The Cold Is Creeping Deep Inside, USMNT Win Something Out Of Leatherheads

We're wrapping up the Hawks' whathaveya in Seattle, getting you set up for Saturday night's soiree in Van City, and some thoughts about the USMNT's first "competitive" fixture with Mauricio Pochettino.

Sector 1901 - The Cold Is Creeping Deep Inside

The Hawks couldn't score-effect their way into another point or two to cover up the cracks, or outright fissures, that led to yet another soporific loss. This one was by the score of 3-1 to the Kraken, who sit above the Hawks in the "nondescript" class of the league instead of the "suck-ass."

The overriding theme of this one, and why the Hawk spent at least 45 to 50 minutes of the 60 getting their butts kicked from pillar to post, was just how passive the Hawks were. The Kraken are not an overly aggressive team, either in offense or defense. But like any NHL team, if an opponent simply rolls out a red carpet through the neutral zone and at their own blue line, there's enough wearing green and blue to take advantage.

The Hawks seemed intent on playing the cliché "good road game." But the Hawks aren't really built to just cautiously dump the puck in, be solid in the neutral zone, and wait around for a mistake while not making any of their own. It's hard to know what the Hawks are built for, to be fair. The Kraken are a team asking opponents to get in their face, attack them at both lines. There's no gifted puck-mover here other than maybe the kid Ryker Evans. Make something happen, for fuck's sake.

Instead, the Hawks opted to just get the puck deep and lie back, sometimes with their second and third forwards out near or even behind the red line, just welcoming the Kraken to gain speed through it. How were they going to create anything?

While score-effects allowed them to create some drama late in the 3rd, it also resulted from the Kraken allowing the Hawks to step up, cause some turnovers that allowed them to turn around in a hurry, which is about the only way the Hawks can create chances and score. And they don't do a lot of that. They have four regulation goals in their last four games. Pay for the DTC CHSN app today!

Anyway, let's run through some of it:

You know you're in The Bad Place when the return of a decaying Alec Martinez constitutes "big news" on the pregame stand-up. Martinez is a nice player, barely, though his rustiness was evident last night and contributed heavily to the first Kraken goal. If his return from injury can even be faked as something that will change the fortune of a team, then you're in the muck.

Speaking of that goal:

Well, at least he got within five feet of Jaren McCann before leaving a runway for Matt E. Beniers to waltz down. That's better than T.J. Brodie.

Tyler Bertuzzi is a loser. His theft of Kyle Davidson's money continued apace. This doofus had a shift in the first period where he half-heartedly tried to step up in the neutral zone on a pass, missed by a first down, causing a Seattle chance behind him. Some 30 seconds later in the offensive zone, he attempted a pass from the left corner to the right corner to Teravainen, except it was at ankle-height, 75 MPH, and about three feet wide so that it just hit the boards and bounced out of the zone. He cleared the puck for the Kraken.

Thankfully, Luke Richardson finally noticed that Bertuzzi has been a giant boil on the ass of life and demoted his useless ass to the 4th line in the third period. Only 3.75 more years to go on this contract!

Connor Bedard had one shot. Even with starting 71 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone, he still came away with sub-40 percent Corsi and xG%. I hate it here.

There's a strange narrative in the Hawks-sphere about Petr Mrazek. Yes, Mrazek has been good the past two games. But both the broadcast and the intermission crew and a fair share of the beat writers treat this as if it's been the norm or Mrazek has been some kind of rock. He's been thoroughly mediocre all season. His save-percentage is .905. He's saved one goal above expected. He's been massively outplayed by Arvid Soderblom. He wasn't even THAT good last season. His .907 was fine, somewhere around league average. He also 1.6 goals above expected. So basically he stopped everything he should have. They're pissing in our ear again.

Speaking of pissing in our ear, Darren Pang has picked up the torch from Eddie Olczyk. He's happy to serve in Hawks Pravda. He was only too eager to champion the Kraken's handling of Shane Wright, and how it's good for everyone that Wright has spent two years in the AHL. Which asks us all to ignore that Shane Wright hasn't done anything. Unless one goal in 17 games gets a breeze going between your legs, with some putrid metrics to boot. We get the message Panger, it's still horseshit.

Bertuzzi isn't the only curious vet on this outfit. At some point Kyle Davidson is going to have to answer some questions if this keeps up. Yes, Bertuzzi has sucked and that was predictable. But Tuevo Teravainen seems to be going through the motions, and on at least three occasions in the 2nd period he attempted a floated pass eight to ten feet off the surface in the neutral zone to the other side of the ice. Look, I love a good Alexander-Arnold-to-Andy-Robertson switch of play as much as the next guy, but there's a certain forum for that and it's not 200 feet of frozen water in central Seattle.

