Chicago Blackhawks



Los Angeles Kings




1 Sat June 1 4:00 United Center
2 Sun June 2 7:00 United Center
3 Tue June 4 8:00 Staples Center
4 Thu June 6 8:00 Staples Center
5* Sat June 8 7:00 United Center
6* Mon June 10 8:00 Staples Center
7* Wed June 12 TBD United Center

My Two Gay Cents:

As for players, I'm only going to talk about Quick for those of you who haven't seen much of his work since I love watching him play. Any chance I can take to talk about Quick is an opportunity I must take.

I was asked who I fear the most and I said out of all the teams left, I think the Kings have the best chance at taking us out. These guys are pretty good. They hit, skate hard, play good team d, have timely offense and have the best goaltender in the world. The Hawks are a better hockey team than the Kings though, in my opinion. Our offense is better, our defense is better, we skate just as hard and we've shown that we're not afraid to throw the body around in the playoffs. The big issue is Quick. If you were to look at that Sharks/Kings series, one could make a very good argument that the Sharks were the better team. Quick was too good though. The Hawks lit up Quick this season but playoff Quick and regular season Quick are two different beasts. If you want to beat Quick, you need to shoot high, preferably his glove side (as with any goalie, really). His lightning fast reflexes, strength and flexibility with his legs make it feel impossible at times to get anything by his pads. Not only that, when he's down and out, he'll find a way to go acrobatic and roll around like he's having a seizure only to find a way to keep the puck out if it's not elevated. Pretty much, if it stays on the ice and he sees it, it stays out of the net. He's great at tracking the puck too. When things get really crowded by his net, he can crouch down lower than any goalie I've ever seen to track the puck through legs. He's not perfect though as he can get himself in trouble at times by being almost TOO quick (you see what I did there?). His lateral movement and leg strength is so good that when the play is moving really quick he can have moments where he takes himself out of position by sliding all over the crease. This causes some huge rebounds and open nets at times but like I stated, you need to elevate these pucks every chance you get because he can bail out his own mistakes and these mistakes are rare enough as it is. The Hawks are better than these guys. Solve Quick and move onto the Cup Finals. Sounds simple, right?

My Prediction: Hawks in 7

Why? Because it's the Chicago Blackhawks, man.

Using the Dewskie Expert Analysis Method™*, my prediction is that the Blackhawks will win in a 4 game sweep.

Why do I say this? The Kings have a hot goalie, but I don't think Quick's play in the Sharks series was anything comparable to Howard's play in the Blackhawks series. Howard's been arguably the best goaltender in the playoffs, and the Blackhawks still laid 4 goals against him 3 times (give or take an empty net).

The sense of urgency that the Blackhawks were missing for the last two months or so finally rose to the surface in game 5 of this series, and I don't think the team's going to look back. LA's a damned good team, and all the variables are in place for another 7 game series, but the Red Wings were the ultimate threat to Chicago's finals run.

Not to mention that the Blackhawks, after a dominant game 1 performance, gave Detroit a weak-ass two day break to get their shit together. With a solid back-to-back weekend tilt at the UC, that could be a crushing 2-0 lead with momentum all breaking to the team in red.


* - denotes talking out of my ass about shit I don't really know about

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The Kings only have two forwards listed under 6'0 with Mike Richards and Brad Richardson at 5'11.

Board battles and forechecking is going to be a bitch.

Quick is the best goalie on the planet.

Johnny Oduya is going to be in for a long series. Their forwards are going to key on him. With the yips he displayed against Detroit, it's going to be 10x worse against a team that's built for that. Don't be shocked to see his ice time drop.

The Kings are a very good hockey team and a bad matchup for anyone they play.

More in depth thoughts coming.

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Team Cutler.

Didn't we beat the Kings all 4 this year?

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

2-1. Hawks beat them decisively in the season opener, then again in a second game, then lost a back-and-forther where the Kings scored with like 0.5 seconds before intermission and then Dustin Brown scored the winner late.

But in spite of that achievement, you know what? Fuck Dustin Brown's media love. Everyone is on this guy's dick and I have no clue why. All this guy has ever really done is be one of the better players on the Kings when they sucked. There's gonna be all this OHHH HEY EDZO DID YOU SEE WHAT DUSTIN BROWN JUST DID OHHH EDZO LOOK AT THAT OHHH THAT'S WHY HE'S THE CAPTAIN OHHH OHHH OHHH, but honestly, he's only like the fifth-best player on his team. If I'm starting a team and made to choose a player from the Kings' roster, I go with Jonathan Quick, Mike Richards, Anze Kopitar, or Jeff Carter before I go with that overrated Down's baby cheapshot artist.

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Don't forget Doughty. He's essentially American Shane Doan.

Oh, yeah. Donuts. Brown is sixth, then. That doesn't mean that he's bad, mind you, just that his importance to a team that didn't amount to anything before falling ass-backwards into Mike Richards is vastly, vastly overstated.

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The Blackhawks only played the Kings 3 times and Chicago won 2 of them, including a memorable Opening Day in Los Angeles.

