The game was entertaining as hell and the Hawks got a point out of it… that’s something right? Bittersweet though. With the Hawks loss in OT they forced a 3-way tie for first place in the central between Scum, Hawks and Blues… and just imagine the hate-fucking that would go in that threesome. The Hawks came out firing in the first.. actually capitalizing on their first power play opportunity and following it up less than a minute later when Patrick Sharp brought the puck to the center of the ice and took advantage of some poor positioning from the Wings to put the Hawks up two. Sadly, that’s the last the Hawks would see of both Shooter and the back of the net. Despite a fast and exciting back and forth game, the Hawks would fall victim to Pavel Datsyuk as so many people do.. more on that later. Right now.. we’re going straight to the bullets
- Q started off the game with the Leddy/Hammer pairing which means one of two things. Either he was making a statement like “Get your fucking heads right and play better” or he thinks there’s nothing wrong with this pairing that ought to concern anyone. Now, I believe it’s the former.. or at least I hope it is.
- Speaking of Leddy, he was on the ice for the last two of the Wings three goals. The first he served the very important role of being cross-checked in the back by Flippula which allowed the puck to dribble past Crawford and find the net. There’s no certainty he would have been able stop it but it was still a pretty nasty missed call. On the OT goal, he served the equally important backboard for Datsyuk to bounce the puck off of. Again, not entirely his fault but he could have taken a much better position in the net rather than guarding the far post. I haven’t been able to find a good replay of it to see how much Crawford may have been blocking him but Leddy left about 80% of the net wide open and the replays on TV made it look like the puck went off his hip and into the net. The game wasn’t as abysmal as the last one but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
- Oh and in a sign that even Q may be growing tired of Hammer’s shit – Leddy was out there with Montador in OT. Hammer was paired up with Leddy on the first shift in OT but it was Monty on the second. Monty unfortunately was the one who inadvertently kicked the puck just out of Crawford’s reach and got too distracted with punching Johan Franzen in the head (forgivable offense) to try to knock the puck away from the slot.
- Speaking of Franzen.. he was once again pretty damn invisible right up until getting punched in the head and giving Monty one back. He got an assist on the OT goal though so I guess Scum fans will take an invisible mule if it means they get two points on the road… something that doesn’t come easy for Scum this year.
- I guess it would be appropriate to mention the Hawks getting horsed on a couple non-calls by the refs tonight. The aforementioned cross-check on Leddy was the first. There was an interference/too many men that was missed just before the OT goal as well. The Hawks still had 5 power plays to the Wings 2 though. Bad calls are going to be made and blatant penalties will be missed throughout the season. I’m not one who believes “it all evens out in the end” but I do believe that shit happens. The Hawks had 3 power plays and a penalty shot and couldn’t do anything with them. That’s a bigger story than the missed calls.
- The Frolik at center experiment lasted all of 15 minutes. Not sure if that’s because Frolik wasn’t that great at it (1-4 on the draws he did take) or that Q needed to cover for the absence of Patrick Sharp. Not sure why a missing winger would change around the center rotation though.
- Patrick Sharp is out with “an upper body” which obviously could mean just about anything. NBC showed a few replays of Sharp taking a couple shots to the knee (meaning he can no longer be an adventurer) but if the “upper body” is be believed then it’s just about anyone’s guess. I didn’t notice him taking any particularly hard hits and certainly nothing to the head.. anyone else?
- It’s pretty amazing how much better of a broadcaster Eddie Olczyk is when he’s not paired with Pat Foley. When he’s not cracking dumb jokes or laughing like an idiot at the same tired jokes he actually has some pretty great things to say. Even his “stop it right here” shtick doesn’t seem so grating when he’s on top of his game.
- The Hawks attempted 62 shots tonight 31 were on net, 23 were blocked and 8 simply missed. 23 blocked shots is almost as many as the Flyers and Avalanche totals combined. It did certainly seem like the Hawks were all to willing to help by firing shots directly into the Wings forwards from the point.
- It’d be pretty easy to panic (if you weren’t already) with 4 losses in 5 games but this was far from the Hawks worst game. For the most part, the Hawks defense looked solid. An effort like that against most teams will likely result in two points. So it goes.