It’s the start of the new week and the Hawks haven’t played yet – so lets take a look around all the other sites and see what other people are thinking of the Blackhawks so far.
SBN Power Rankings – 1st in the Western Conference but only 4th overall.
The Hockey News – 4th overall and the comment only mentions Huet’s major mistake on the dump-in.. this might be a theme.
NHL FanHouse – 4th overall once again – thankfully no mention of Huet.
TSN – 15th overall… the fuck? TSN isn’t sold on the Hawks goalies but even still this is an obscenely low rating.
NHL.com – 4th overall once again
ESPN – 10th overall – Questions about Huet cause them to drop.. but since when does ESPN know anything about hockey?
Looking at the league-wide stats – the Hawks are near the top in just about everything other than the power play and goals against. The only area that’s troubling though is when you compare shots against/game with goals against. Please don’t take this as another invitation for a Huet flame-war though.. it’s just an observation..
Points: Tied for 3rd with 3 others (11)
Goals For: Tied for 5th with 2 others (28)
Goals Against: Tied for 16th with 3 others (22)
Shots/Game: 3rd (35.9)
Shots Against/Game: 1st (20.8)
Faceoffs: 2nd (55.4%)
Power Play: 13th (23.3%)
Penalty Kill: 5th (85.7%)