California Love: Hawks 0 - Ducks 3

- Ales Hemsky OUT FOR THE SEASON due to surgery to repair his left shoulder. Must have been from trying to carry the Oilers since, oh, Smyth’s departure.
-Martin Havlat out on IR with a hamstring injury. Must have been from running away from the incensed Wild fans over his lovely production to date.
-Brent Burns has also been moved to the IR as well. Go Wild! the season gets better.
-Milan Lucic is out for 4-5 weeks with a high-ankle sprain. B’s fans must be so impressed that management chose him over Kessel.

But shit happens from time to time. May it serve as a wake-up call to the ‘Hawks and they end up taking out their frustrations on the Queens tomorrow and play an all-around game that sufficates them to death. It certainly would put a nice ribbon on this present of a trip to go 5-1.
If Niemi starts may be duplicate his perfromance for the last thing I want to here is that “I Love L.A.” song as that would be music to all our ears. Just as retarted as the song is the goal horn before it as it’s volume could wake-up the dead.

Today the Hawks looked like they were on game 5 of a 6-game road trip. Slow, sluggish, and unable to get away from the tight coverage the Ducks employed. The Hawks seemed to have only a second or two with the puck before being grabbed. No real sustained possession. And there were a lot of times when the Hawks were fumbling with the puck. How many whiffs did our boys have, even when they were simply trying to make an open pass?

I’m not too worried, but it would have been cool to see the streak get to 10.

And though I know it’s way early, I watch these games and try to imagine how a best-of-seven series would play out. Obviously, there’s lots that may/will change (deadline trades, injuries, new coach, etc.), so you can only speculate so much. But if the core groups stay the same, no team on this trip scares me except for maybe Vancouver (seriously). I don’t think San Jose was as bad as they played, but I think the Hawks are even better than they showed that game, because the Sharks were willing to play a style that fits the Hawks game. Calgary and Edmonton don’t have the guns to stay with the Hawks, and I don’t think Anaheim can sustain the style they played today for a whole series. But Vancouver can it seems. At least, they’ve done it to us almost every time we’ve played them, going back to last year’s playoffs. When they got away from clogging everything up, like in game 6 last year, well, we all know what happened. I know the Hawks beat the Nucks this week even with everything against them, but the games with Vancouver are ugly, and one-goal affairs can go either way too easily and change a playoff series.

So this trip tells me the Hawks are in the top 2 in the West, they can get up for big games, and there’s better things still to come. It also tells me that they can be outworked on occasion, like today, and Vancouver is a royal pain in the buttocks. (Though that’s not a new thing to learn.)

The one thing still to learn is, how will the Hawks handle being the “big game” for every team they play now? This will be an interesting next few weeks.

Just sucks a bit it’s the game that could have tied us with the franchise record AND given Q his 500th. Oh well.

Hopefully we’re able to rebound tomorrow? We’re 4-0-1 so far in the 2nd game of a back-to-back. It’s just a stat, of course, but a potentially comforting one. Then again, knowing my luck, tomorrow’s probably the first loss we get or something, so apologies ahead of time if that’s the case.

I mean come on they went from the Flames, to the Nucks, to Edmonton, then fly to play the Sharks, which I believe took alot out of them, even though it was a put it in the bag kind of game, I think that game was mentally tiring for them. I think if they had some time off, beating the Ducks woould be easy.