Down the Frozen River

Tag: Brad McCrimmon

  • March 29 – Day 161 – Bird is the word

    Though there’s only four games on today’s schedule, there’s at least two that should provide some captivating play.

    The action starts a little later this evening as Chicago at Pittsburgh (NBCSN/TVAS) doesn’t drop the puck until 8 p.m., followed an hour later by Los Angeles at Calgary (SN). 10 p.m. marks the beginning of Washington at Colorado, preceding tonight’s nightcap – St. Louis at Arizona (SN360) – by half an hour. All times eastern.

    Since the Kings‘ playoff chances took a significant hit last night with their loss in Edmonton, let’s catch the action in the Steel City.

     

    Quick, tell me the best team in the NHL since the beginning of February. Calgary? Nope. Pittsburgh? Nada. Washington? Guess again.

    You’ve probably figured it out, but the correct answer is the best team in the Western Conference, the 48-21-7 Blackhawks. In the past two months, Chicago has earned an impressive 18-4-2 record on the back of its elite offense.

    On the season as a whole, the Hawks rank seventh-best in goals-per-game, but February and March have been an absolute clinic. Led by Patrick Kane‘s 33 points (the fourth-most in the league over that stretch), Chicago has buried 84 goals in that time, trailing only Nashville for most in the NHL.

    Kane has been absolutely magnificent of late. 19 of his 34 goals on the season have been struck since the beginning of February, and both totals are tops in the Windy City. But the main reason Chicago is playing so well is they’ve stayed extremely healthy. Only 25 different skaters have donned a Blackhawks sweater in their past 24 games, an extremely impressive total that perfectly explains the club’s synergy.

    That compatibility is most evidenced when the Hawks take to the power play. Though they actually rank 14th-worst on the season as a whole, Chicago has converted 22.4% of its man-advantages in the past month – the 10th-best effort in that time.

    Captain Jonathan Toews gets to take a lot of credit for that success. Though he’s only registered one power play point in his past six games, Toews has nine on his resume since February to lead the club. Most of those have been assists to the other star of the first power play unit: Kane. He’s buried five power play goals in the past two months to headline the team and tie for fourth-most in the NHL.

    If there’s one spot the Hawks are still trying to improve, it has to be their penalty kill. Stopping only 77.4% of opponents’ power plays all season, they rank fifth-worst in the league. The issue is not 30-16-3 Corey Crawford, but the defense playing in front of him. Crawford has faced the 12th-most power play shots against in the league (among netminders with 30 or more appearances) due to Niklas Hjalmarsson and Brent Seabrook being the only two players with more than 22 shorthanded shot blocks.

    Though two games ended in a shootout, the last three games have been tough for the 46-18-11 Penguins, the third-best team in both the Metropolitan Division and the Eastern Conference.

    The reason for Pittsburgh‘s struggles is not on the ice, but off it. Nine players were listed on the Penguins‘ most recent injury report, though Jake Guentzel (concussion), Ron Hainsey (upper body) and Conor Sheary (lower body) skated yesterday. If any are cleared before tonight’s game, I’d bet on Sheary since Guentzel and Hainsey wore non-contact sweaters.

    Usually one of the elite squads in the game, the holes in the lineup has most effected Pittsburgh‘s offense. Usually averaging a league-high 3.4 goals-per-game, the Pens have scored only six goals in their past three games, which ironically ties with Chicago for fifth-fewest since Thursday.

    If able, Sheary will be a welcome addition to the lineup to rejuvenate the offense. He’s averaged .91 points-per-game this season, which is the third-best average in Pittsburgh. Of course, he’s no Evgeni Malkin, another member of the club spending more time in the training room than he’d like. His 33 goals are second-most on the team (and 10th-most in the league) behind Sidney Crosby‘s 42, as is his 1.16 points-per-game average (good for the ninth-most points in the NHL).

    One thing that hasn’t suffered is the power play. Scoring on a third of its attempts, Pittsburgh is tied for sixth-best in the league since March 23 – well above its 22.4% success rate on the season. What’s most impressive about this effort is that the power play scoring has come from five different players, and none of them were drafted first overall.

    Instead, the special team that has taken a step back is the one that was already poor to begin with. The Pens‘ penalty kill has blocked only one power play shot (courtesy of Tom Kuhnhackl) en route to only a 75% kill rate, which ties for eighth-worst in the league in the last week.

    When the Penguins visited the United Center four weeks ago, they seemed to forget about one major detail: Kane.

    Not Kahn, Captain Kirk; Kane. Notching his second hat trick in three games, the right wing teamed with Scott Darling and his 36-save effort to lead Chicago to a 4-1 victory.

    Some players to keep an eye on in tonight’s game include Chicago‘s Crawford (30 wins [tied for eighth-most in the NHL]) and Kane (82 points [tied for second-most in the league] on 34 goals and 48 assists [both tied for sixth-most in the NHL]) & Pittsburgh‘s Crosby (42 goals [leads the league] for 82 points [tied for second-most in the NHL]), Matthew Murray (.923 save percentage [seventh-best in the league]), Justin Schultz (+27 [eighth-best in the NHL]) and Sheary (+26 [tied for ninth-best in the league]).

    No matter how busy Chris Stewart – the Penguins‘ head athletic trainer –  is, Vegas still favors Pittsburgh to win with a -125 line. Unfortunately, I don’t feel quite so optimistic for the home team. Chicago has been on an absolute tear over the past 56 days and doesn’t look like its stopping now.

