Courtesy Of Our Friends At The Chicago Blackhawks, Please Help Yourselves To This Tripe

The Hawks have a whole heapin' helpin' of garbage they want you to buy.

With the Hawks forcing Anders Sorensen onto a very desperate Jeff Blashill's coaching staff, Hawks Pravda is in full force. They clearly don't want it to look like Kyle Davidson desired his own pet on the coaching staff, and all the questions that would come along with it. No, they want you to believe that Jeff Blashill definitely knows who Sorensen is, how much of an understanding they have, and how important it is to the development of the Hawks youth that Sorensen is still around.

We'll get to the fairytale of Anders and Jeff staring upon Touchdown Jesus together and discovering their shared vision of hockey in a second. But let's deal with the narrative that the Hawks are pushing about the steps forward that the Hawks took under Sorensen's guiding hand. It's all centered around a handful of games at the very end of the season where the opponents just didn't care. I cannot stress enough that the Hawks true veteran leaders, Connor Murphy and Ryan Donato and not a certain camera moth, thought so much of the steering of the ship by Sorensen that they called a team meeting with THREE GAMES TO GO. That never happens.

The Hawks can't keep stressing what happens at the end of the season as anything that meaningful. Remember when Lukas Reichel dominated a stretch of games at the end of a season? How's that gone for everyone since? It's not a representative time on the calendar.

But let's leave that for a minute. From the time Sorensen was hired, December 6th, until April 1st, which is a span of 48 games, the Hawks were the worst team in Corsi, the worst team in expected goals, and by open lengths in both categories. The only reason they collected more points than the Sharks during that stretch was they shot 10.1 percent, even though they were the worst offensive team during that stretch in terms of xG/60 by a full 0.2. That's the same gap as between 31st and 21st. It cannot be stressed enough just how awful the Hawks were under Sorensen when they were playing games against interested opponents.

That sample of 48 games, which isn't a nothing, wouldn't be some glittering spot on a resume where other teams would just have to have him. Only the Hawks had to have him, for reasons that assuredly don't make any sense.

As for the "development" of certain players, Sam Rinzel came from a real-ass program in Minnesota and wasn't around for enough games for Sorenson to weave his magic. Frank Nazar and Artyom Levshunov just might be that good that he can't ruin them. But what did Oliver Moore do? Or Ethan Del Mastro? Or Louis Crevier? Or Landon Slaggert? Most importantly, Connor Bedard? Sadly, we can tack Kevin Korchinski onto this list too, a player he just doesn't seem to understand.

Again, nothing in that sample of "development" makes Sorensen a coaching prospect that anyone other than Kyle Davidson feels they have to have around. He's not some prospect whisperer.

Let's get to some money quotes: “I believe in working with a group that pulls on the same rope, so to speak;"

I can't resist the urge to say I got a rope he can pull on, but now that's out of the way, I once again have to stress that the Hawks thought so much of his stewardship they had to call a team meeting in the last week of the season. Clearly, there were players who weren't buying what Sorensen was selling and didn't feel any duty to pretend like they did and just mailed it in on the ice.

Here's the best part. The Hawks and Sorensen's cover story is that he and Blashill struck up a special relationship at Notre Dame's coaching clinic:

“We always met up in summers at those things,” Sörensen said. “I always held him in very high regards as a coach and a person. Got to know him through there, and he was a guy I always stayed in touch with throughout the years and picked his brain on different things. It always seemed like I came out of conversations with Jeff, whether it was over beers or just in the coaches’ setting, I always came away with something. I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I like that,’ or he made me think. He made me think about different things. That’s something I really value.”

Read it closely enough and you can see Sorensen checking his script to make sure he hit every bullet point Davidson put out for him.

Jeff Blashill has been in the NHL for 10 years. He certainly has more than enough connections and relationships through that decade to fill out a coaching staff through his own choices without needing to resort to some guy he ran into in the hallway in South Bend. But he was desperate enough for a job to take whatever the parameters were, in this case having to take on Sorensen because the Hawks just have to have a guy who was already standing there remain standing there.

I don't know what actual effect this will have on the Hawks. My hunch has always been assistant coaches in hockey don't do all that much and the buck will always stop with the head coach. But should the Hawks start next season wonky, and are at the bottom of the standings again, it's going to get awfully uncomfortable amongst that staff with an assistant forced on a coach who didn't have enough gas to hire his own guy and won't be able to fire the one who isn't his guy.

Some ship you got here, Danny.