The Need to Knows
- The Time: 5:30pm PT
- The Place: United Center, Chicago, Illinois
- Place to Watch: ROOT Northwest, NBC Sports Chicago, ESPN+/SportsNet+
- Place to Listen: KJR 93.3 FM
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Second City Hockey
Know Your Enemy
Chicago is bad, but that’s the point. They’re building for tomorrow.
They’ve gone 3-7-0 through their last 10, are dead last in division (though nobody’s beating San Jose for dead last in conference) and while they’re playing close hockey, they’re not exactly playing well; routinely getting outshot and their few positives are the ones you kind of expected; Connor Bedard’s leading the Hawks in points and goals, they’re trying to find money wherever they can in guys like Philipp Kurashev and Jason Dickenson, and getting some depth scoring from guys like Corey Perry (ugh) and Ryan Donato (miss you bud 💔). Their goaltending is kind of better than I expected it to be, in that their defense is often so bad I figured it’d be lacrosse goalie levels, but Petr Mrazek is a .903 SV% after 10 starts, so good for him!
Otherwise, not a contender, but capable of doing something. You definitely know who you should mark.
Game Notes
Where to begin.
The Kraken are in a weird way. I’ve already gone over their quarterly performance, and they’ve confounded and frustrated. Mercifully, they don’t seem to struggle (much) with teams that are unambiguously referred to as bad. Unless they’re actually trying to get their act together. Then there’s trouble.
It’s been a weird and really frustrating one in King County.
The Kraken need to figure out what they want to be and a game against Chicago generally speaking makes for a good get-right, but they need to take the good habits from their usual 40 minute efforts into their final period, because the alternative is having to walk into Toronto with a two game losing streak, and that would be rough.
Still should be fun to see what Bedard’s been doing. Should also be a good opportunity for more course correction!
LET’S GO KRAKEN
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