Canes Blow Away Blackhawks
The Blackhawks performance on Tuesday night was great…
Chicago did absolutely nothing offensively in the first period and allowed goals to Jeff Skinner, Riley Nash and John-Micheal Liles as Carolina sprinted to a 3-0 lead. The Canes did a nice job of getting traffic in front of Hawks starter Corey Crawford, and were tipping almost every shot on net. The first two goals appeared to change directions a couple times on their way to the net, and Liles completed a 2-on-1 with Kris Versteeg to push the lead to three.
Scott Darling jumped into the fray to start the second period and received the same amount of support Crawford did in the first. Former Blackhawks forward Joakim Nordstrom beat Darling at 10:51, and Nash added his second of the night – only his fourth of the season – just 93 seconds later to make the score 5-0.
All four of Carolina’s forward lines factored into the scoring.
The Hawks were being out-shot 25-12 when Nash scored Carolina’s fifth goal of the night. And Eddie Lack had only needed to make a couple decent saves through 35 minutes of action.
Sadly, this five-goal deficit wasn’t treated with the same disregard as Calgary’s seemingly insurmountable lead in 2009.
You can blame the schedule or the flu working its way through the roster. You can say Hawks had mentally and emotionally started their All-Star Break a few hours early. But there wasn’t much worth watching from the team in white on Tuesday evening.
The third period came and went like a fart in an elevator.
Final shot totals were 40-26 in favor of the Canes. Darling stopped 21 of 23 in a relatively decent outing for the final 40 minutes.
In his NHL debut, Mark McNeill skated 11:51 and led the team with three hits. He also had one takeaway and looked comfortable considering the circumstances (read: nobody else showed up).
WTF
Even Foleys call of the game was horrid…yaking away about absolutely nothing and endless dumb laughter while play action ensued…for long stretches of time. It was very frustrating to listen to so went mute and just watched. Worst game of the season for us. What happened to Toews? He left early and no word from the TV crew. Flu bug hit the team apparently. The ‘Canes looked just fine. Our power plays were beyond pathetic. A line of Morrison, Ebony and Mook would have been about the same in effectiveness. Oh well…take a break, come back and cruise/pace smartly through a much easier schedule to the end.
I feel sorry for McNeill, he was the only player other than Toews who showed up. What an embarrassment.
I blame Sekac. Garbutt never got the team sick. What a bum.
In fairness to Foley. How is he supposed to call that kind of display.
Also on this day in Hawks history Steve Sullivan scored 2 shorties on the same pk and taunted a fan that got hit by the puck Patrick Roy shot over the glass to cause the penalty.
Ernie- The Garbutt curse!
103 and we go for the Lord Stanley tonight pathetic!
Awful . Just awful .
Tired is one thing, but NO effort us another.
Yuck !
Imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV expecting to watch the Hawks game and found The Body Snatchers playing instead. I never liked that movie and I found it even more annoying tonight when they wore Blackhawk sweaters.
That was a resounding THUD, although Carolina was flying.
I think Foley mentioned they were tending to #19 in the locker room, but one wouldn’t have heard that with the sound muted.
Is Lack the new Varlamov?
That game sucked uuurgh
@ Ernie
For players and fans a like this break will be good-
only one more 4 game week this year and the next 11 have no back to backs-
The next 6 (3 per week) after the break will do much to determine playoff positioning
Worst game I’ve seen in a very long time. Easy to find negatives but I will look for some positives. 1 most difficult part of schedule is over in terms of games played and they are in first place at the break 2. Loss sends a message to team that they need to refocus. 3 loss alerts bowman that he might need to add something at the deadline. I have to add a negative scaduri is brutal and like molasses out there. I can barely take watching him. On one of those goals he was so slow coming over that it was literally painful to watch.
Tab… Farts in elevators can be deadly… and can linger… especially if the elevator gets stuck and there’s more brewing…
Love the Triumph clip! Hilarious!
We all saw this coming and we all see a Big Win over the Stars coming right after the Star Break to ease the panik! Hawks now on auto pilot until April fools day unless it’s an arch enemy like Wild, Stars Kings etc. The Canes just suffocated the Maestro Line which leaves it up to everyone else and no one showed up!
Toews was little sick last night and not in a good way and the Hawks team looked like malaria victims on ice. Toews was a no show and Crow Show was abruptly yanked off the air, and replaced with Finding Big Foot, Darling Sasquatch was horrible. IMO Darling as much as ya want to see him be great, such a great story, is Not going to repeat what he did last year, he is just technically too sloppy, out of position even at his size and to me the real “key” to Hawks possibly not getting to the CUP. Crow needs some night off in the second half . . . Hawks need home ice and it is Not for the Fans . . .
