Unnecessary Panic, Darker Than A Black Steer's Tuchus On A Moonless Prairie Night

Kicking off the week by trying to be reasonable about the Hawks' loss on Saturday night, and doing the exact opposite about The Blue And Orange.

Sector 1901 - Unnecessary Panic

I'm not going to sit here and try to somehow argue that scoring five goals in the last five games can be washed away. At least they've efficiently spread them out one per? Wait, I just said I wasn't going to do that.

Nor would I try to argue that the Hawks carrying the wooden spoon of the entire league, again, is something that one can simply wave a hand at. It was supposed to be better than this. It was supposed to be more enjoyable. There are worrying signs. The coach is clearly panicking about keeping a job that he really shouldn't be in danger of losing. Assuming the priorities throughout the organization are straight, which is an awfully big assumption. And any chance the GM has taken in roster building has bitten all of us in the ass.

The thing is though, the loss in Vancouver on Saturday night was the kind of loss that the fans and team should...well, maybe not accept, because no one ever "accepts" losing. But it is how you'd want the team to look, as far as development goes and the identity and style that Luke Richardson is trying to install.

The Hawks were much tighter against the Canucks than they had been in recent games. They were aggressive, and they harried the Canucks all over the ice. Their d-men in their 1-2-2 were above the red line on a lot of occasions when the Canucks were trying to break through. Their second and third forwards struck quickly. In the defensive zone, Richardson's system of letting the center freelance a bit and pressure a puck-carrier outside of expected areas kept the Canucks at bay for the large swaths of the game.

The numbers bare that out. Sure, the 2nd period was a little ugly, but this team isn't equipped to play a full 60 anyway. No, the Canucks aren't all that good, but they're a few steps ahead of the Hawks. And I know the Hawks go out of their way to separate themselves from "moral victories" that no one else is mentioning.

For a rebuilding team, fans should want to see the structure that will carry through every step of the process and still be on display one day in the future when the Hawks are playing in May and maybe even June. That was on much more visible on Saturday. It's not a lot but it's something.

Oh yeah, the Hawks can't score, but there's a simple reason why. They have too many shitty players. But we're told that will change over time.

Anyway, we can fill in the rest:

That doesn't mean Luke Richards isn't getting everything right or doesn't appear to be a drowning man. We've seen this movie in several places. It's easy to tell when a coach is desperate. And scratching Taylor Hall is desperate.

One could argue that the Hawks did respond with a better effort, if Hall's depositing in the pressbox was meant as an attention-getter. But there are better ways to do that. If it was meant as punishment, we could list five forwards who deserve to be sat down ahead of Hall (and three of them rhyme with "Bertuzzi').

A coach with pedigree on a winning team can get away with scrambling his lines and pairings every so often. He has earned the right to juggle to try and find a spark. There's trust there. When a coach like Richardson does it, as handicapped as he's been, it looks like fishing or a lack of ideas. It's clearly not instilling any confidence in his team.

What it is is results chasing. Yes, the Hawks did state they wanted to win more games this year. But it shouldn't be the pivot point of the season over development. What, honestly, is the difference between 75 or 65 points in the long run?

And it's not helping Connor Bedard. When looking at the stat sheets, it's clear that Bedard has been at his best when he's been paired with Teuvo Teravainen and some kind of grinder on the left side. The counting stats aren't there obviously. But the metric ones are. That's why Teuvo was brought here. It's why Hall was brought here. And Richardson has sprinted away from it to put Bedard with plugs like Ryan Donato and Phil Kurashev.

Donato may be the kind of puck-winner Bedard requires on one wing, but he still has a terminal case of being Ryan Donato. The Hawks have to come to Jesus about what Kurashev is and isn't. The 54 points last year are almost certainly something of a fluke/someone had to score phenomena. He is not a puck-winner. He is not a high-level playmaker. It makes the line awfully small. And it's not working.

Bedard isn't getting the puck in good areas. No one's clearing space for him to carry the puck there himself. No one's winning the puck enough to get him another chance to do either.

The top of the job description for any coach is to put his players in the best position to succeed. Richardson is failing that test at the moment, and it's pretty obvious he knows it. Thus the floundering and flapping. We can't know what the expectations that were laid down from Kyle Davidson to Richardson. This should have never been a season about results. It feels like Richardson has been told that it is, at least partly.

