What Does Progress Mean To The Hawks This Year, The Bears Slow Ride, and Spuds

We've got our final Hawks rumination before they skate in anger, being relaxed about the Bears for at least a few days, and some Premier League thoughts to kick off the week.

Sector 1901 - What Does Progress Mean To The Hawks This Year

As we sit on the eve of the new season, let's cycle back to last April, when Hawks GM Kyle Davidson said it was time to move on from "competing" for the #1 pick in the draft and that the Hawks had to stake a step forward in 2024-2025 season. Let's try and figure out what that meant to Davidson and what it should mean.

The overall message is certainly what fans want to hear. It's what we all want to hear. We've watched some really garbage hockey for a while now, and we'd like to see there's a possibility that will change before we're dead. It's also how an organization is supposed to work. Bottom out, then ramp up, then your contention window. The Hawks have the bottom out part down pat, that time should have passed.

Certainly the Hawks needed to upgrade the roster. The Hawks had 12 players play more than 60 games last year. Only six of which were genuine, above-replacement level NHLers you'd say, and I'm giving Nick Foligno a healthy slice of benefit of the doubt on that one. Certainly, Davidson couldn't count on Connor Murphy and Taylor Hall simply remaining healthy for the roster to improve. As a close friend likes to say, you might as well text Narnia.

But the chase for more points, simply for the sake of chasing more points, doesn't really move the Hawks down the road all that much. The signings of Teuvo Teravainen and, even though I think he's one of the league's premier dummards, Tyler Bertuzzi does forward the team. These are genuine, top-nine forwards in the NHL The Hawks didn't have enough of those.

But is Craig Smith? He's been a fourth-liner the past three seasons at least, albeit on some pretty good teams in Boston and Dallas, but he's had 20 points the last two seasons each. He's 35. Isn't this just another word for Ryan Donato? Joey Anderson? Pat Maroon is all this multiplied by two. The latter spent all of last season getting utterly clocked when he was on the ice. Is there that much difference between him and McKenzie Entwhistle other than name recognition and beard quality?

Same goes for the blue line. Alec Martinez can probably still carve out a role doing...something, but he also spent last year trying to accessorize the tire tracks left over his face every night. His relative-Corsi and xG-percentage were -5.10 and -6.97 for the Knights last season. That's pretty woeful, and the Knights weren't a great possession team last year either.

TJ Brodie is even worse. There is no analytic department, even the double secret one the Hawks have that you can't see, that would recommend signing TJ Brodie for any other reason than to just say you did. Is he better than Jarred Tinordi or Smegma or some of the waste water runoff the Hawks trotted out there? Probably, but only on the margins.

Again, Hall and Murphy are back, and that should lift the floor here along with Teravainen and Bertuzzi. But let's say the Hawks do leap from 52 points last year to around 70 (and that's a big leap!) but with no other kid other than Bedard playing significant minutes. What does that mean? Now Nazar and Korchinski, after all that precious development time in Rockford, have to jump into a team that's supposed to at least wave at a playoff spot next season? That's an even bigger leap than the one the Hawks say they can't make now. What really will have been accomplished?

Let's put that to the side for a second. Let's get to process instead of results. Luke Richardson has been pretty open about how he'd like the Hawks to play when they have all the tools to do so. He wants them to get up the ice quickly, he wants the defense to either get the puck up to the forwards ASAP and or skate it themselves. He wants an aggressive forecheck. He wants the D to push up the ice without the puck so they can meet the oncoming rush somewhere between the red line and the Hawks blue line to deny entries into their zone. He wants to turn the puck over in the neutral zone and spring from there.

How do you do that with TJ Brodie and and a fading Martinez? How do you do that by pairing Alex Vlasic with Brodie? Who is pushing the puck up the ice here? Seth Jones and....? And Jones is only moderately all right at that. If the aim is to install a system that will carry the Hawks for years, how is that happening this season? At least to start, it isn't. We're going to see a lot of the forwards having to drop too deep to help out their defense to generate the momentum up the ice that Richardson has repeatedly said he wants. We're going to see d-men dropping way off their blue line. This isn't really preparing the ship for future battles.

It makes one wonder who asked for this. Did Luke want veteran steadiness to the point of being quite possibly an impediment to the team he wants to develop? Or was he saddled with this group by a GM who is now points-chasing and perhaps losing sight of the process? Why is Anders Sorensen better equipped to develop two of the Hawks main prizes than Richardson?

