Hawks Weekend: Girls In Cages Playing Their Guitars

We're wrapping up the Hawks loss in San Jose, and then getting you set up for the Hawks weekend in SoCal.

Sector 1901 - Girls In Cages Playing Their Guitars

Let us pray that the postgame isn't filled with quotes about how there are no moral victories again, because no such thing was possible in a game against San Jose. Welcome to the basement, folks. The Hawks are now tied with the Predators for worst record in the league. Though the fact that the Preds are there is some saving grace...if the Hawks hadn't just lost to them as well.

The Luke Richardson countdown clock may have just started. Let's do some bullets and then look forward, because looking back isn't going to do much for your digestion.

• The Hawks clearly came into this one knowing that even a modicum of effort should have seen them through, because in the 1st period they were awfully fancy with the puck and trying a lot of shit in the offensive zone. It didn't go unnoticed by the coach. Perhaps the problem for them was that it worked, as they exited the first with a 2-1 lead. Which led to a pretty piss-poor effort in the 2nd as the Hawks tried to continue their Russian 5 act. If Kyle Davidson is watching intently, these will not be checkmarks in Luke Richardson's favor.
• Tyler Bertuzzi had a great first period, but one wonders if we're only going to see that kind of effort from him when it's easier. The Sharks are barely a NHL team, and any winger worth a shit should be able to win battles, find some loose pucks, and generate chances against them. Seeing as how we have only seen this in brief flashes from him on the power play, again when it's easier, it is a disturbing trend for the only player Davidson has decided to commit to aside from Vlasic.
• Where exactly what TJ Brodie going before Will Smith's first goal?

• This is why Brodie and Maroon can't be on the ice together.
• Still, luck plays a role, because Connor Bedard isn't going to hit the handle of the goalie's stick twice in a game the rest of the season. At least one would hope not. A change of a centimeter or two and the Hawks probably dance out with a 4-3 or 5-3 win in this one.
• Yesterday morning, Scott Powers at The Athletic was ruminating that Alex Vlasic might make Team USA for the Four Nations Series this winter. We probably need to pump the brakes just a touch. The Hughes brothers, Charlie McAvoy, Brock Faber, Zach Werenski, and Adam Fox are certain locks. Can Vlasic beat out John Carlson, Thomas Harley, Noah Hanifin, Jake Sanderson, and Jaccob Slavin? Seems like a tall task.
• That doesn't mean Vlasic wasn't once again the best Hawk, and probably the best player overall on the ice against the Sharks.
• Look, it's great that Phil Kurashev got 18 goals and 54 points last year, mostly playing with Connor Bedard, but this isn't a long-term solution. He just doesn't quite have the hands or finish to consistently bury the chances the vision of Teuvo and Bedard will provide, nor good enough along the wall to supply them with more looks. Perhaps it's time to bump Taylor Hall up there, if only to boost Hall's trade value come February.

Right, we've got two games to set up and no one in their right mind wants to spend too much time reading about the Sharks and Hawks.

The Hawks do the L.A. two-step over the weekend, with a matinee against the Kings on Figuerora street on Saturday and then a Sunday dinner down in the O.C. Let's boot it all up.

Los Angeles Kings Lineup

Turcotte - Kopitar - Kempe

Fiala - Danault - Moore

Foegele - Byfield - Laferriere

Jeannot - Lewis - Thomas

Anderson - Gavrikov

Edmundson - Clarke

Englund - Spence

Kuemper/Rittich

What You Need To Know: The Hawks main dance-partner of a decade ago would like to think they've come around again to a Western Conference contender, while the Hawks are still in the mailroom. Whether the Kings are actually up at that level is highly questionable. And there's probably a much longer treatise to be written on how the Kings became a playoff team again much quicker than the Hawks did after their reigns atop the West came crumbling down.

Short story: Kopitar and Doughty aged much better than Toews and Keith, the Kings accepted their era being over more quickly than the Hawks did, and thus reset faster.

