseason, in part by beating out the Hawks in the bidding for center Ryan Kesler.
The Kesler story is a significant subtext to this game. After the Hawks (as many sources told me) came up short in their trade offer for Kesler, they defaulted to free agent Brad Richards.
Richards has been somewhat disappointing thus far for Chicago (3 assists in 8 games, 44.9% on faceoffs), an early indication that there is, as many Ranger fans would attest, very little tread left on his tire. Kesler, on the other hand, has been strong for Anaheim (7 points in 9 games, 58% in the dot). It’s early yet. But these types of tradeoffs can be very meaningful over the course of a season and the playoffs.
Hawk coach Joel Quenneville has spread out his firepower a bit, moving Patrick Sharp down to Richards’ third line, which has shown some good results early on. But overall the Hawks simply need to score more goals, evidenced by just 6 tallies over their last three games, where they went 1-2.
PROJECTED LINEUPS
Anaheim
Smith-Pelly Getzlaf Perry Cogliano Kesler Silfverberg Beleskey Karlsson Rakell Etem Thompson Jackman
Beauchemin Lindholm Fowler Stoner Fistric Vatanen
Andersen
Chicago
Bickell Toews Hossa Saad Shaw Kane Sharp Richards Versteeg Morin Kruger Smith
Keith Seabrook Oduya Hjalmarsson Van Riemsdyk Rundblad
Raanta
All for now,
JJ