Olympic Break Mic Check 1-2
With everyone, save Teuvo, taking a breath, it's as good of a time as any to see where the Hawks are.
57 games isn't really a benchmark. It's 70 percent of the season. But when the league and Olympics throw a big ol' break at this juncture, it's a good time to take stock. How much better off are the Hawks than they were last season? Are they? Do they need to be, considering what they're trying to do? All viable questions. Being the brave soul that I am, I'll try to answer them.
For this exercise, I think it's best to throw OT and shootout results out the window. They're too volatile, they aren't really predictive of anything, and quite frankly they're fucking up this season's standings way too much. It's too principled of a stand, clearly, but it's how I do things. So anything that went beyond 60 minutes, this season and last, we'll just chuck into the "tie" category.
2025-2026: 17-26-14 (looks pretty ugly that way, don't it?)
2024-2025: 15-33-9
So it is better, in that sense. They might only have two more regulation wins, but they've at least been able to drag five more games into the carnival game. On a purely 60-minute record, they have a 42 percent points-percentage this time around. Whereas last season, it was 34. That's a step forward, but it also feels light years away from anything.
But is it? If Utah are a reasonable target or goal, a team the Hawks should be emulate relatively soon, their record is 23-23-11. The Ducks are 18-23-15. San Jose, the great monster under the bed as far as the Reddit crew is concerned, is 16-24-15. In that sense, perhaps the Hawks aren't as far off as they feel, depending how far down the road you think any of these teams are. What we can conclude is that hockey and the NHL are extremely weird, even more weird this season thanks to the compressed schedule, and trying to figure out what's really going on requires some sort of skeleton key that is buried under the ice in the Arctic.
If you've been around here or followed me for any length of time, you know that I'm a process guy, not a results guy. Especially as the Hawks results don't matter, but their process does. What's under the hood here?
'25-'26: 50.5 CF/60, 59.0 CA/60, 46.1 CF%, 2.2 xGF/60, 2.8 xGA/60, 43.8 xG%
'24-'25: 47.8 CF/60, 62.0 CA/60. 43.5 CF%, 2.0 xGF/60, 2.7 xGA/60, 42.6 xG%
More sobering. While the Hawks have been able to decrease the amount of attempts they give up, and increase the amount of attempts they generate, they are less dangerous. On expected goals, this is a worse offense than last season, even with Connor Bedard providing top tier offense far more this season than he did last. The defense is essentially the same.
Reading that, whatever improvement the Hawks have record-wise is almost entirely due to the brilliance of Bedard and Spencer Knight in net. That's not to dismiss it. Those are very important things! A true #1 center, which Bedard hasn't quite proven he is long-term but is at least trending the right way, and a bonafide #1 goalie are maybe the hardest things to find. The Hawks might have both. That's a thing!
For the rest though, we have to actually dig under the process a bit. Because these aren't the same rosters putting up these numbers. So, last season's top-ten forwards, in terms of ice-time at 5-on-5:
Bedard
Donato
Taylor Hall
Mikheyev
Bertuzzi
Nazar
Teravainen
Foligno
Dickinson
Kurashev
This season:
Bedard
Bertuzzi
Mikheyev
Burakovsky
Nazar
Dickinson
Donato
Greene
Teravainen
Moore
Basically, Moore and Greene have replaced Kurashev and Foligno at the bottom of the lineup. That should be an upgrade, and yet the numbers show that it isn't. Burakovsky has replaced Hall, which is something of a downgrade, no matter how he looked at the beginning of the season. Everyone else is just about the same.
It's not great that two kids, Moore and Greene, have stepped in this season, and have not been able to boost this beyond what a couple of plugs were doing last season. They are in their first seasons, there's plenty of road to travel. You'd just...like a bit more.
Let's shift to the defense.
Last season's defense by 5-on-5 minutes:
Vlasic
Jones
Levshunov
Murphy
Martinez
Kaiser
Brodie
This season's:
Vlasic
Kaiser
Grzelcyk
Levshunov
Crevier
Rinzel
Murphy
Look, having Levshunov or Kaiser taking up Seth Jones's minutes is always going to be a downshift, no matter how much Hawks fans hate Jones. He's far beyond anything the Hawks have this year, aside from Vlasic. Grzelcyk has taken over from Martinez, which is at worst a push and probably an upgrade. Crevier and Rinzel over Brodie is quite obviously an upgrade.
Yet, the Hawks are putting up the same, or worse, numbers. They've got a full season of Nazar, a nearly fully-operational Bedard, and they don't get the same chances as the more plug-heavy lineup did last season. They have a far more mobile defense, while admittedly far more inexperienced, and aren't really using it on the offensive end. On the flip side, the fact that the defensive numbers are better without Jones and so many neophytes is somewhat encouraging.
This is where I get discouraged, though:
As you can see, these numbers have cratered the past month. Maybe it's just fatigue, as a condensed schedule for players who have either never, or barely, gotten through one normal regular season before could be an explanation. Certainly, the more conservative ways that Blashill has leaned into as the season has gone along has played a role. The Hawks have just created less and less. That's not good, especially for a team that should feel it has nothing to lose.
Not all of this can be done through numbers. Levshunov having to be sent out to the stairwell in the hall to keep from disrupting the rest of the class is a problem. Nazar having one goal in 30 games is a problem, as is his utter helplessness in his own zone. The fact that the Hawks top three forwards in the coming years--Bedard, Nazar, and Frondell--all being shoot-first and wondering how they might all fit together, is a problem. Do we have to worry about Blashill leaning on punters like Grzelcyk in the coming years, too?
Overall, the Hawks have taken a tiny step forward this season. It's hard to see where leap is going to come from, though. It's certainly a unique season, given the Olympics and how that skews everything. You can probably see whatever you want in it, if you're so inclined. The issue is that there just isn't enough to see.