Word came down today that Brian Campbell will be out four to five weeks. This means a couple of things. A) the mouth breathers can watch how much we struggle without him and hopefully will stop bitching about his contract for a good five minutes. B) Someone get Hammer a bunch of oxygen tanks because he’s going to be doing yeoman’s work covering for the defensively short bus Nick Leddy. Leddy would appear to get first crack, though I imagine his leash will be pretty short — the Hawks have up to 9 games to send him to junior, which is exactly where he should be despite whatever glowing reports they want to blow up my ass. The bet here is Brian Connelly is up before too long to try and take this role. Connelly has at least a full season at Rock Vegas under his belt, whereas Leddy has exactly 30 games an U. of Minnehaha. I just don’t see it.
Secondly, the Hawks second unit on the power play is going to need some help. There’s no one to run it. Ideally, it should have been Keith while 51 Phantom ran the top unit, but that only happens in my most far reaching fantasies. Leddy will get the keys (go get ’em kid) to start. This really isn’t good. I wouldn’t be shocked if Keith and Seabrook man the points on the first and Dave Bolland in your QB on the second. Buckle up.
If there’s a silver lining is that Soup will miss October, when things were going to be shaky anyway. It’s not a tear, and the Hawks can afford to give him all the time in the world to heal to 100%. There’s absolutely no reason to panic and rush him back, no matter what our record might look like on Nov. 1st. It’s a very long season. Remember when Scum was out of a playoff spot in February? Yeah. Exactly.
Other things from last night that I didn’t see:
-Stalberg apparently had a nice little game again. I think some, only some, of the stick he’s seen is over the top. Remember, these are all new teammates and to expect him to spit in the face of Aries right off the bat was unrealistic. I don’t think he’ll let anyone down when the curtain goes up on Thursday.
-Whoever this guy is that’s wearing #81, he’s got an excellent shot to stick with the big club.
-Skille was back skating again, so that’s nice. Skiilz has had a real strong camp, and finally might be ready to contribute on a full time basis. God knows we’ve been waiting long enough.
-I’ll be back before tomorrow’s game, but I wanted to say tomorrow will be our test run of using our twitter to post our thoughts during game action. If you’d like to check it out, twitter.com/2ndcityhockey, and McClure and I will periodically sharing what we see. Or calling each other chump. Either way.