comment by b

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comment by b_b

b_b · 4618 days ago · link · · parent · post: We Just Come From Such Different Sets Of Circumstance: SCH's Phoenix Coyotes Preview

I agree with SCH's assessment that the Hawks will probably win the series, but I don't share his belief that it will be easy. Firstly, Chi has by far the worst defense of any West team in the playoffs; its not even close. When dealing with a very well disciplined team like Phoenix, you have to be careful of such things. They will stand in the way and block shots until one lucky rebound leads to an odd man rush. They pushed the Wings to 7 in '10, and that Wings team was a lot better than this Hawks team.

Second, Chicago has awesome top end players, and then a bunch of spare parts. That might get then out of the first round, but no further.

Third, there is no comparison in goal; Phoenix has a huge edge.

And finally, when the author says: "While the Coyotes fans will try hard with their whiteout, you can probably expect what we've seen the past two years. That is huge blotches of red in the sea of white that are the invading Hawks fans", he is referring to the Wings fans in the last two years. Hawks have had a national presence for 4 years now. While they have a fair number of band wagon jumpers, there is no guarantee that their fans will fill the seats like the Wings fans have.

All in all, I think that their top end players will get the job done, but I think it will take 7 games.

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ElGuapo · 4617 days ago · link ·

Many of your points are pretty much correct, I can't argue that Crawford or Emery have been on top of their game this season, but I couldn't say that for Turco last season or Niemi or Huet the season before when we won the cup. As far as saying the Hawks have the worst defense in the entire western conference is a bit overstated, sure the Ga is in the high end, but if you look for the GA averages on the western side its not too far off from everyone else. As far as band wagoners, if you didn't grow up around Chicago, you may not know that the former owner did not allow any home games to be broadcast for many many years in the hopes that it would drive fans to the stadium to watch games, so when we got new owners ~4 or so years ago people finally got to see hockey on TV, so id say while we did have some fair weather fans when we won the cup, most of it is just Chicago becoming more hockey centric.

+discuss+discuss

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b_b · 4617 days ago · link ·

I am aware of the WWW situation there. Old man Wirtz was a terrible owner, possibly the worst in the NHL. As to the D, I was just pointing out that of the teams in the West playoffs, Chi is 21st in GAA (2.76). Nsh is the next worst among West playoff teams at 10th in the league (2.47). That is a big difference, and it could cost dearly against an opportunist team like Pho.