Save Korch

Sector 1901 - Save Korch

This is the section where we'll talk about the Hawks.

I know I said in the leadoff to this funky little experiment that I wasn't here to shit on the Hawks. I wasn't here to provide some sort of yang to the vibey-yin elsewhere. It's mostly trying to control my own blood pressure, but also that isn't all that much fun. Maybe this is a way for me to lengthen the runway to something that will have my blood boiling come the second week of October.

Kevin Korchinski shouldn't spend a minute in Rockford, even though you and I both know he will do so.

The perception that Korch needs more "seasoning" is built on faulty data. The biggest piece being that Korch spent his rookie season playing with a collection of assholes and fuck-ups that would rival the extras on HBO's Oz. Korch's most frequent partner was Jaycob Megna, who A. couldn't even spell his fucking name correctly, and B. rarely if ever had played hockey before.

Korch also got 250+ minutes with Connor Murphy, who could barely move before going on the shelf for the season. There was also 215 minutes with Nikita Zaitsev, who apparently had leprosy scabs given how his own teams have felt about playing him.

And worse yet, at least in the case of Megna and Zaitsev, is that neither of these players were satisfied doing the things to let Korch shine, i.e. be his free safety allowing him to join the play up the ice. Far too often we saw Korch doing that for these two no-hopers and go-nowheres. Unless that's where the Hawks think Korch's future lies, in which case burn the whole thing down.

While Korch only got 89 minutes with Seth Jones, the 52 percent attempts-share they generated together is light years ahead of the 46 percent mark Alex Vlasic and Amy's Eldest produced. But let's get more into the weeds on this.

Even playing with two rejected muppets, Korch was the best on the team in controlled exits out of the zone (thanks to Corey Sznajder's AllThreeZones for all these):

Korch and Megna, somehow, were also best on the team in standing up at the blue line, which we're led to believe will be a tenet of how Luke Richardson would want his d-men to play when all this matters again:

And Korch was far better than Isaak Phillips on zone entries, even though Phillips has apparently located some sort of magic gas to dupe all of the front office, coaches, and local media into thinking he can do anything other than maintain his oxygen level to barely conscious-levels:

The other problem with Davidson's plan to let Korch marinate in Beef-a-Roo in Rockford is that it is impossible to disprove. If Korch goes down there, kicks everyone's ass into orbit, and then comes back a better player, it obviously was the right call, even if Korch would have shown improvement with the top club from the outset as well. If he struggles with the AHL's heavy dump-and-chase ways as well as the Piggies' tendency to be utterly mediocre no matter how much hype they generate to distract Hawks fans, well, that's just how it goes for a young d-man, isn't it?

Secondly, the plan of having Korch and Levshunov pair together in the A to come up together is patently ridiculous and it's barely worth discussing. No one has ever done this for two players they project to be their top pairing one day. Get the fuck outta here with that.

Alec Martinez would seem to be the perfect signing to partner Korch. Given Martinez's age, he's not shotgunning up the ice much anymore, but is still more than mobile enough to cover space behind a cowboy like Korch. What's the point of having Martinez here to parter T.J. Fucking Brodie?

This is the #7 pick who has already proven he's an NHL player. All of this just screams doing something to do it and to make Davidson look like some expert developer of talent. It's horseshit.

Around Town - It's Everything You Think On The Southside

More boring title for this section than "The 606," but also more sensible. Working on it.

You know when Britt Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal show up, things aren't going well.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5773947/2024/09/19/white-sox-failure-worst-season-history/

The article doesn't really give anyone who's lived in Chicago for more than five minutes all that much new information, but it certainly provides more depth on what we already knew. The owner is decrepit and stuck in 1982 or worse. The only person on Earth more decrepit is his consigliere and has his drunken paws in every aspect of the team. Would any other organization let this corpse hang around the batting cage? And not only is that myopia turning the team into a farce, but it's combined with frugalness bordering on Scrooge-ness that can't possibly allow anyone to succeed.

I haven't lived anywhere else for all that long, so it's hard to know if this kind of myopia is common amongst teams that don't go anywhere. But here in Chicago, we have at least the Sox, Hawks, and maybe to a lesser extent the Cubs that can't see beyond their own walls for answers. The Bulls are hamstrung by apathy at the top, and the Bears are simply owned by warm chocolate milk drinkers, to quote one of my favorite orators of our time.

In a normal world, the anecdote about the Sox airplane being a grade or six below what other MLB teams are using would at the very least shame someone into providing the proper plane next season. But public shaming has always seemed to cause Reinsdorf to dig his heels in even more. That's how they ended up with La Russa as it is.

If Reinsdorf does in fact think he knows everything, the problem aside from him knowing nothing about modern baseball is that he also can't make up his mind. It wasn't all that long ago that the Sox refused to go through an actual rebuild. Then Reinsdorf allowed Rick Hahn to do so, but short-circuited that with the hiring of La Russa while also not augmenting it with any signing or trade for a genuine star to push it through the firewall. And now there's this, with no plan whatsoever.

Worse yet, there's no escape. At least Cubs fans have some evidence that the Ricketts family will go outside for help when they feel they need it, if that ever comes around again. White Sox fans are hostages, and worse yet the only recourse they have–not showing up to the park or supporting the team financially--is only used as evidence against them to pony up for a new park the team doesn't need and no one wants to pay for.

I've spent a good portion of my life laughing or mocking Sox fans, when I was of the other parish. They deserve better than pity, empathy is hard to comprehend given the heinous nature of Reinsdorf's crimes, but it sucks for all, because being a two-team town in the summer is supposed to be a special experience. For a while now it's just been double the ennui.

Anyway, have a good weekend everyone. Back Monday.