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The Chicago Blackhawks have scored 6 goals in their last four games. Now, the good news is, their opponents have scored just 8 in the same timeframe. And goaltending depth in the organization is starting to look a lot more like a strength than a weakness.
But that also makes the Hawks 1-3 over their last four outings.
And the inability to convert has to be a concern.
A couple of observations.
This is a team that was physically overmatched in last season’s playoffs against the Kings. They look that way again. Their “physical… forwards—Andrew Shaw and Bryan Bickell—just don’t seem to be quite enough. The goals aren’t there, in large part because the greasy goals that typically have to happen to get things going aren’t there. At forward, the Hawks remain a small group that relies perhaps too much on finesse and pretty plays.
The power play is sliding back into mediocrity. Players aren’t moving, the puck is getting overhandled by individual players on the perimeter. If I was an opposing forward, I would be just salivating at the thought of the next Hawk pass from the halfboard back to the point. Because that’s about the extent of the puck movement.
Full marks to Stan Bowman and the staff for re-tooling the 2010 team eventually into the very good team that won the Cup in 2013. But last year’s team was an approximation of that team, minus some key pieces due to new contracts. And this year’s appears now, to perhaps be another step down.
It’s great that all the key pieces are locked up for several years, but the supporting cast feels either too old and too slow, too small, too young, too . . . meh.
Say what you want about Michal Frolik and Viktor Stalberg, but both brought a unique size/speed combination that at times was very hard for opponents to handle.
Frolik was just a lot better on Marcus Kruger’s wing than Jeremy Morin is, or even Ben Smith is. And as much as you like either player, you can’t ignore the fact that neither are all that great, and neither is likely going to get much better. Sure, Smith can be my 13th forward any time, just on effort and grit alone. But when you miss Dan Carcillo this much, maybe your depth is just not all that great.
And no question, Bowman’s hands were tied in the summer of 2013, he had to move some players who had big contract demands. But the question becomes, was this front office a little too intoxicated with its own bathwater, coming off the relative rookie success of Brandon Saad and Andrew Shaw, in thinking that its prospect pipeline would solve all the supporting cast issues going forward.
Maybe there’s a disconnect between the front office and the coaching staff—as Joel Quenneville is notoriously impatient and intolerant with the mistakes of young players. Yet Quenneville has the skins on the wall. And in hockey, as well as in business or life, there’s no substitute for experience.
What we do know is this front office is slow, or hesitant, or unable to move on trades of any significance. There are more than one explanation for that floating around—that the decision-making apparatus at 1910 West Madison is too large, corporate and unwieldy, that Bowman has to answer to or at least engage too many non-hockey people, that Bowman himself is too cautious and in the words (allegedly) of at least one opposing GM “always looking to ‘win’ every deal and make you look bad.…
Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Even just because the Hawks’ salary cap situation today, don’t expect any kind of deal to inject life into this team.
Maybe, maybe, they work through it organically, with the roster they have today.
Maybe some piece (or pieces) from Rockford injects some life at some point, like everyone’s fair-haired Finn, Teuvo Teravainen, or perhaps a guy whose size and skills fit the Hawks’ lower line needs like Mark McNeill.
It’s early, the season is only a little over 1/10th of the way, and yet, you feel like this team has a serious case of Low T. Like you could be watching golf someday and see Patrick Sharp and Johnny Oduya fly-fishing and joshing around in an ad for Andro-Gel.
But I digress. And the Hawks, at 5-3-1 in the uber-competitive Western Conference, might be already considering some other alternatives.
All for now,
JJ