All right, maybe some good things. This is the kind of stuff I'm watching for, and they're just two examples of where we want to see Hawks d-men positioned:

Ok, granted, both of these involve Wyatt Kaiser, who had an excellent game, but he wasn't alone. The Seth Jones injury certainly doesn't help, but if there's one spot on this team that has some depth it's the blue line. Anyway, Richardson has said repeatedly he wants to play high-pressure, aggressive hockey, and this is it. Don't let a team gain speed through the neutral zone, speed up their clock, cause turnovers and bad dump-ins. The Hawks did this a lot on Saturday, far more than they did against the far lower octane Kraken.

The centers were more aggressive, too. Another staple, I'm assuming, that Richardson would like to instill in the defensive zone is the center, or lowest forward, springing on opponents along the boards instead of just patrolling the middle of the ice.

I got on Bedard's case about him trying to pressure Kirill Kaprizov against the Wild for this, but it's clearly something they've put in the hands of the centers. But there's a difference between trying to blitz a forward with his back turned and one who can see everything from a not-dangerous position at the point. Both Foligno and Bedard did create turnovers in these spots that allowed the Hawks to spring out of the zone, which is how Richardson wants them to play. This was apparent all night for the Hawks.

Ok, but what about the goals, Mrs. Lincoln? Yeah, sure, none of this really matters if the Hawks can't score. With this roster though, even when they're causing turnovers or getting the puck quickly and springing on an opponent before they can set up, who do you trust to bury open chances? There's one high-level sniper on this team and he's low on confidence right now. They might have two above-average playmakers, and they just healthy scratched one of them.

Frank Nazar has 13 points in 12 games in the AHL Mentioning this for no reason at all.

If you'd like to get back to worrying, the players that Kyle Davidson has "invested" appear to all be snake eyes at this point. Tyler Bertuzzi and Teravainen are supposed to be part of this team when the corner is turned. Bertuzzi is a complete waste of time and Richardson has appeared to sour on Teravainen. Hall was a scratch. Mikheyev has been a scratch lately as well. All make above $4 million and are the highest paid forwards on the team. This probably won't help Davidson rise above his current "chickenshit" level when it comes to make a real splash. You can hear my Nikolaj Ehlers dreams dying on the vine.

Just ride PP1. Especially with Seth Jones out, Richardson will be well advised to just let his first power play unit take 90 seconds or the full two minutes on any advantage. More teams are doing this now. And does anyone want to see Craig Smith and Pat Maroon on the power play? Ok then.

All right, that's enough of that.

Sons of Lemuel - Darker Than A Black Steer's Tuchus On A Moonless Prairie Night

I'm not a fatalist. I couldn't be, after how long I was a Cubs fan and eventually saw that pay off. There has to be a flicker somewhere, deep down, in the darkest recesses, where a fan believes that it will all come together one day. There has to be more than ritual to fandom.

Unless you're a Bears fan.

The feeling I carried from 2:58pm yesterday through the rest of the afternoon and night was the same as Bart when he spends a whole snow day studying and still fails the test anyway. Except there will be no extra credit for a demonstration of applied knowledge to save the day.

"This as good as I can do and I still failed."

It's never going to measure up to Green Bay. They can't do it. They won't ever do it. Even as close as they came, they still took moronic penalties, left points on the field, had cowardly coaching decisions, and no amount of Caleb Williams finding the magic we know he's capable of could overcome it. They still ended up on their ass like Charlie Brown, with Lucy glowering over them, if I can mix my cartoon metaphors. They always will.

Sure, they'll probably fire Eberflus after the season. But whatever yutz is in charge, be it Ryan Poles or Kevin Warren, will just hire another yutz. We do this every three or four years, and it just keeps repeating. Flus may have his special brand of idiocy and fuckups, but they all are still in the same file of the other idiocy and fuckups the cavalcade of nimrods have manned the headset.

The Packers don't even have to do anything well, and they'll still walk out of town with the win. They can start whatever clown they want at quarterback, and it's not clear that Jordan Love is that far above a clown whatever his paycheck says, and it doesn't matter. They can always step back just far enough to let the Bears faceplant without even getting any dust on them.

The Bears best player will fall down at a crucial moment. Their coach will lose his nerve after somehow keeping it for 59 minutes. Their QB, in the midst of a very good game, will throw a ball to the back pylon instead of the front one on a two-point conversion. They'll find a way.

Every time, they'll do just enough to lose. It hasn't changed in 30 years, aside from the occasional blip here and there. It doesn't matter. This is the way he wants it.

Please share and forward and re-post on Bluesky and all that good stuff. The water's warm.