Trending Toward Not A Moron

It was a good weekend for Jeff Blashill.

Jeff Blashill and his charges might look at losing out on the fourth point of the weekend, the shootout loss to the Canucks, as well as giving up a last-minute goal to the Ducks, and think it could have been better. Perhaps it could have been, but whether or not it could have isn't really important. I wasn't thrilled by his appointment, given that no one else was after him, the kind of desperate way both he and the Hawks ended up with each other, and his Wings tenure. But so far, things we've seen from Jeff Blashill are quite encouraging.

First and foremost from Friday and Saturday, it was obvious before the weekend that Sam Rinzel was drowning with top-pairing assignments. He's just not very good in his own zone yet, especially under heavy pressure. Which is fine! He's played 15 professional games! One suspects that Rinzel on the top pairing was something kind of forced on Blashill by the front office, given the propaganda campaign the Hawks have waged about him all summer.

So Blashill didn't wait around to adjust. In just the sixth game, on Friday against Vancouver, Blashill took Rinzel out of the firing line. With his seven D look, Blashill can mix and match a bit given the situation, and Rinzel started every one of his shifts in the offensive zone. He started 75 percent of them in the offensive zone against Anaheim. He's responded with perhaps his two best games of the season, running 88 and 59 percent expected goal shares and getting to do more in the offensive zone, which is the strength of his game. The Hawks put up 1.44 and 1.39 xG when he was on the ice in the past two games, his highest marks of the season.

Secondly, last night, the Hawks really struggled in the 2nd period, some in the 1st. They were pinned in their own zone for long stretches, and the 38 Corsi share and 24 xG% in the middle frame attest to that. In the 3rd, Blashill clearly told his d-men to break the puck out through the middle:

One can easily imagine Anders Sorensen continuing to jam Rinzel out in his own zone until it worked or until he broke. One can easily see Luke Richardson just asking the Hawks to be safe in the 3rd period of a 0-0 game to jam out a point. Well, Blashill tried something, got that one point anyway, and it only took some bad luck (delay of game penalty, a laser from McTavish) to deny him a regulation win.

We like all of this.

What else?

-It's only one game, but if Blashill has finally gotten the message through to Connor Bedard that he needs to fire whenever he can and sometimes whenever he can't, then we're really cooking with gas. Ok, nine shots is Kobe-brained, and isn't something he'll need to get to every game. But it's far more than two or three per game we had been seeing. It's a career-high. Yes, it only resulted in uncomfortable saves instead of goals, and our fear has always been that it will only ever lead to uncomfortable saves. Only one way to find out!

Of course, when he's firing that much, he's obviously feeling pretty spritely out there. Which one springs from the other, it's hard to tell. But it does lead to passes like this:

That's an absolute hand grenade Bertuzzi give Bedard at the line, and any mishandle there is an odd-man rush the other way. Bedard not only corrals it, but then is able to get a blind, backhand pass to Burakovsky for a chance. This is the good stuff, people. Absolute retrograde. What that intern you hate at work is doing in the bathroom on Friday nights at clubs you don't even know exist.

-Of course, despite Bedard's best efforts (and they were his best efforts), it was Frank Nazar who actually scored. He did so with a ridiculous play at the line as well:

Bedard all over the offensive zone. Nazar scratching out a 3rd period goal through skill and determination. There's a blueprint in there.

-On the flip side, Artyom Levshunov was pretty iffy all night. He took a penalty in the first that smacked of hesitancy. Bad gap at the line in the middle of the ice, with not only Kaiser back to support him but a winger to his side, backed up anyway, Terry undresses him as he is flat-footed, and then whirling around blindly to swing a stick at him that results in a slash. These nights happen, but definite character builder.

-A word on the Q coverage. I thought we were going to get through the night with just small mentions of his status as Ducks head coach and a brief graphic of his games coached and wins records. Not great, but fine. Basically just treating him as an opposing coach. Maybe point out what he's trying to install with the Ducks, which Pang did in the 1st about their change from man coverage to zone.

But CHSN couldn't resist, and there was a video package about his three Cups with the Hawks. If a national broadcast did this, it wouldn't be good, but you'd understand why it was so glossy.

However, CHSN is the official bullhorn of the Hawks. It is run by the Hawks, and it was the Hawks who eschewed, at least at first, everyone out who had anything to do with 2010. By highlighting Quenneville is coach, CHSN invites why those wins are tarnished in some minds. Because of what the Hawks hierarchy did, and where CHSN springs from. ESPN and TNT can whitewash what happened. The Hawks themselves cannot.

Again, Quenneville is his own case. He is clearly highlighted in the report as a main driver, along with John McDonough, of what would come next. By showing him with the Cup in Chicago, it's an attempt to paint all that as if it didn't happen. Danny Wirtz made it clear, not so long ago, that wouldn't happen. His dad, embarrassingly, went out of his way to try and erase what happened. Danny tried to set himself apart separately, to address what the Hawks were changing to make sure it never happened again. And then his TV station, the one he controls, went on to pretend nothing happened. It's unacceptable, especially when the route of just doing nothing was available and would have been grudgingly acceptable.

Work harder, Danny.