Of course, the devil is in the details, as the Kings aren't exact rebuilt on the shoulders of a new generation of pillars. Kopitar is still the #1 center, the team still relies on Doughty pretty heavily, though the latter is changing. Dough Boy did his ankle in the preseason and is out for weeks more, but the Kings have still ascended to a 6-4-1 record without him and might have found replacements who can at least hold their own in his absence.

Didn't think much of their pickup of Vladislav Gavrikov two seasons ago, because no one thinks much of any acquisition from Columbus. But Gavrikov has become one of the cleanest defensemen in the league in terms of getting his team out of the defensive zone. He's top-10 in both Corsi and xG%, and leads the latter if you throw out any Carolina d-man, as they always seem to game the system.

There's also a kid on the blue line in Brandt Clarke that's turning some heads (partly by doing shit like this), and he's racked up 10 assists in 11 games. He's getting sweetheart zone-starts as a young d-man would and should, though he does have to drag around Joel Edmundson every night.

Up front, the story isn't quite as simple. Kopitar is taking the Bergeron-path of aging where his metrics are still glittering and he's still scoring a ton and everyone assumes he's the same player he always was while not noticing that his usage tilts more and more offense-only. Adrian Kempe is still his main running buddy, and he's 28 now.

That doesn't mean there aren't some kids around, as Quinton Byfield had his breakout last year and then was moved to center for this one. The idea being that Kopitar-Danault-Byfield would make the Kings perhaps the strongest team down the middle in the West. Byfield has yet to score this season and his move to the middle has had some bumps so far. There's a lot of miles to go before they'll have a verdict on this.

The Kings made a big deal in training camp about switching out of a 1-3-1 to a 1-2-2 neutral zone defensive system. The former made the Kings hard to beat the last few years but also boring as shit. The 1-2-2 is meant to get them more aggressive and hopefully open up more things for their forwards. So far the results are good, as the Kings are 7th in even-strength goals per game and 6th in xGF. They'd be one of the higher scoring teams in the league if the power play wasn't a dumpster fire, which is clearly where they're missing Doughty.

Player To Watch - Phillip Danault

If you were a scamp like me, you could make a decent enough case that the fall of the Hawks began with the trade of Danault. Or even the development of Danault. Because no organization ever navel-gazes like the Hawks, they kept telling Danault to be another Marcus Kruger, because every team needs a Kruger because the Hawks had one, donchaknow, instead of seeing all the things he could become (six 40+ point seasons since).

We can even leave that behind, because you may recall early in the '15-'16 season, then-GM Stan Bowman told the press that it was time to let some kids coming through the system fill holes on the roster instead of tossing them overboard at every trade deadline, both because it was cheaper and because it might help elongate the Hawks window. Danault was the first name he mentioned back then, who was taking up the #3 center role at the time.

Well, something happened between then and the deadline, and it was likely Joel Quenneville demanding vets be brought in and winning whatever fight that might have led to with Bowman, probably being adjudicated by McDonough. After that, there would have been no fixing the relationship between Bowman and Q and they spent their last year and a half together constantly fighting and getting the roster and its usage caught in the middle.

Danault was traded for useless deadasses Dale Weisse and Tomas Fleischmann and the Hawks spit it up at the first hurdle in the playoffs and haven't won a playoff game since. Danault went on to have an excellent career, the Hawks never produced a center as good until drafting Bedard, and here we are.

No, Danault almost certainly would not still be on the Hawks now even if he hadn't been traded. But things should have been different.

Anyway, Danault is still a possession monster, and is having an even more dominant season so far this year (64.1 xG%) as his usage isn't quite as dungeon-like as it has been in the past. It's only resulted in three assists so far, but his winger Kevin Fiala has eight points in 10 games. What could have been.

