EHM The Blue Line

Team still stinks on ice...

The Hawks really had to give up a lot to bring in Vrbata from Carolina, the ever popular "future considerations". Anyone who can light the lamp is a welcome sight on this team though so who knows?

Time will tell if they are rushing Ruutu's recovery too much bringing him back into the lineup tonight after there was talk of him missing the entire season. If he is 100% healthy and can stay that way though it will be a major help to this club.

Speaking of missing the season, Eric "Mr. Back Surgery" Daze whose return to the lineup has been uncertain at best, is said to be considering not returning to the Hawks this season and even never lacing up with skates again. Retired at 30? That's what can happen when you have three back surgeries in three years. Why they didn't buy this guy out when given the chance to do so still baffles the hell out of me. Even more baffling was their not cashing in on his actually being healthy and playing well and dealing him as the All-Star game's MVP for someone with fewer questionmarks and more talent. I just hope he or the team decides on something soon because they need to resolve this and free up that Cap room and stop claiming they have a 30 goal scorer on the team in Daze.

Yeah, Ruutu better stay healthy, and get the game going, since we're gonna need him in olympics .

Seen alot of Nhl games this season, however have yet too see the hawks sadly. But from what I have been reading, the bullin wall have been rather shaky this year despite young defense core playing very well, seems very uncharististic of him, but the problem boils down to scoring only?.
With a team that young in many key positions even with a few big ufas (Aucoin+ Bullin), you cant expect to make the playoffs just look at how the Penguins are struggeling.
How close to the cap are you anyway?, cant you trade 2 round pick or something for a solid scorer, Sabres seem to have alot of solid second liners, or do you need a star first liner forward?

Really there is a laundry list of problems with the team and even more regading the organization/ownership. They seem to be making some headway but it's not the kind of thing that will improve over night.

I won't get going all on the organziation again but the main problem has been and continues to be that the team barely has second liners let alone first. They have a long and storied tradition of not being able to draft and terribly mismanaging the players they lucked into having that have became stars. Yes they traded Hasek, but that's a tough one to pin on them as back then he was just a nightmare who played like he was having seziures not protecting the net... So really in the recent era of things still affecting the team I guess it goes all the way back to the trading of our last big-time true superstar forward in Roenick for Zhamnov. He was then made to be a first line center which he isn't and even more rediculously later on team Captain which he certainly is not, just ask Boston.

From then on it's been a series of moves trying to hammer square pegs into round holes. Amonte? The organazition felt they needed to prove some kind of point and neither offered him a real contract OR traded him; the team got a conditional pick for him. . Sullivan? Who still isn't a true first liner but could score and played with heart every day was dealt to Nashville, where he's doing okay I guess [/sarcasm] They got two 2nd rounders for him which became Garlock & Blunden who may help the team but it's several years from happening. The one that is absolutely devastating though is that Mike Smith dealt Brian McCabe to Toronto (where Smith used to work before they canned him) for Alex 'the walking wound' Karpovtsev who is an absolute joke and was a daily embarrasment to the team for years. Beyond mentioning that he quite literally blew his knee out straining on the toilet before a game I'll leave the on that one to our long-time color commentator Pat Foley (this .mp3 is 2:12 long and over 1 meg but worth it!): Good Riddance

This year the did some things right (Dale Tallon as GM, Yawney as coach, Aucoin on D and Khabi in Goal) and some terribly wrong including loading up the offense with more overpaid third liners: bringing in LaPointe (who fans have started calling LePaycheck as he's signed for 2.4 million!), Barnaby, Brown and Dowd none of whom should be on the team. They also fooled themselves that they didn't need to get a scorer because they had a 30 goal scorer already in Daze who hasn't played a game. On defense they brought in the equally brutal Todd Simpson and Jassen Cullimore again overpaying. Every one of these players is a nightmare in the "New NHL" due to being slow and "physical" which these days only means they were masters of obstruction and hooking/holding. This of course leads to the team's biggest problem which is complete lack of ability to stay out of the penalty box. Look for the names I mentioned in this depressing little box:



The Hawks have been penalized far and away more than any other team. A good deal of that being 5 on 3 disadvantage, in one game I saw them with two men in the box SIX different times. By mid November they'd been shorthanded 5 on 3 more times than any teams in the entire year of the 2003-2004 season. Aucoin has been hurt the majority of the year so I think the sheer number of kills required by the team is the real reason Khabi has looked so bad. He was in shock after playing with people who actually knew the position...

And now Ruutu is out again after having surgery to repair a severed tendon in his ankle He got cut by a Nashville player's skate battling for the puck behind the net