Hawks Weekend - A Tour Of The Territories, World Series Preview

We're getting you set up for the Hawks back-to-back on Friday and Saturday, as well as a quick bit about the Fall Classic that everyone hates but secretly loves kicking off.

Sector 1901 - Hawks Weekend: A Tour Of The Territories

The Hawks get back to Central Division action on Friday and Saturday, with the visit of the Preds and then jetting down to Dallas on a DC-10 at night to see the team they seem to be trying to model themselves after? Maybe? We'll get to it in a minute.

Nashville Predators Lineup

Forsberg - O'Reilly - Nyquist

Stamkos - Sissons - Marchessault

Jankowski - Novak - Evangelista (OH!)

L'Heureux - McCarron - Smith

Skjei - Josi

Lauzon - Carrier

Del Gaizo - Schenn

Saros/Wedgewood

What You Need To Know: You have to find your smiles where you can as a Hawks follower, so one comes to the UC tonight as the Predators have gotten off to a worse start than the Hawks. They bricked their first five games, four of which were at home, before finally finding the win column on Tuesday against the Bruins. We have all waited a long time for the Preds to suck and become irrelevant and not annoyingly hang around the bottom of the playoff picture as they always seem to do. Have we finally got our wish? Could very well be.

For starters, this team is three days older than water. Ryan O'Reilly is 33. Roman Josi is 34. Steven Stamkos is 33. Jonathan Marchessault is 33. Luke Schenn is 107. Gustav Nyquist is 35, and if you're a team that has to be concerned with how old Gustav Nyquist is at all, you're in the bad place. Even Filip Forsberg, their only genuine top line talent, the only top line talent the Preds ever produced despite being Defenseman U., has crossed the threshold into his 30s.

Now, whether their inability to produce any offense so far is tied to their age or the fact they just don't have that much firepower, we'll leave for others to decide. It's probably a combo of both. Their big signings of the summer, Stamkos and Marchessault, were supposed to solve that. Except when they're given Colton Sissons as their center, it's not going to work as well. Stamkos has become more and more of a spot-up shooter as he's gotten older, which wasn't a huge problem on a team with Brayden Point or Nikita Kucherov getting him the puck. It is a problem here. Funny story, he has one goal so far, though that's more to do with his 4.5 shooting percentage than a lack of chances being created for him.

The Preds other big problem this season has been their goaltending, specifically at even-strength. They have the third-worst SV% at 5-on-5, and Saros has been a disaster so far when all things are equal with a .877. He's been great on the kill, with a .958, but that's not enough. He's too good to be that bad for the bulk of every game for a long time. Right now it's putting the Preds behind the eight-ball.

While the top of this roster is fine if not glittering, the middle has been getting utterly clobbered. The Preds used to be able to do it with grunts and no-names populating the middle-six because their defense was so good and drove most of their offense. Well, that's not the case anymore. Brady Skjei, who felt like the perfect Predator when he signed there, was getting clowned when paired with Schenn, and it's only slightly improved now that he's been moved to Josi's partner. Jeremy Lauzon, Alex Carrier, these are just guys. Speaking of Josi...

Player To Watch - Roman Josi

It feels stupid to say, as Josi put up 85 points last season. And it's tempting to pin that total on his power play production (33 points). But all the great d-men in the league now pile up points on the power play, because they're QB-ing the best units around. Josi was fourth in the league last year in power play points by a d-man, behind Makar, Hughes, and Bouchard. These are good names to be in any group with.

And yet, it feels like Josi is finally starting to bend to his aging arc. His Corsi and xG% were fine, but digging deeper, Josi didn't really do any of the stuff that the top tier of puck-moving d-men do these days. At least he didn't do them all that well. He doesn't break the Preds out of the zone at more than a median rate, doesn't clean up deep in his zone all that well, and only stands up at his line at an okay-rate. And now he's 34.

He's had a very slow start this year, with even his Corsi and xG% dropping below his normal rates. Some of that is trying to find him a partner, which the Preds have struggled with. But the Preds were built for years on their defense being the generator of their offense, and often finishing that offense. Well, now Josi is old, there isn't someone to carry the torch from him as he did from Weber and Suter, and the forwards are worse and older than they've been. If the Preds are going to salvage one more furious drive to a wildcard and first round exit, it'll still start with Josi.

Dallas Stars Lineup

Robertson - Hintz - Stankoven

Marchment - Duchene - Seguin

Benn - Johnston - Dadonov

Steel - Back - Blackwell

Heiskanen - Dumba

Harley - Lyubushkin

Lindell - Lundkvist

Oettinger/DeSmith

What You Need To Know: On the other side of the Central spectrum, kinda, are the Dallas Stars. The Hawks will roll into The Metroplex to see a Stars team that has won six of its first eight, including a 4-2 kneecapping of the Bruins in Boston on Thursday.

Unlike a usual Pete DeBoer team though, this team has gotten there simply because they've gotten otherworldly goaltending rather than boring-ass defensive work. Both Jake Oettinger and finishing school graduate Casey DeSmith have save-percentages of .941 (which helped make Oettinger quite rich very recently). DeSmith started in Boston so the Hawks are likely to get a face-full of Oettinger.

And the Stars have needed that goaltending, because unlike a normal DeBoer team they've been pretty woeful defensively. They're 27th in xGA per 60 at evens, though they're just middle of the pack when it comes to giving up shots and attempts per game. Teams have been able to get pretty much whatever they want around the net against the Stars. The Stars 12 points is mostly based on Oettinger's .886 SV% on high-danger chances.

