First off – an apology… no it’s not for insulting Detroit or the Red Wings – screw that
The apology is for the mixup in last game’s preview. We used a quote from Blood Mountain and a picture from Leviathan.. yes, these are the things we worry about.
If Mastodon doesn’t work this game – we’ll find something else.
On to the game:
Where do you start with what needs to get better? We’ll just say this – Kane, Toews, Biscuit, Keith, Buff, Havlat – play better. There – That oughta do it.
We’ve really discussed everything the Hawks need to do in the comments and other posts.
- Work to get the puck in deep because you’re probably not going to get past Lidstrom with the puck still on your stick.
- Don’t stand around and let the Wings put on a show with their passing – get in those lanes and don’t let them set it up. It looked like they were putting on a clinic out there on some shifts.
- Get the shot total down – if you give the Wings 43 shots more than a few of those are finding twine.
- Step up the physical game – The Hawks did get the slight edge in the hits department, 36 to Scum’s 35. But this is really more for my benefit. Nothing quite like seeing a Wing player blasted into the boards with a solid hit.
- Oh, score more goals than Detroit too.. that’s a big one./
I said in a post yesterday that the Hawks blocked a season-high 20 shots and it was a joke since I didn’t look at any stats. Well I still didn’t go through and check every game but I did see that in the regular season the Hawks blocked an average of 10.3 shots a game and had stepped that up to 12.5 in the playoffs so far. So maybe I was right after all. Hard to believe the Wings still got off 40+ shots with the Hawks blocking so many.
John over at Fifth Feather has a good article up about the ice time for Kane and Toews. It’ll be interesting to see if Q follows any of John’s advice (little known fact that Q does, in fact, read all of the Hawks’ blogs). Daydream Nation barely saw any time on the ice where Lidstrom wasn’t matched up with them. Obviously Babcock (heh..cock) is always going to counter with Lidstrom and Rafalski so lets hope Q has a trick up his sleeve.
HockeeNight has a new puckcast up with a special guest, the chief from Able to Yzerman it’s an awesome way to kill an hour but just a warning, there is a guy there talking about the Red Wings, so don’t listen to it if you don’t like opposing viewpoints.
That it? Yup.. OK
Lets Go Hawks