By the way, Dave Strader, Brian Engblom & former Hawk goalie Darren Pang have been commissioned by NBC Sports to call this series starting Saturday. Meanwhile, here we go again! Thanks to Diamondbacks/Cubs on Saturday night, 720 WGN Radio has that game in primetime, while 97.9 The LOOP has Game 1 of this Kings/Blackhawks' West Final in stereo starting at 3:50P.

I'm pretty sure Doughty is Canadien.

Their size and physicality scares the Hell out of me. Someone mentioned Oduya is going to be in for a long series and I agree. The board battles are also gonna be a bitch!

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The motto of the B&B section:

I honestly don't listen much-Reared On The Score Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:38 am

Yeah, Doughty is from Ontario. Pretty much everyone on the Kings came out of the OHL or NCAA. It's weird. I think Voynov and Kopitar are their only non-North American roster players. Lombardi really loves big lunky Character Guys, I guess.

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Aren't a lot of the NHL guys from Canada to begin with?

Dustin Brown = American Shane Doan

Yes, SHARK. What CH is pointing out is the Kings are Don Cherry's wet dream team. Tough good ol' Canadian boys mixed in with some Americans. No room for soft pansy Europeans.

His words not mine. (As in Cherry's)

From what I gather from the experts Jimmy Howard was not close to the best goaltender in the playoffs and has had trouble closing

About 50% these days, but it's gone down quite a bit with the rise in American and European players. Quebec in particular has become alarmingly barren in terms of NHL prospects, though I attribute that to underscouting of the QMJHL.

And yeah, Don Cherry surely jerks it to Kings game film. Nothin' but Good Ontario Boys playing a heavy forecheck and lest we forget WINNING BOARD BATTLES.

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Okay.

The Canadiens, of all teams, have been predominantly Eastern European (erstwhile Kostitsyns and Koivu, Plekanec, Emelin, Kaberle, Galchenyuk) for a while, along with a lot of Americans (Gomez, Gionta, Pacioretty) more recently. I'm convinced David Desharnais is just there as a token.

Meanwhile, the rest of the league has caught up to the Red Wings, who don't get to scout entire European leagues by themselves anymore, and are now finding themselves relying on domestic prospects (Smith, Emmerton, DeKeyser; Abdelkader and Helm before that) as much as overseas (Andersson, Brunner, Nyquist, all three of whom had themselves quite a series, by the way).

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I have often wondered why not more Swedes they always kick ass in worlds or olympics. There are quite a few but surpisingly fewer than I thought there might be.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Galchenyuk is from Milwaukee. Hey curious hair, remember that shitty European scout the hawks used to have, Michel Dumas? I believe he was always one of Pully's guys? An odd looking man...

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The motto of the B&B section:

I honestly don't listen much-Reared On The Score Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:38 am

I think all of them were just in the Wings/Hawks series.

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In fact Swedes make up the 3rd highest percentage behind Hosers and 'Mericans.

http://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/national ... stats.html

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Galchenyuk was born here because his dad played for the Ads, but he grew up in Russia. I don't remember the appearance of a former scout, no.

The Hawks have Stalberg, Kruger, Oduya, and Hjalmarsson, plus Henrik Karlsson if you want to include him, and I don't. The Wings have a bunch, I'm sure, and I'll cheat and wikipedia it to find out, and sure enough: Joakim Andersson, Jonathan Ericsson, Franzen, Gustavsson, Kronwall, Nyquist, Samuelsson, and Zetterberg, and that's with Lidstrom and Holmstrom both retiring before this season.

The NHL is losing its Russian contingent to the KHL, big time. I don't mind. I hear Switzerland is the next big thing in terms of NHL prospects.

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@ Dewskie

Howard made all the saves he was suppose to but every great Hawks chance went into the net for the most part. The Wings defense was great and made life easy for him. In my opinion, his performance vs the Hawks has been overrated.

Norway should be really ashamed. Only one player when Sweden and Finland are taking it to ya. Step it up NORWAY!!

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Norway is a soccer country. For some reason, they never quite picked up on hockey like the rest of the region. Even Denmark is starting to get a good thing going: Frans Nielsen with the Isles, Lars Eller with the Habs, Mikkel Boedker with the Coyotes.

The Hawks briefly had a Norwegian prospect named Mathis Olimb. Someone injured him in practice, knocked him out for the year, and he went back home having contributed nothing. The player who injured him? Kyle Beach.


SO MUCH FOR THAT.

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Not that you give a shit but I found this lol http://blackhawks.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=47160

Speaking of euros, I'm pretty excited about the future of Teravanin, last years first rounder. For those of you who've never seen this kid, look up some of his youtube videos. He's a little undersized but has great skills. I believe we have another decent Swede in the system stashed over in Europe.

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The motto of the B&B section:

I honestly don't listen much-Reared On The Score Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:38 am

Kinda sorta.

He was born in Milwaukee, raised in Russia for a while, then moved to Chicago for some of his teen years where he played for Chicago Young Americans based out of Lincolnwood and Heartland ice Arena and then moved onto Sarnia for juniors.

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Dumas looks vaguely like former Sharks owner and imaginary Coyotes owner Greg Jamison:



Teravainen is going to be something special, but size is a concern. We're small as it is.

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What an interesting life this kid has led! Curious Hair mentioned something about him living in Russia too.

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The motto of the B&B section:

I honestly don't listen much-Reared On The Score Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:38 am