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Friday, January 17, 2014

Hawks 3rd Line Woes

The easiest thing to do is write when your team is winning. Conversely, the same could said about losing.
The Blackhawks are having an abysmal January with only 2 victories in January. Their 3rd line has been away on holiday and hasn't returned since Christmas. Bryan Bickell and Kris Versteeg are not working cohesively together and to make matters worse, their 'guts' of their line, Andrew Shaw, has been moved up to the 2nd line centerman position. This puts Michael Handzus as their 3rd line centerman. Handzus - Versteeg - Bickell. Ahhhhh, not crazy about that combination. Maybe,...just maybe, Bickell needs another 'boot-in-the-ass' by making him a healthy scratch. Put Brandon Bollig there to shake things up for a game or two and bring up Jeremy Morin to fill in that 4th line role. J-Mo worked well with Kruger and Smith. This could work (and they currently have the cap space again to allow this to happen).
Whatever they do,...and sometimes doing "nothing" and allowing the team to work out their issues, can be the best thing to do. However the Hawks aren't getting anything in the net period 1. In fact, they're "chasing". So, by the time they tie up the game, they're dead tired and either give up that losing goal late, or they lose in O.T. or the Shoot-out. This has been their M.O. the past 2-3 weeks. This has got to stop if the Hawks have any hopes of catching St.Louis or Anaheim.

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