Embarrassing. Utterly embarrassing.
There’s not a lot to say here. The Hawks squandered a golden opportunity with Scum’s top center, top defenseman, and top face-off man all scratches, and they gave us their most wretched performance since the infamous Islander game in early March. There’s a lot of blame to go around, so let’s start, shall we?
- Cristobal Huet – While he was adequete in relief on Friday, Cris squeezed out a big steaming turd of a game this afternoon. Only the Filpula power play goal was one where nothing could be done about it, every other one before it was academic was a save he needed to make, and there were none to be found. The numbers and the eye-test were finally in sync with this one, and Huet showed us why Quenneville has ridden Khabibulin in the post season.
- Kris Versteeg – Lazy, immature, selfish. The Franzen goal was as a result of Versteeg (you have to earn your exclamation point back, pal), again, making one too many stickhandles while standing still just inside the blue line. Had Havlat not been sent to the dressing room again. he would have been benched, and deservedly so for his selfish minors. He did not move his feet to cut off Hossa at all on his second tally. A consistently horrendous performance from 32 from start to finish.
- Joel Quenneville – You were brought in to keep your cool and provide a guiding hand for a young team. Your players saw you lose your composure, and promptly followed suit. That outburst was unacceptable.
- Ben Eager – Grow up./
No one is without blame for this performance. The most indicting aspect of this abortion of a game is that they made Pierre McGuire sound like a genius, proving his normally idiotic drivel to be right at every opportunity. And while I may regret saying this, there is fortunately at least one more opportunity for these young Hawks. If you’re going to go out, don’t have it be like this. We demand your best effort of the year on Wednesday, and if you have any dignity left after this afternoon, you should be demanding it of each other.