Finished Here, Greetings Death

The break is definitely over as the Hawks suffer through a slog of a weekend in their return to action, and then what Rob Manfred is really after.

Sector 1901 - Finished Here, Greetings Death

Did everyone enjoy their break? Was everyone ready to have Hawks hockey come right back in the door and puke on the rug? If you were the smart one, and if you're subscribing to this you obviously are, you were more than prepared for exactly that. After completely no-showing against Columbus, the Hawks were at least spikier for some stretches against the Leafs. But Toronto is a team that can simply outclass the Hawks without breaking much of a sweat, which they proceeded to do when they got sufficiently annoyed in the 2nd period and into the 3rd. Fuck, they could even do it with the Worse Robertson Brother.

I guess I want to start here, with Scott Powers's piece from The Athletic last week. Reading it, one gets the impression that the Hawks are looking for any excuse to hire Anders Sorensen full-time. Scott may be just speculating within this article, but he also usually gets his stuff from somewhere.

Look, we know the Hawks M.O. They love to hire the guy who is already standing there, and they love to hire within no matter what. No one was looking to add Sorensen to their AHL staff, but the Hawks think they know better. Now, he's come up through their whole tree, and we know how much they love to glorify their development track for not just players, but coaches.

We'll do a deeper dive on this later in the week I think, but quite simply, Sorensen is too big of a moron for them to hire full-time.

I'll just pick and choose here, and I understand that without Jason Dickinson it's not as easy as it could be. But why is Connor Bedard, at home, getting most of his ice-time against Auston Matthews? We know the Hawks want to see Bedard succeed against the best. We know that Bedard wants to, as well. But there's a time and place for that, and it's also not illegal to use the last change to get your best player away from the other team's best checker (which Matthews has become) and get him advantageous matchups. It's in fact the only thing a coach can really do during a game. Every competent coach does it. Getting domed to the tune of a 33% Corsi-share against Matthews and only managing shot attempts when the goalie is pulled isn't really getting anyone anywhere.

There was an instance in the 1st where out of a TV timeout, Sorensen sent Bedard out there to take a d-zone draw against Matthews, one of the best faceoff guys in the league, to add to being one of the biggest offensive threats in the league. There's asking guys to learn and putting them in teachable moments, and then there's just doing shit. That was most certainly in the latter category.

Bedard was sent out for another defensive draw in the 2nd period. You might remember it from when this happened:

https://www.nhl.com/video/tor-chi-mccabe-scores-goal-against-arvid-soderblom-6369239756112

I know this team is so limited that there just aren't great options anywhere. But isn't this what Nick Foligno is for? Craig Smith? The shift before this had seen the Hawks' 4th line have an extended shift, so basically any other line was available.

Secondly, it's not the most important thing, but at the end of the game when the Hawks lost yet another challenge, Landon Slaggert is the choice to sit? Isn't he a penalty killer? Shouldn't he be?

Y'know, this town lost its mud over the idea of Caleb Williams will play for a third play-caller and third coach in just two seasons. Well, Bedard is going to match that number of coaches, one would hope, in three seasons. But beyond Bedard, next season is the most important one developmentally at the NHL level for the Hawks. Levshunov will arrive, Korchinski will return, Nazar will be in his first full 82, there's a chance Oliver Moore or Nick Lardis or another will be on the team, and there will probably be less veteran plugs around to bleat to the press about standards. Most of the teaching will have to come from behind the bench. What has anyone who's standing there now done to make you believe they're the ones to take the reins of that very important season?

But this is the Hawks, and they are standing there...

-While most focus next summer will be on getting Connor Bedard linemates at his level, and it should be, I will also be hopeful that the Hawks can get Frank Nazar one, too. Of course, they have one on the roster now in Teravainen, but Sorensen is still trying to construct a checking line for a team that doesn't have any scoring lines.

It's one thing to watch a player use his hands or creativity to make things happen offensively, as Nazar did for the Hawks second goal that left Max Domi soaked in his own urine in the corner. That's good stuff. But it's another entirely when a player like Nazar is using those hands and elusiveness to get out of a jam in his own zone. He did so a couple times, especially one late in the 2nd where he weaved out of a tight space between two Leafs and sent Kurashev on a rush the other way. Which, of course, Kurashev fumbled at the blue line.

It shows a confidence few have, to go with the skills that a first round pick should have, and a good sense of what is possible in the most important moments. It's heartening to see Nazar confident enough to use what separates him from just another center in moments that could go really wrong. It's good at the Hawks are letting him. Nazar took matters into his own hands by providing a chance that even Kurashev couldn't miss, but it would be good for him to get more time with guys who will make more out of the plays that Nazar is making, so that he'll keep making them.

