Let's Pull This Rig Over To The Soft Shoulder

The Hawks hit their first real ditch of the season.

I've always thought that when the Bears are good, there's a vibe in the city that spreads to all sections. There is nothing that unites Chicagoans like the Bears, and that probably applies to more than sports. Sometimes, those vibes and juice can spread to the other teams in town. Remember just a few weeks ago when people were kind of bouncy about the Bulls? You can see what I mean.

I'm really not here to pick on The Athletic's Mark Lazerus. The thought behind this kind of headline is genuine and correct. The Hawks are something of a surprise team so far this season. Connor Bedard is a genuine superstar. There are better vibes around the Hawks than there have been in a long time. Those are all genuine takes. Asking the GM if he wants to touchdown dance after barely a quarter of the season is gone is certainly tongue-in-cheek. At least I hope it is. But it does speak to some unreasonable inflation of Hawks opinions at the moment.

So after the Hawks got seven different kinds of shit kicked out of them on consecutive nights, perhaps it's a good time to really assess what's going on here, where the Hawks really are.

The Hawks have definitely benefitted from everything below the Avs and Stars in the West condensing, mostly due to the tightened schedule leaving teams tired, beat up, and unable to take a breath to change things. Sure, the Hawks are only one point out of the wildcards. They're also only two points from 13th in the conference. It's all a muddle.

But it would be unfair to simply attribute the Hawks higher place in the standings than most would have guessed simply to outside factors and a glut of overtime games elsewhere. They are getting some of the best goaltending in the league, and there's no way to know if Spencer Knight will be a consistent Vezina candidate without the benefit of time. He could be! He also might not be.

At the other end, they are absolutely being carried by Bedard, who is dragging a still porous forward group to competence by himself. Bedard has always been billed as a future, perennial MVP candidate, so it's easier to say that this is what the Hawks will get from him for the next 10 years than it is to say for Knight.

Everything in between those two poles is a question. This is still a team that has two regulation wins in the last 10 games. They're 7-7-4 over the last five weeks. Even though .500 in the NHL is actually pretty bad, it's an improvement for the Hawks from where they've been. But it's also an illustration of just how far they have to go.

As far as the roster, between Knight and Bedard, really nothing is for sure. Sam Rinzel nearly became the first NHL player to leave a game early with the bends last night. Artyom Levshunov flashes a lot, but he flashes on both ends of the spectrum. The smart money is still very much on him being a very special player, and soon, but it's no sure thing yet. He could still end up jolly Russian Torey Krug. Wyatt Kaiser has had some serious hiccups since I called him the Hawks best defenseman this season, so I'll own that one. Does anyone really know what Alex Vlasic is yet? He was terrible last night, but so was the whole team. He hasn't really shown to be a top-level defensive stopper, at least not in the last two seasons. He's not a puck-mover. All of that's fine, it's not like he's being paid to be. But if he isn't, that's a spot the Hawks would have to solve, and solve from the outside the organization. That's not something Kyle Davidson, pre-touchdown dance, has proven he can do.

Up front, Ryan Greene and Oliver Moore have sometimes flashed being useful bottom six forwards one day. Great. Those are the questions that are supposed to be answered at a later date, after the big questions in the top six have been solved. The prospect-heads can lose their mud on Reddit about a Vanacker here or a Kantserov there or Clearisil (Nestrasil) everywhere, but the guys who are already here that we can't make hide nor hair of also had gaudy numbers in college (well, Moore didn't, and thus the bottom-six projection). Again, Frank Nazar is still likely to be a big part of things going forward. But he's been bad for more of the season than he's been good. It's easy to run for the comfort of saying it's all a learning curve and development, and it probably is. But do we know that for sure? The Hawks have no choice but to ride it out. The only scary part is that he's the only one that Davidson fully committed to, contract-wise, so there actually is a clock on him when he'd better start to look like it. It might be 2028, but it's at least there.

The Hawks are where they are because Knight has been amazing, and they've shot the lights out both at 5-on-5 and on the power play. The 5-on-5 SH% is now flattening out, and we can all see the results. Other than that, the Hawks don't really do anything well. They give up a ton of attempts, but don't generate a ton, and are getting worse. They don't get a lot of chances, but they're giving up more and more (they're now 29th in xGA/60). Some of it can be attributed to the makeup of the roster as far as experience. But not all of it.

So this is Jeff Blashill's first test. He got the cover of some inflated PDO, which gave him time and flexibility to have his message get across to the players. But now they've gotten completely stuffed on back-to-back nights. That can't go on too much longer before players start to get a little dizzy. There's time, but never as much as anyone wants.

What was so frustrating about Sunday's loss against the Ducks is the way they attacked the Hawks should be exactly what the Hawks want. Given the mobility and skill the Hawks have on the blue line, they should want teams to come at them hellbent for leather on the forecheck. Because they're supposed to have the wheels and hands to get away from it, to pass through it, to get behind it and frolic in the tons of open ice behind that aggressive forecheck.

Instead, the Hawks were stationary, hesitant, and seemed surprised? Did they not think they would have the Ducks' full attention after last Sunday? Why weren't they spitting blood after giving up a touchdown to the Kings? They kind of looked like a team that just wanted to go home. Which isn't really acceptable for a team that has accomplished exactly nothing and a good portion of them don't even have their NHL futures fully locked up. Blashill still had them trying to do piecemeal breakouts under a forest fire.

The other prong that is frustrating is that it really would be nice to see the Hawks play that way. The Ducks have more riding on this season than the Hawks do, given how weak the Pacific has come up and being a year or more ahead of the Hawks on their arc. And Quenneville has them basically playing ya-ha time. When there's a problem, his solution has just been to turn up the volume more, be faster, more attack-minded. They certainly have more speed and skill than the Hawks, but the Hawks have a whole lot less to lose. They haven't been as conservative in that 1-1-3 as they were earlier in the year, but there's still so much more gas to hit.

Now we'll find out if Blashill can recover anything. It's not that the Hawks season is on the precipice, but it's also not impossible that it spirals out from here. Perhaps it's time to bin the 7-D look, and give Rinzel a breather in Rockford (take Crevier with him). Give each pairing a defined role for a while instead of having to mix and match partners and zone starts. Get Lardis up here so we can see if he can be any of the finish that the Hawks have so little of right now. Not for wins, but for development. It also might not hurt to toss a couple starts at Drew Commesso.

Look, it's been fun this season, if only for Bedard and Knight. And those are the two most important pieces! That's a really good start for any team try to escape the woods of non-competitiveness. But thinking anything else is solved right now is fantasy. It might be by April. But it isn't April, and everything else is a question right now. That's where the Hawks are.

So I told you so.