I took a long look at the Hawks earlier this summer, during some playoff downtime. I dont really have a whole more to say than that about what was wrong with last years version of the Hawks basically, their save percentage was terrible, they appeared to have no discipline and their PP was terrible. I should note as Chris Boersma did in the comments to that post that at least some of the bad goaltending was attributable to lousy team defence as a whole but I still have Khabibulin as one of the worst goaltenders in the league. If they addressed those three areas over the course of the summer, they possibly become a fringy playoff team, particularly with the fact that their division is still bad.
| Team | SIT | S/60 | RK | G/60 | RK | S% | RK | SA/60 | RK | GA/60 | RK | GD/60 | RK | SV% | RK |
| CHI | ES | 32.8 | 4 | 2.59 | 15 | 7.90% | 25 | 29.9 | 13 | 2.98 | 28 | -0.38 | 27 | 0.9 | 28 |
| CHI | PP | 42.7 | 29 | 4.78 | 30 | 11.20% | 29 | 8.1 | 11 | 0.94 | 24 | 3.84 | 30 | 0.885 | 28 |
| CHI | PK | 8.9 | 13 | 0.43 | 23 | 4.80% | 25 | 41.8 | 2 | 6.24 | 12 | -5.81 | 13 | 0.851 | 21 |
Changes
Something that the Blackhawks do very well is the provision of a Player Tracker on their website. Other NHL teams should follow their lead here its very useful.
Martin Havlat: The big move that Chicago made this summer, the Black Hawks immediately gave him a 3 year $18MM contract. Havlat has historically been an elite PP player for the Blackhawks and should help them with one of their big problems from the 2005-06 season. Theres a risk in trading for a player like Havlat, in that no one knows what hell do outside of the Ottawa PP which was loaded with other top offensive players but he certainly cant hurt.
Bryan Smolinski: Old guy who should be able to eat minutes without hurting the team. Not going to help the PP.
Michal Handzus: Nothing special on the PP, but he doesnt look to be a guy who takes a lot of penalties. He had a bad year at ES last season but then Philadelphia wasnt exactly a team with great goaltending. Hes been solid in the past.
Kyle Calder: Although terrible on the PP last year and generally bad throughout his career, Calder was a scorer at ES for the Hawks last season. He was actually a plus player last year, one of the few Hawks who played significant minutes who can make that claim. He was just a few goals below even at ES in 03-04 on another bad Hawks team. Last season was a noticeable high water mark for him in terms of ES offence; Id say that the Hawks probably sold high.
Mark Bell: Bell got bombed at ES last season but was perhaps the only Hawk of any use on the PP. It was his second consecutive decent season on the PP (3.64 PPP/60 in 03-04, 4.02 PPP/60 last season). He was EV+ 37 EV- 45 last year, although he looks to have had an off year offensively he had his lowest ES scoring rate than his rookie year. Im thinking that Chicago probably sold low here, particularly if he was the guy playing against the oppositions best players last season.
Goaltending
As mentioned above, this was a real problem for the Blackhawks in 2005-06. Its probably going to be another year of below average to bad goaltending for the Blackhawks. Their goaltending looks like its going to be Patrick Lalime and Nikolai Khabibulin, neither of whom has been anything more than an average goalie at best in the past 4 or 5 years. Both of these players are coming off of terrible seasons and are on the wrong side of 30. Contrary to popular belief, goalies dont get better after the age of 30 in fact, many who were above average at best suffer steep declines and disappear from the game quite quickly.
While Khabibulin should hopefully be better than his .899/.845/.898 line of last season, I cant see them getting much help from Patrick Lalime at all. Khabibulins contract is a real millstone for the Blackhawks theyd be well advised to look for a Doug MacLean type guy to dump this contract on. Unfortunately for Chicago, I just cant figure out whod be willing to take on such a contract, particularly given the fact that better goalies than Khabibulin were taking significantly less money last summer.
Chicagos goaltending will be better, I think (regression works both ways) but I still see them as likely being below average overall. Its going to be very difficult for the Black Hawks over the next few years as Khabibulin is eating up a huge amount of money ($6.75MM) while hes going to provide a negligible return. As distasteful as it may be, Chicago probably should have considered taking the hit and buying him out over the summer. As a bit of an aside here, the CBA provision barring teams from including money in trades baffles me. You would think that that would be something that everyone would want. Surely Chicago would be better off if they could move Khabibulin and $9MM to someone as opposed to just paying him to go away.
Even Strength
As you can see from the chart at the beginning, Chicago was actually a surprisingly decent ES team in 2005-06. When you consider that they had Oilersesque goaltending, the fact that they were only a tenth of a goal worse than the Oilers at ES suggests that they were doing a decent job outside of their goaltending. Chicago put up decent numbers in the faceoff analysis I did a little while ago as well they came in at a 0.98 ratio of offensive/defensive zone faceoffs. We know that Chicago spent a ridiculous amount of time on the PK last year as opposed to the PP as well, which would have slanted their ratio below one. Theres reason to believe that Chicago had a good ES team held back by bad goaltending in 2005-06. The players who theyve added this season have been good ES players in the past, particularly Handzus and Smolinski. It looks like Chicago kind of moved sideways to me Id expect them to be good at ES again this year. The question is whether theyll get the goaltending to help them out.
