Blackhawk Up - A Chicago Blackhawks Blog

"Get up Corey, you look like Luongo." (Photo by John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images)

Yikes.

Aside from the occasional bursts of momentum that only lasted a minute or two, the Hawks looked a step behind all night. Maybe it was the fatigue of playing the night before. Maybe it was a general unwillingness to compete with the Preds’ hard working, physical style. Maybe it was both, it sure looked like it. Either way, the Hawks were preyed upon by the hungry Predators without much of a fight.

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Can the Hawks new youth help lead to a championship(Morgan Creek Productions)

The Sequal

It’s been four season in Chicago since a youth movement has shown this much promise and excitement! Granted sequals rarely live up to any hype and even though they usually create a lot of buzz they generally leave the audience wanting more.   In 2007-2008 Jonathon Towes and Patrick Kane started their careers and had outstanding rookie seasons. Towes had 24 goals and 30 assists in 64 games while Patrick Kane scored 21 goals and 51 assists in 82 games in his rookie of the year campaign.  This was the ground work for the 2010 Stanley Cup returning to Chicago for the first time since 1961!

Youth has returned to the United Center ice and it has been a very exciting two weeks seeing the Andrew Shaw and Jimmy Hayes take to the ice with 100% gusto!  They have done it all! They score, pass, throw their bodies around with little concern for their own good, and they are willing to drop the gloves!  After watching Bickell skate around like he’s at an open skate at Southwest Ice Arena it has been very exciting to see these  guys, that may be playing over their talent level or may still have a higher ceiling, playing hard every shift hitting everything in site and getting rewarded for their efforts!!

TIGER WOODS ENDORSEMENT

The true sign that any player has arrived is something Tiger Woods did to make people think he belonged.  No its not some easy joke about women on the rode (althought Mrs Woods probably had a good slap shot) its how he put a zy or er at the end of another players name! When i heard Coach Q say Shawzy at the press conference after the Sharks game, it became official that Coach likes what the kid brings to the table! Shaw has 5 goals in 8 games with an assist.  Its crazy to think he’s going to keep this scoring up when his best season in the minors was 22 goals last season, but if he continues to get ice time like he did against Buffalo in all situations maybe their will be an onslaught of “Shawzy” jerseys entering the U.C on a nightly basis

Jimmy Hayes hits the ice and every announcer seems to drool over his size and skill set! He has 4 goals and 3 assists in his first 10 games.  He took a penalty the other night when the Buffalo player didn’t want anything to do with him!  Hayes checks and hits and checks again which is what the Hawks were missing at the beginning of the month as the routinely were out hit by large margins.

The one original Young Gun that seems to be struggling is “Kaner”! He has run in to some tough luck with Annti Niemi robbing him Sunday with a top 10 save of the year, but lately it seems that he is battling against cuteness/harlem Globetrotterness instead of shooting he tries to make the Sportscenter highlight pass! Get pucks to the net and good things will happen!!

Until the trading deadline passes the names of the new youth will undoubtly be mentioned because the Hawks need defensive help!  The Hawks stuck to their guns after the Stanley Cup and refused to budge on trading away any of their core young superstars and even though they may bring us a defenseman that can take some heat off Keith and Seabrook, it would be nice to see how these new young guns continue to grow in the Red Sweaters of the Hawks for the rest of this season.

Tonight is the start of back to back games at home versus Florida and then a big road test against a division rival in Nashville!  Ray Emery gets the start tonight.  Will the young guns bring it tonight? We are only a few hours away!!

Lets go Blackhawks!!!

Initially this post was only going to be about some trade rumors floating around out there that involve the Hawks. But then Andrew Shaw and Jimmy Hayes decided to go all superstar, so I’m also going to look at how their emergence might affect how the Hawks approach trade possibilities.

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"The ancient Greeks didn't worship Zeus. They worshipped Andrew Shaw" (Photo by Bill Smith/NHLI via Getty Images)

I’m going to keep this short so I can get to work on a post regarding trades for tomorrow.

Last night the Blackhawks went up against a struggling, desperate Sabres team that had lost 9 straight on the road. However, Quenneville warned that this was a game that the Hawks needed to be careful in, as you never know how desperate teams are going to come at you. The gameplan was simple: have a good start, push the pace, win battles and don’t give the Sabres any confidence.

Mission accomplished.

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Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I wasn’t able to watch the game against the Red Wings yesterday, so I don’t have any post-game comments for you. But what I do have is some thoughts regarding the Hawks’ inaction in the trade market (and just lack of trade activity in general)

Over the past few weeks, Stan Bowman has made comments informing the fanbase that he is contacting teams about the possibilties of trades. Predictably its quite hostile out there. This is likely due to the fact that this is a sellers market and all the teams with expendable assets that are willing to deal are asking a king’s randsome in return. And this is where I empathize with Bowman. There’s no question that navigating a seller’s market is difficult and dangerous.

So Bowman is pretty much being forced to wait until teams either become more willing to deal, or more importantly, the costs of players decreases.

But the problem is that its unlikely that players will get any cheaper.

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