And here's T.J. Brodie getting walked like a clown by Chandler Stephenson:
https://www.nhl.com/video/chi-sea-schwartz-scores-ppg-against-petr-mrazek-6364735619112

Assistant coach Kevin Dean during his interview in the second intermission remarked how the Hawks have struggled to create speed through the neutral zone all season. Gee, if only there were a couple of in-house solutions for such a thing. Oh well!

All right, let's turn this around quickly and get everyone set up for the Canucks on Saturday, in a slightly shorter fashion than normal.

Vancouver Canucks Lineup

DeBrusk - Petterssen - Garland

Suter - Miller - Lekkerimaki

Heinen - Blueger - Sherwood

Joshua - Räty - Hoglander

Hughes - Hronek

Soucy - Myers

Brannstrom - Desharnais

Lankinen/Silovs

What You Need To Know: The Nucks are starting to get a little beat up. Brock Boeser got domed last week by Tanner Jeannot (resulting in a three-game suspension for the latter) and hasn't been back since. He's unlikely to make the post Saturday. They've been without Thatcher Demko all season, though he's practicing again. His return date is still undefined, however, just as Boeser's. That's their best scoring winger and starting goalie, so it's not the full Canucks force.

Vancouver just can't quite seem to hit top gear, either. They've had a couple decent little streaks going, but then have gotten clubbed by New Jersey, Edmonton, and the Islanders last night, all three at home. Even with those ugly losses, the Canucks are a solid third in the Pacific, and their metrics are all top-10. Their goaltending at even-strength has been pretty shoddy, which is the only blip so far. Kevin Lankinen has thrown in some stinkers of late after a hot start. Arturs Silovs can't be trusted to make it from the dressing room to the bench without setting his face on fire. This team needs Demko back desperately.

For a team with more than a modicum of offensive skill, the Canucks aren't very flashy. I may still be in denial that coach Rick Tocchet can be anything other than a raging moron after watching his Arizona teams and his catatonic presence on TNT, but this is a lockdown outfit more than a fireworks-filled one. Which has certainly helped to mitigate the iffy goaltending, especially of late. The Nucks are middle of the pack when it comes to scoring and chances, but one of the best defensive teams around. Vancouver just allows nothing in their own zone that isn't along the boards, even if they'll let teams into their zone with only a passing challenge. It's hard to defend and frustrate all the way through the playoffs, as the Canucks learned last spring. But as far as this November regular season game goes, the Hawks are up against it.

It's a homecoming for Connor Bedard. Won't the nation of Canada be so thrilled to see him and the Hawks on Hockey Night? Better than the Bears poisoning the national airwaves the next day, I s'pose.

The Kickmen - The USMNT Come Through The Mud

With now less than two years and only a handful of international windows remaining until the home-based World Cup for the US, every game takes on an outsized meaning. We all want not just to see what Mauricio Pochettino has planned for this team, but how it's going to evolve. The steps we want from game to game would be impossible for any manager and/or team to accomplish, given the nature of international soccer and the lack of verve from most of the games. Even the CONCACAF Nations League, though advertised as competitive, isn't really going to get the vibes and juice going full pelt for anyone.

Give Poch this, he picks up on the assignment pretty quickly. Even though he's never been on a CONCACAF qualifying campaign, or probably even watched a match from it before taking this job, he obviously knew that trying to do anything all that pretty or constructive over a cow patch in Kingston, Jamaica was going to be impossible. This was one of those trench-warfare soccer games that USMNT fans know so well from previous World Cup qualifiers, and they're usually a balls-up while being utter torture to watch.

It may have still been torture, but it wasn't a balls-up. We'll settle for it. The US did put some nice passages together in the first 10-15 minutes, as Christian Pulisic was dancing everywhere between Jamaica's midfield and defense and creating havoc. The Reggae Boyz couldn't find him at all. It's how he set up the first goal too, with some nice interchange from the overpacked midfield of the US behind him.

But once the turf cut up and started to look like what I used to play on in Winnemac Park for pickup games, it really wasn't about creating anymore. Poch's idea to just keep the midfield barb-wired and mined was a solid one, and Jamaica basically just launched long balls in the hopes of getting a weird bounce or set-pieces (which they did). Jonny Cardoso's injury didn't help, as his replacement Malik Tillman isn't really equipped to be one of the two deeper midfielders in the box that Poch wanted to set up, with Pulisic and McKennie the higher duo. It left Tanner Tessman kind of on his own a lot.

But the Yanks weathered basically a minor storm, sapped the heat out of everything for the last 25 minutes, got a win, and got the hell out of there. That's a skill too.