Important > Only Reason Hawks need a home ice advantage is they get the last line change which allows them to hide weaknesses! The weakness is our over all defense, Keith and Hammer are Lock down defenders when paired on the ice but even Seasbrook as under rated and sound as he is at time a liability depending on his partner, if is ya Go At Seabrook hard, he will turn it over. His lack of speed is deadly.
Any defense men can be paired with Keith and shine! Keith Speed covers up mistakes. Hammer knows Not to Get out of position and knows his lack of speed do Hammer does not wander.
I have seen our core 3 are really covering up mistakes made by TVR, Gusty, Rozy constantly, getting way out of position and leaning and covering too much ice and Seabrook is not quick enough to do that so he become a weak link, make sense?So now ya have 2 solid defense men and other teams Coaches on the Road just wait and then attack for basically to see if Dunk is on the bench! That is the entire strategy to beat the Hawks. TVR and Gusty in the playoffs will be attacked hard so now is Not the Time to chat talent and skill and stick skills that time is coming when they will be under pressure. ( god love David Bowie) Seabrook will also be attacked hard and if Not Paired with Keith he is at times a liability with turn overs like last night.. This will be the Theme in the playoffs mark it down, not Crow, not Kane not the Rookie of the Year The Artist but home ice and ability to match up vs our challenged defense. Bolts, Pantherrs and Canes all have defensemen who move the puck with confidence and are well coached to attack the weakness and did.
MCNeil did nothing last night, not sure if he is part of a trade package coming up and needed to be “paraded out” to show GM’s he has legs and can skate but we have way toooooo many “Ben Smiths” like this in the system with all due respect. McNeil is another one! Ouch!
Danault won 5 at the DOT and Moose Rasmussen had 5 but he lost 12. Moose finally went to the net hard but went into the net with Panik, starting to worry about Moose? Danault too will see how hard it really is to go at Marcis Speed for the half vs teams who will be fighting for life! Playing pre-all-star break is easy, so now we’ll see conditioning, heart and skill level under stress of competition.
I must say the only guy who was in living color last night was DEZI, he plays soo hard and smart and used every skill god has given him every night, I mean all out, and not sure his energy is matched on that line, would love to Shawzy and Dezi together to just lock down that 3 / 4 th line. Trade for a scorer for Toews and Hoss and roll the dice!
Steve Sullivan extracting severe revenge on taunting fan is in the top ten moments of Blackhawk history…thinking it should be a holiday for Blackhawk fans, so stay home from the daily grind and hoist a few.
Mining man, Foley had NOTHING to call, made the best of it. I don’t get to watch him much either, so it’s a bummer to have that zero performance buoyed by Foley’s golden (ok, yellow) pipes. He did Harry Caray, 5-love Canes, plus an Olczyk Wannstedt reference, I got my Chicago transplant ears’ worth :)
That young Canes defensive core is going to win them a cup down the line if they keep it together. Sure it’s a one game sample against a tired team, but they’re really young and all can skate.
The only positives were McNeill and TVR giving a crap, Crow was just fine too. Whatever. 2nd place in the league halfway through the year, if anyone thought they’d be here after that off season and losing Kruger for months, you’re lying. Nobody thought that.
Goes with the territory of 14/24, didn’t matter how well or bad we played because we didn’t play/no energy. Essentially these 4 games are meaningless (just like the 4 we had at the end of the 82 games last hr). If you would have said we would win 13/16 during this sch stretch before it started we would have said yes. I did think we would catch DAL and LA but not that fast. That it would be during games 60-80. Every team that starts 30-10 hits a wall and LA plays weak sch division. Same with WAS so you have to factor that in when looking at records. I did think STL and MIN would be close/there to.
Which I believe we donot give a shit about if we’re the 123or4 seed just that we are healthy and are preparing are team game with the season games for the playoffs. I think our guys have the education and experience to know when it’s a time to coast/not use energy/take chance on getting hurt to get presidents. Didn’t WAS get presidents in 2010.
Agreed, 13 wins in 16 games is huge…….BUT, Mo this was an important game. We need points. You are gonna play around .500 against the top tier in the regular season (and I’d take that every year). You must play .800 against non playoff teams to get home ice. That game was a lost opportunity and I am sure Q has let them know.