Kyle is right in wanting the team to amass more points this season. But how a team in the Hawks' position amasses those points matters. What is all this veteran leadership for exactly? Bedard and Bedard alone? He's the last kid who needs that.

This gets ironed out if Davidson is true to his word and let's kids like Korchinski, Nazar, maybe Dach, maybe Allan, and one or two others move some of these vets out of the way as soon as they've proven they should. Then at least everyone can see what they have. But simply providing a platform in the hopes that Smith or Martinez or whoever can roll back the years for 50 games to vacuum up some more points that no one will remember doesn't accomplish anything. Picking up the pace after the trade deadline is Jed Hoyer shit.

The play was to not only bring in experienced players, but experienced players who could showcase the hockey the Hawks say they want to play, accompany instead of replace the kids, and let the improvement in the standings come along with that. It's really unclear that the Hawks have accomplished that at all. If this is how the Hawks have decided they want to go about chasing 70-75 points, they'd probably be better off being in the mix for a top-three pick again. No matter how hard it would be to watch.

Sons Of Lemuel - Slow Ride

There isn't much to add to the Bears stroll against the Panthers. It's always enjoyable to watch the Bears truly maul someone and let your Sunday wash over you instead of getting the week off to a anxiety-filled start.

For all the teeth-gnashing we do about the Bears, it's the nature of the thing after all, they hae rarely if ever been as bad as the Panthers are right now. Perhaps the Bears rot from the head the same way Carolina does, but for the most part they've been able to put together at least one functional side of the ball. Even if the other two were completely helpless. That Panthers thing feels like it might never get better.

The defense could be better than thought, or at least capable of completely throttling bad teams. Caleb Williams gets better every week. The trip to London feels pretty big. Going into the bye open lengths clear of .500? It's been a while. Let's try it. Also losing to this version of the Jaguars, on any continent, is going to quite the stomach punch to have to weather for two weeks. Let's avoid that.

Let England Shake - Oh, Spurs

If you're new around here, at least on Mondays this is where I'll rehash the Premier League Wrap I used to do at G/O Palooza. We'll see how it fits for a bit longer. Just three points to take us out.

• I watched the first half of Brighton-Tottenham. Thought Spurs looked pretty good. Flipped over to watch Aaron Rodgers decompose in double-time for the last five minutes of that game. By the time I got back to Spuds, I was watching Danny Welbeck celebrating his eventual game-winner. Only took 18 minutes of gametime for Spurs to blow that one. You have to admire the efficiency.

It's not a huge shock that eventually someone was going to figure out Ange Postacoglu's 4-1-0-5 formation. Yes, it had blown away Brentford and Man United of late, but the latter don't have any sort of structure or plan. Brighton simply overwhelmed Rodrigo Betancur in the second half, with their wingers Kaoru Mitoma or Yankube Minteh tucking in to combine with the midfield on either side of Spurs' lone midfielder, or Welbeck dropping deep and letting the two wingers run in behind.

It's hard not to love Big Ange's Damn-The-Torpedoes-And-Fuck-You methods. We all need a mad-scientist blowing his own face off in the lab as it makes the world more interesting. Spurs' season, at first glance, is better than the current 8th-place suggests. Their xGD is second-best to only Liverpool. However, it's inflated by their blowouts of United and Brentford, where they amassed 6.1 of their 7.2 xGD. The rest basically comes from slapping Everton around in the second week of the season. When teams can't get to grips with their one midfielder system, they are capable of running riot. When a capable team like Brighton can get hold of the ball and pass the first wave of the press, there isn't much there. Spurs are going to continue to be an amusement park.

• It'll get a lot tougher for my beloved Reds now. Liverpool have won six of their first seven, and sit atop the league. But after this international break, they'll see: Chelsea (H), Arsenal (A), Brighton (H) Aston Villa (H), then after the last break of the year, they'll get: Southampton (A), Man City (H), Newcastle (A). Throw in three Champions League games at Leipzig and at home to Leverkusen and Madrid, and it's a six week gauntlet.

The worry before the season was who would Liverpool get to play as their deepest midfielder. Ryan Gravenberch has answered that, but now what do they do when he's not available? He probably can't play all of these games. Can Alexis Mac Allister cover? He played there for a lot of last season but could turn into a runway when asked to do the defensive side of the job. Does Arne Slot's more controlled ways protect him enough? Can Wataru Endo do the part of the job with the ball? This is where business will pick up.

• Hats off to James Ward-Prowse. If you're going to get sent off for a handball, don't half-ass it. Make it worth your while:

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