By Jim Coffman
Let’s not become too agitated about the Hawks’ less-than-stellar effort against the Red Wings on Saturday, okay? Two nights prior they avoided embarrassment by pulling out Game 3 but they couldn’t repeat the sensation despite a couple high-profile Red Wings absent from the lineup when the teams returned to the ice. The Hawks tried to muscle up in Game 4 and in the NHL these days that almost never works. Teams that try to play chippy hockey pay a price in power plays against that they rarely overcome.
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And now the Hawks will almost certainly bow out to the defending champs on Wednesday (or if the Wings suffer a let-down, the next time the teams take the ice). On the bright side, the end of this series will cap off what can only be described as an amazing season. After 10 years of decrepitude, the Hawks bounced all the way back into the NHL’s elite in one great campaign. And then there is the fact that the only time to vociferously bemoan a playoff setback is when your team clearly had the advantage in talent, toughness and experience. The Red Wings are about to sweep that best-of-three series.
But the Hawks will obviously go into the next playoff go-round with a great deal more experience. Dustin Byfuglien, Duncan Keith and other young Hawks won’t just display more toughness next time around, they’ll be smarter about when to assert it. And Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews have only just begun to scratch the surface of their talents.
One thing that is a little eerie is something I was reminded of last week. That was the fact that when the Hawks last won the Cup, in 1961, Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull were just about the same ages that Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are now. Clearly Mikita and Hull still had a great deal to learn when they won that Cup. Clearly they improved their play over the next half-dozen years. And crystal clearly, the six-team NHL of 1961 was slightly different than today’s 30-team behemoth. Still, the very young Mikita and Hull were a huge part of a Cup-winning effort early in their careers and then never returned to the mountaintop. That’s a great reason to remember to never start talking too much about a team’s potential until the current season is over. No matter how young, a team must do absolutely everything it can to win right now. There are so many things that can go wrong (especially in this era of already contentious contract negotiations spiraling down to a new level soon as the NHL salary cap goes down in the next few off-seasons).
That’s why upon further review, I’m not as upset as I was about Marty Havlat playing in Game 4. Initially I thought it was ridiculous that a guy who had taken such a crushing (and completely legal by the way – Brian Campbell’s inane yammering about it being a “dirty play” be damned) knockout hit the previous game had no business playing in the next contest. Of course he wouldn’t be as good as Hawks reserve forward Colin Fraser, a fourth-liner if there ever was one but still, a tough and reasonably skilled player who was ready to step into the lineup if Havlat couldn’t go. But upon further review it is clear the only way the Hawks were going to advance in this series would be if the best players played their absolute best hockey. So if there was any chance whatsoever Havlat would be able to bounce back (and it was a tiny chance – that was an absolutely perfect body check Red Wing defender Niklas Kronwall unloaded on the Hawks’s most skilled winger), the Hawks had to take it. If they were going to have any sort of real chance, they needed him in the lineup.
So I won’t get on the coach for that one. However, hey Joel Quenneville, I don’t care if the roughing penalty at the end of the first period was the worst call in the history of hockey (which it most certainly was not – it wasn’t even the worst call of the game), whining about the officiating to the media is always, always, always a mistake. Perhaps there was a time when ultra-charismatic coaches might bleat about calls not going their way and gain a small advantage in the next game. But those days are long gone.
If a coach can stay reasonably cool (first of all, don’t pile up the compound profanities – second, avoid ostentatious gestures), he’ll often have a chance to vent to officials in the middle of a given game. That’s the best he can do. And if he’s persuasive enough, even-up calls have been known to happen. But repercussions following specific calls will almost never be felt days later. First and foremost, different officials will be assigned. Second, time heals coach versus ref wounds.
Quenneville would have had us believe the roughing call in question (the one that led to the Red Wings’ third goal early in the second period) was absolutely pivotal. But it obviously wasn’t. At that point the Hawks were already down two goals and playing poorly. By speaking up about it after the game it was clear to everyone in the NHL pool of officials that all the coach was trying to do was show up a few officials and perhaps make himself and his team look a little less bad (don’t you understand? It was the referee’s fault).
The worst part of the deal, Joel? You sounded like Milt Bradley. And you absolutely do not want to sound like Cubs bust of all time Milt Bradley these days.
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Coach Coffman welcomes your comments.
Posted on May 26, 2009