I'm going to eschew the normal statistical breakdown of last night's game, because you don't need a variety of numbers to show that the Hawks didn't play, didn't care, and (outside of Marty Turco) just plain "didn't" during last night's game.
I was really hoping these It'll-all-be-over-soon-and-I-can-go-home efforts were a thing of the past, but evidently they're still going to pop up.
Obviously, the big story is the injury to Jonathan Toews, and we'll know more about noon today when the Hawks practice. I'm not going to play doctor, but I would expect him to miss at least a few games.
It's galling that a team that came together to overcome the injuries to Marian Hossa and Patrick Kane at the same time seemed to take the injury to Jonathan Toews as an excuse to pack it in. Yes, he's the heart and soul of this team, and the captain, and the best all-around player. But injuries happen, and it's not a time to pull a "woe is us" routine as if your were a jilted, actress ex-girlfriend. If this is how they're going to be while Toews misses time, there's a word for what they'll be that I can't use here, but it rhymes with "pucked".
Speaking of heart and soul, while Toews might be that to the Hawks, Duncan Keith is the straw. When he's bad, the Hawks are bad. When he's good, the Hawks are good. And he was all kinds of awful last night. While I may rant and rage at mistakes from the likes of Nick Boynton and Tomas Kopecky (and they were on display tonight too to be a side to the main dish of suckitude that Keith was providing), I expect a certain level of competence from the reigning Norris winner. When Keith is on, it means at least a third of the game the Hawks face virtually no threat on their end and are pushing the play to the other. I'm sure this energizes the guys on the bench to see the ones on the ice attacking with security. When he's scoping out his own rectum, everything falls apart. The Hawks give up chance after chance, panic sets in, and the entire defensive structure gets defenestrated. We've said it before and we'll say it again, Duncan Keith is not expected to just be good for his 25 minutes, he's expected to dominate. Or so that contract would suggest.
Though I was fuming last night, upon review this morning it will look like just a loss in December if the Hawks come out breathing fire on Thursday against the Sharks, with or without Toews. We'll have more when we hear more about his shoulder.