-For all this talk about what the Hawks will do at the deadline and how vets like Martinez and Maroon and Brodie aren't going anywhere because the organization made them promises or something, that had better mean the team will have no problem sitting them down for the season's last stretch to give the kids more time.

We don't need to see much of Brodie or Martinez for the last 15-20 games. It's clear what they provide, and for the benefit of not having to uproot after a trade again, they can provide their mentorship at practice.

Unless the Hawks think Martinez whiffing on a pinch and being beaten by open lengths back down the ice, or Brodie putting in a sloth's effort against a forecheck before having the puck bounce off him into the net is really teaching anyone anything. Which they might.

-Speaking of leaders, on the Leafs first goal, Vlasic attempts to cut across to retrieve a puck that's been put behind Murphy. He didn't get there, which happens. But now both d-men are in the corner. Is that really the time for Foligno to also get into the corner to try and cut off a pass he had no hope of getting to? Or maybe just cover the slot where the Other Robertson is in a canyon of space?

-A word on Frank Pellico's last night. The Hawks started phasing out the organ from their game presentation long ago, though there were isolated spots for it. I know, and you know, that game presentation in every arena is not really aimed at us anymore. The very idea of "game presentation" was probably never aimed at us.

I'm not sure who it's aimed for and if it's working. It's hard for me to believe that someone goes to a hockey game and says, "Well, the actual hockey was boring as shit but all the games and screaming hosts and 15-second snippets of songs written 20 years ago will keep me coming back!" I know there are people paid a lot more than me who say this works.

It's the same at Wrigley or a lot of other ballparks now, too. I always thought part of the appeal of baseball was that, no matter the time, the sound of the bat on ball at Wrigley sounded the same now as it did in 1984, or 1971, or 1950. There's a connection there. And while updates in places are certainly welcome, that throughline is a unique experience. It gets muddled with noise between every pitch.

Same goes for hockey. I didn't really raise a fuss when the organ was lessened during games. But the organ definitely made a hockey game sound and feel like nothing else. Making hockey or baseball or whatever else try to sound like everything else, I don't know. It doesn't seem like the way to go about it.

But, again, it's not for us. They'll take everything that was for us away, knowing we'll come back. It feels lazy, that a team or marketing department can't figure out how to promote what is different and belongs solely to the hockey game experience and make people want to see it and be a part of it. Ah well. Hope Frank enjoys retirement.

All right, that's enough of that.

Wanted to spend a little time talking about MLB's and ESPN's it's-not-me-it's-you act over the weekend.

The Sunday night game has been unwatchable for a good while now. Maybe ever since John Miller stopped doing it. It's a testament to his greatness that he was able to bring the broadcast above whatever inanity that was gargling out of Joe Morgan's maw for those games. Whenever they decided Alex Rodriguez had to be part of the whole thing, the whole thing became a must-pass. Now, Karl Ravech is the absolute worst, and I have no idea how he and his wig have been employed at ESPN for so long when he has no insight, no charisma, no gravitas. But then, Mike Greenberg is probably the definition of all those things and he's perhaps their largest personality. Explains it all.

Sunday Night Baseball had become something of a variety show, where the game was merely a backdrop for the three wahoos in the booth to discuss whatever was on their mind, conduct interviews either with players on the goddamn field that absolutely no one asked for or gets much out of, or with people who aren't even at the stadium. It was basically Late Night At (insert ballpark). If you cared about either of the teams playing, it was excruciating.

That said, MLB simply losing a major broadcast partner can't just be glossed over simply because that broadcast partner wasn't all that good at it. The other three major sports leagues feel like they need to be on ESPN, so why is MLB so special? Sure the league could have done with the $300-400 million ESPN might have settled for paying per year to keep Sunday night and the playoff games that came with it or whatever the total may have been.

There's certainly some argument to be made that MLB making its regular season even more rudimentary with the expansion of the playoffs hurts the value of broadcasting it. But MLB only did that to have more playoff games to sell to the likes of ESPN, so both of their fingerprints are on the destruction of th 162's worth. Certainly it's much harder now to sell any Sunday night game as important, when we already know a good portion of the playoff field by the 4th of July.

My hunch is that Manfred and his sniveling cronies want to go through 2026 without any sort of replacement deal, so that when CBA negotiations really kick off they can cry even poorer in their pursuit of a salary cap. It's hard to see what entity is going to pony up to broadcast a new MLB package when everyone is pretty convinced that a good portion if not all of the 2027 season is going to be sacrificed in that cap-pursuit. It just feels like a ploy.

Nothing Manfred does is ever for the good of the game or to make what we watch on daily basis more enjoyable. As hard as Sunday Night Baseball had become to digest, the nixing of it isn't in fans' interest either.