Power Play
| PLAYER | PPTOI | PPP/60 | PP+/60 | PP-/60 |
| BELL MARK | 313.33 | 4.02 | 5.94 | 0.57 |
| VOROBIEV PAVEL | 131.98 | 3.64 | 4.55 | 1.36 |
| SEABROOK BRENT | 264.67 | 3.63 | 4.76 | 0.68 |
| CALDER KYLE | 270.53 | 2.88 | 5.10 | 0.89 |
| BOURQUE RENE | 201.57 | 2.68 | 5.36 | 0.30 |
| AUCOIN ADRIAN | 133.40 | 2.25 | 5.85 | 1.80 |
| LAPOINTE MARTIN | 314.08 | 1.91 | 4.97 | 1.34 |
| KEITH DUNCAN | 107.75 | 1.11 | 6.13 | 1.11 |
| VANDERMEER JIM | 154.95 | 0.77 | 1.94 | 1.16 |
The power play in Chicago was terrible last season and I dont see a whole lot of hope for it this season. As mentioned above, Mark Bell was the only non-terrible Hawk on the PP last year other than him, its ugly. Im mystified by the fact that Jim Vandermeer played 155 minutes on the PP last season he makes Eric Brewer look like Bobby Orr. Adrian Aucoin missed a big chunk of last season but hes nothing special on the PP his best rate was 3.30 PPP/60 and his career rate looks to be around 3.00.
The good news for the Hawks is that Martin Havlat has historically been an elite PP producer. The bad news is that he leaves one of the best PP environments in the league in Ottawa and comes to one of the undeniably worst. For those who are interested in questions like the extent to which the player creates or created by a high scoring environment, Havlat should be added to Alex Tanguay on the list of players to pay attention to next season. Id figure the Hawks PP to be better regression would almost demand it but still not very good.
Penalty Kill
Chicago had a surprisingly good penalty kill last year that was undone by some shoddy goaltending. The problem for the Black Hawks was the sheer volume of penalties that they took. The only team in the league to spend more time shorthanded was Nashville. The Hawks can probably expect to be done in again by shoddy goaltending but theyd do well to keep their shots against on the PP to a similarly low level. If Chicago is going to move forward next season, theyre probably going to need to cut the penalties significantly, if only because theyre not going to get good goaltending on the PP.
Outlook
Chicagos got some decent upside I think, with the caveat that theyre probably going to be held back by the goaltending. Theyve got a young team, so if theyre going to surprise in either direction, its probably going to be in a good way, as only Smolinski, Martin Lapointe, Aucoin and Jassen Cullimore start the season older than 30. If they get the goaltending, the PP and the discipline, theyve got a shot; discipline is the only area I can realistically see them making significant gains in. I see them in the 10-15 area in the conference along with the other two bad Central Division teams.
Even looking further ahead, you cant help but think that this team is going to be screwed because of that Khabibulin contract for some time to come. The Lapointe contract is no prize big either. Even if Khabibulin somehow gives them average goaltending, hes nowhere near worth his paycheque and with Chicago hovering just below $40MM already, its hard to see them adding much more to their payroll. Lapointe provided them with an astounding 300+ minutes of sub 2.00 PPP/60 ice time not only is it appallingly bad but its incredibly expensive at $2.4MM (and signed for next year) per. Theres some decent potential in Chicago but the expensive deadweight is going to hamstring them for some time to come.
I don’t know that the incetive is there for the small teams to do that anymore, what with the relatively small salary window. You’d have to get an awful lot of money for selling a player to be worth it and for most players, it wouldn’t. It seems to me that there ought to be a way to curb that risk without the solution being guys like Khabibulin getting bought out when someone would probably take him for $1.5MM. My way is a more efficient solution.
It also is “efficient” for one of the less profitable franchises to leave the hockey business for a more profitable draft pick business.
Forcing a team to live with their mistake IS efficient. Chicago and ONLY Chicago should suffer for Khabibulin’s contract. The Hawks have a way out, but it is punitive - as it should be. That was designed into the CBA for deflationary purposes.
The commodity is players - no substitutes - no jiggery pokery. Better for the game.
Jiggery pokery? Is that a technical term? Seriously, I’ve only ever heard that in one episode of Doctor Who, and I’m kind of curious as to whether it’s common British slang or what.
You know, I’ve tried writing offseason overviews for my friend’s website two or three times, and I just can’t do it as well as some of the people on the blogosphere. Awesome stuff, MC.
Good post.
Earlier on this summer it looked to me like Tallon was in a great position to take this team forward. And I think that he has crapped the bed since.
When you look at EV results against the Western Conferences best hockey players (I arbitrarily chose Modano, Thornton, Naslund, Ignila, Gaborik, Zetterburg, Selanne and Demitra) … then it’s pretty clear which forwards are driving the results in CHI-town. Bell(1
, Calder(20), LaPointe(20) and then it’s a helluva drop off to a bunch of guys in single digits.
As an aside, Spacek (only 4 events against this opposition) didn’t see a lot of results against these guys at all. Almost certainly because he didn’t play against them much at all, and not in the bad situations either (end of PK, D zone draws, etc). Some pretty terrific D depth there if they could afford to be playing Jaro PotiMinutes(TM). Then again they were out of the race early on, maybe it was a “may as well give the kids some more responsibility.”
Ruutu is going to be a helluva player if he ever gets healthy. He played a whack against quality opponents in 03/04 as well.
Tallon crapped the bed here. And two of the guys that seem to really understand and value the context of when the counting numbers were garnered (Clarke and Wilson) … they shagged him in the alley.
Starnge that CHI took so many penalties, but it was a tonne. I didn’t see enough of them to know why that happened.
I think most people will agree with you that Khabibulin will probably have a better year coming up. Both healthwise and stopping pucks. Still, it’s hard to imagine that this will be enough. Nothing against Marty LaPointe, he’s a quality NHLer … but when he is your third best forward you are in trouble deep.
When you see a GM trading away the guys that the coach really leaned on (Calder and Bell, and Sullivan in 03/04) you have to think that there is some sort of disconnect between the coaching staff and management there. Strange stuff.
That should be Bell - 18
Turns out that if you put an 8 before a ) … you get an emoticon.