On the other end of the ice, the Stars are producing at something of a middling rate, and are having shooting troubles at just 7.7 percent so far. The power play has been utterly woeful so far as well (9.5 percent). If Hintz and Duchene weren't seeing a lot of pucks going in thanks to some good luck, the Stars might have an offensive crisis.

Things will probably turn around for the Stars though, which is good for the Hawks in the sense that they've made little secret that Dallas is the team they'd like to emulate. It's easy to see why, as they have home produced pillars like Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, Wyatt Johnston, Miro Heiskanen, and Thomas Harley. This is the kind of core the Hawks would love to replicate with Bedard, Nazar, Moore, Korch, and Levshunov. It's possible for sure, if not a little wistful.

The Stars problem is the support crew, or it could be. Duchene and Tyler Seguin are getting very old. Jamie Benn has already played himself to the third line and his 35 xG-percentage so far this year suggests he may not be done tumbling down the lineup.

The other question for the Stars, which the Hawks won't have going forward, is figuring out of Hintz really is a #1 center for a team that has designs on parades. Hintz is gifted at getting the Stars into the attacking zone, but he's not a gifted playmaker or finisher when they get there. They've lost consecutive conference finals to Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel before him, and it's fair to question if Hintz is in that class and if the Stars can go where they want to if he isn't. At 27, this is probably as good as he gets. Is Johnston more built for that role, even with just being 21? The metrics and pedigree suggest so.

As far as Saturday night will go, the Stars are kind of the worst matchup for the Hawks. Not only are they good, but they stuff the neutral zone and the Hawks just don't have any trap-busters on the roster. They're also not built at the moment to dump and retrieve successfully on nights they have to. And even if they get through all that, they'll have to beat one of the Stars' goalies who is on a real heater at the moment. That said, if the Stars continue to have the problems defending their own slot that they have, the Hawks do have some crease-crashers who could profit.

Player To Watch - Miro Heiskanen

From the moment he arrived in Dallas, it was obvious Heiskanen was going to displace John Klingberg as the Stars #1 blue-liner. There is a smoothness immediately obvious when watching Heiskanen. Scary to think he's only 25 and is just entering his prime.

The Hawks and others have made it quite clear that Heiskanen is what they'd like Kevin Korchinski to be. It's at least refreshing to see the Hawks use a model that didn't play for them at some point, and Heiskanen is certainly a worthy role model for a playing style.

Heiskanen is advanced in both passing and skating the Stars out of their zone, and efficient and clean when doing either. He has a skating style that makes him look like he's not trying all that hard while he's blowing by forcheckers. He's also one of the league's best d-men at breaking into the offensive zone himself, given his prowess with the puck.

It doesn't make for a perfect comparison for Korch, whose game is a little more frantic and a little more flashy, potentially, than Heiskanen's. The Finn has been a shutdown corner pretty much since he arrived, whereas Korch is going to have to prove that on his own line over the coming years. But Korch could, potentially, be more explosive.

But if the two end up in the same conversation one days soon, things will be going much better on Madison.

We'll do a quick set-up for the World Series before getting out of here for the weekend.

There's a lot of baseball fans that complain about a Yankees-Dodgers World Series. That still feels like conditioning from an owner-driven narrative that this series is only a result of being in the biggest markets and that no one else can run with them. The response from most fans should be to demand that their team acts more in the style of these teams. And make no mistake, most baseball teams can spend on good players and be aggressive like these teams. They just don't, and no fan should ever feel sorry for a billionaire.

But it's easy for owners and their water-carriers in the press to prey on an entrenched dislike of the Yankees and Dodgers, which is just part of baseball rather than having anything to do with the actual rosters. Fans can warp that distaste in their minds to be a cry of an unfair system. It's kind of timeless. Very few outside of New York and Los Angeles like those places (I happen to, but not in a sports sense).

Still, when the first pitch arrives and Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are on deck and then when we get to Game 3 and it's Shohei Ohtani in Yankee Stadium, even if it's the bastardized new one that doesn't carry the feel of the old one, very few baseball fans will be able to look away. It's fine if these teams are hoarding the biggest stars in baseball. They're supposed to, they're the fucking Yankees and Dodgers. Was anyone happier watching Cory Seager and Corbin Carroll last year? Of course not.

It used to feel that playoff baseball just looked right in Yankee Stadium. I'm not sure that's carried over across the street, but the uniforms still do. Most hate the Celtics and Lakers too, but when they're in the Finals it just has a different look and feel. When they're there together, it feels like a completely separate event. Same goes for this.

As far as the series itself, the Yankees have actual starters, even if Nestor Cortes's arm is going to fly off in the third inning of his outing. I wouldn't trust Jack Flaherty as far as I can throw him, and that was before he revealed himself to be a pissbaby against the Padres. I know Dave Roberts was able to dance his bullpen through a series against the Mets and finally played the long game by ceding a couple games that were already out of hand, but this should be a different animal.

The Yankees lineup is top-heavy like the Mets' was, though Soto-Judge-Stanton (in current form) is a step up from Lindor-Vientos and a decomposing Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. And I have to believe that the Yankees being able to use actual starters most nights will make a difference, though you never know when Aaron Boone is going to decide to use Mark Leiter Jr. for no reason in a close game.

Yanks in six.