Anaheim Ducks Lineup

Fabbri - Carlsson - Terry

Vatrano - McTavish - Strome

Gauthier - Zegras - Killorn

Johnston - Lundestrom - McGinn

Fowler - Zellweger

Mintyukov - Dumoulin

LaCombe - Gudas

Dostal/Reimer

What You Need To Know: The Hawks will wrap up the season's longest trip with a visit to a team in the same bucket as they are, the one closest to the contestant on the Bozo show. The Ducks are probably a year ahead of the Hawks, in only that they have more of their kids onto the NHL roster than the Hawks. And they may be completely set down the middle, depending on what their final judgement on Trevor Zegras is (more on him in a sec).

They also might have their goalie. The Ducks have started 4-4-2, but they for sure would be in the league's basement if it wasn't for Lukáš Dostál, who is carrying a .943 save-percentage. He also leads the league in goals saved above expected, at 10.7 so far in just seven starts.

The Ducks have needed it. They give up the second-most shots per game at 34.7, and are fourth-worst in xGA per 60 as well. They are just a woeful defensive team at the moment, and Dostál is keeping their heads barely above water.

Somehow, Cam Fowler is only 32, but all the miles on the odometer are starting to show. Radko Gudas used to be an analytical darling, at least between suspensions, but he's now 34 and basically just bails water. They're excited about Olen Zellweger and Pavel Mintyukov as their young d-men, but the former is dragging Fowler around and the latter has the corpse of Brian Dumoulin attached to him.

Up front is where the interest for the Ducks really lies, with the troika of Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish, and Trevor Zegras all playing center and looking to anchor this team when it matters again. Carlsson was probably the most complete center out of the Bedard draft, as he knows what he's doing at each end instead of being superlative in either. Though there are few better in the league at carrying the puck into the offensive zone than Carlsson.

Much like the Hawks though, there really isn't a winger here to speak of outside of Cutter Gauthier. You may remember him from such episodes as, "Fuck Philadelphia," refusing to play for them and getting dealt to the Ducks last year before he'd played a NHL game. He hasn't registered a goal yet, but he's got some of the best metrics on the team and should breakthrough soon enough. Outside of him though, there are just some seat-fillers like Fabby Robri or Rabri Fobby or whatever his name is, Troy Terry, The Other Strome, and Frank Vatrano. Still, center and the blue line is where you want to be set.

Player To Watch - Trevor Zegras

Piece or hood ornament? That's the question both Zegras and the Ducks are trying to answer as he enters his fourth full season at The Pond. Zegras certainly made himself known to the whole league with his easily TikTok-able goals and game, but is it all just window dressing?

Working against Zegras's flash is that he's slotted behind two other centers in Carlsson and McTavish, and having a third center who is only a fireworks factory could seem a luxury to most teams. It depends on how the Ducks want to line up when when the games matter again. Is Carlsson going to pull Kopitar-like double duty of taking the hardest shifts and still producing like a #1 center? Is someone else going to do that, and do it from where Zegras is slotted now and forcing him to the wing or elsewhere?

To call Zegras merely a party favor isn't fair, though. He's one of the best chance-producers in the league, both in creation and receiving. Yes, he can only really do it on the rush and if defenses close that avenue off to him, he will need to be slotted with wingers who can consistently win along the wall to cycle the puck. But that wouldn't make Zegras a unicorn or anything. And having a third center who has put up two 60+ point seasons before his 24th birthday is not a bad place to be in the least.

Zegras is in the second year of a three-year extension that pays him $5.75 million. It feels like this year is kind of the make-or-break, as if the Ducks are going to move him it would have to come next summer. The amount of highlights Zegras can create might actually do him no favors, making him to be some entertainment entity instead of a real player. You know how hockey works. With more notoriety a young player gains for being flashy means more focus on what he can't do, rarely fairly.

Having a player that can do what Zegras can do isn't a luxury, it's a bonus. The Ducks would be silly to discard it simply due to hockey vibes.

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