    Hockey Birthday

    • Brad McCrimmon (1959-2011) – Selected 15th-overall by the Bruins in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft, this defenseman spent most of his 18 seasons in Philadelphia. The late 80s were an incredible year for this Saskatchewanian, as he not only made his lone All-Star Game appearance in ’88, but also hoisted the Stanley Cup with the Flames a year later.
    • Maxim Lapierre (1985-) – Though currently playing in Switzerland, this center has 10 seasons of NHL experience. Due to being selected 61st-overall in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft by the local Canadiens, most of his playing time came in Montréal. A consistent enforcer, he spent 130 minutes in the penalty box in 2011-’12 as a Canuck.

    Three of Boston‘s four lines found the back of the net to lead the Bruins to a 4-1 victory over the Predators in yesterday’s DtFR Game of the Day.

    Patrice Bergeron (Zdeno Chara and Brad Marchand) got the scoring started early with a wrist shot 2:28 into the game to give the Bruins an early lead. With 6:08 remaining in the first period, Second Star of the Game David Krejci (David Pastrnak and Drew Stafford) doubled that lead with a wrister of his own, the score that proved to be the game-winner.

    The visiting Preds finally got on the scoreboard with 8:44 remaining in regulation when Craig Smith (Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis) tipped the puck into Tuukka Rask‘s net, but Third Star Noel Acciari (Riley Nash) neutralized that tally 4:31 later with the first goal of his NHL career. David Backes (Dominic Moore) took advantage of an empty net in the waning moments of the contest to set the final 4-1 score.

    Rask earned the victory after saving 24-of-25 shots faced (96%), leaving Pekka Rinne with the loss, who saved 27-of-30 (90%).

    Boston‘s home victory was a big one in the DtFR Game of the Day series, as road and home teams in the series have both earned an equal 187 points. Visitors do have the most wins though at 82-58-23, compared to the hosts’ 81-57-25.

  • Reflection

    By: Nick Lanciani

    Five years ago, the hockey world suffered collectively from several of the greatest tragedies in the history of the sport. In the warm months of 2011, the hockey world lost Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, Wade Belak and the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (KHL) team over the course of one offseason.

    In the summer of 2011, I personally was celebrating the success of my favorite NHL team’s Stanley Cup championship. I had grown up dreaming of one day seeing them raise the Cup, but none of that seems to matter when you remember that at the end of the day, every player of the game is human.

    Hindsight is 20/20 and we could say that there were warning signs and better ways we could’ve helped players like Boogaard, Rypien and Belak, but the fact of the matter is that nothing can bring them back and we must move on, remembering them, and committing ourselves to doing more. We have to do more.

    Enough is enough when it comes to senseless fighting in the NHL. It’s not the 1970s anymore.

    But even I seem to battle with the existential question of whether fighting in the NHL should be allowed to continue. In some respects it sets apart the sport from any other (but it is after all, still a penalty). In others, I can see where it is deemed barbaric.

    If the league were to follow a protocol similar to the OHL’s newly introduced rules on fighting, I do not think it would be all that bad for the marketability of the sport. Hockey, in its purest form, will always go on. And the NHL will always be the top league in the hockey world for talent and superstar work ethic, skill, coaching and leadership.

    Especially at the Junior level, we all have to remember, the players are just kids.

    When Marc Savard suffered an estimated six concussions in his Junior days alone, we should’ve realized when to step in and step up. Sadly, new studies and discoveries about the brain are too late to repair the shattered and fragmented careers of far too many Junior players who went on or did not go on to see the days of life in the NHL.

    Likewise, it’s too late to undo what’s been done to those former NHLers now suffering from Alzheimers, dementia and other debilitating diseases caused, in part, by head trauma.

    In the summer of 2011, I was riding the highs of victory, but the dark shadows cast by the losses of Boogaard, Rypien and Belak cemented the fruition of what my eyes only see when I look at any player on the ice— another human.

    They’re not heroes in the sense that they are far above me as an individual or that they are superhuman, but every NHL player is ultimately just another human being with a right to a life after their career. They are heroes in the sense that they get to play a game for a living that I’m sure most of us could only dream of ever doing for a living.

    They are heroes in every win and every loss, but not every win or loss should come in the form of winning a lawsuit for the loss of a life.

    The dark days of 2011 were only blackened some more when the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash occurred.

    How could such joys of watching a team win the Cup be mirrored with the lows of tragedy?

    I remember watching Karlis Skrastins, Pavol Demitra and Ruslan Salei at one point or another in person or on TV. I had never seen Brad McCrimmon play, but I remember hearing about him and his short stint with the Boston Bruins from 1979-1982.

    I think of every member of that team, their families and that entire organization every September 7th. I remember how a community came together to memorialize them all and mourn as one family. I remember that so much good has come from so much bad and horrible memories of the summer of 2011.

    We owe it to every player to do more. To be more as they’ve been more. To be with them as they’ve been alongside others.

    Our lives are short. We never know when the last time might be.

    But there is always time for a first time for a better tomorrow. And I want to see us live it well.

    It sickened me when I heard last year that cocaine abuse in the NHL was on the rise. Both the NHLPA and the NHL have to do more to help their players— their colleagues, their friends, their fellow humans.

    It disgusts me that NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman, continues to deny a link between CTE and head injuries. The emails that were leaked earlier this year show that Brendan Shanahan should really be commended for speaking out and starting the conversation for change.

    Even the NFL is beginning to take things seriously as they give studying head injuries a second thought.

    The league has to do more. I’m not interested in whether or not the league accepts blame or admits defeat at this point, but rather that they will commit themselves to doing more to protect their players and help them move forward with their lives after hockey. Let’s start talking about solutions instead of finger pointing and blaming.

    Let’s always remember the good times we had with Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak.

    And let us never forget the tremendous people of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, the tremendous hockey players, coaches, trainers and more, that were killed five years ago today.

    As we reflect, we move forward in their memory.