Game Recap: Hawks @ Kings 4/18

With that, we have ourselves the end of the 2023-2024 regular season. Good riddance. Now we can focus on things like the draft lottery, ridiculous Twitter mock trades, and daydreams of what the Hawks lineup will look like this fall.

Hawks fans got a small taste of those daydreams last night in Reichel's speed, Nazar's hockey smarts, and Slaggert on the 3rd line. We also had painful reminders of the type of hockey this team played this season. It was a meme for the Hawks season.

There isn't anything worth analyzing. Connor Bedard looked tired from his long season. Frank Nazar looked full of energy. Numerous defensive mistakes littered throughout the game led to goals and dangerous chances. Tinordi happened. The Hawks did manage to score 3 goals in the span of 5 minutes, but the Kings would take the Hawks to OT and end it 6 seconds later.

Thoughts

• Lukas Reichel's goal was sexy.

• Nazar continued to display some impressive awareness and skill in tonight's game. Beyond almost scoring a beautiful goal, thanks to Landon Slaggert, Nazar looks very comfortable in the NHL. He had 2 shot attempts and 2 scoring chances. The fancy stats don't do him justice (or anyone for that matter) so I won't post them.
• Slaggert also looked solid out there. He finished with an assist and could've had himself a multipoint game.
• I lost the feed for about 1 second after the Kings' second goal. When I got the game back it was already 3-1. What happened? Jarred Tinordi did.

• Connor Murphy, wisely, sat this one out due to aggravating his injury. Hence, the 5 defensemen.
• Jaycob Megna. 1.62 expected goals against. 22.22 Corsi. Need I say more?
• The Hawks had their first shot on goal around the 11:15 mark. That came after two solid shifts where the Hawks had decent OZ time but couldn't get a quality shot past the Kings' defense.
• The Kings worked their magic by playing the puck low-to-high which took advantage of the Hawks' defensive structure and opened the floor for mistakes.
• Arvid Soderblom finished with a .861 SV% and faced 36 shots.