Hawks Weekly Update 4/15
Del Mastro debut's, Nazar does too but scores a goal. Future is looking bright.
The end of the season is right around the corner.
With the Hawks playing their last 2 games this week, I'll do my own version of a season recap next week. I'll still be active during the offseason as I'll post Hawks history stuff and news items.
Not that I think people are dying to read it, but I had to pull the plug on the NCAA Tournament update this week due to technical difficulties. Sorry, not sorry. If you really want to see what happened, check it out here. Having some bad connectivity issues this morning, hence the lack of links below.
With that being said, if there's any weird formatting issues, or general sloppiness, I apologize in advance. I'll gladly read through any hate mail.
On to the Hawks.
Weekly Update
Joel Quenneville was on "The Cam & Strick Podcast." It's worth a listen as there are a lot of good questions asked and provides some insight from Q's perspective. He basically takes ownership for not doing the best he could and maintains that he was unaware of what happened. The Q interview starts at the 1:16:30 mark and can be found in the link below.
Cole Guttman, who's been down in Rockford, is injured and expected to miss 3-4 weeks. He'll be missing some playoff time with an upper-body injury.
Nick Lardis and Paul Ludwinski have joined the IceHogs. Both are currently on ATO's (Amateur Try Out). They'll play with Rockford for about 2 weeks and won't be playing in the playoffs.
The World Championship will feature some current Hawks players. Connor Bedard will be playing for Team Canada, Alex Vlasic and Seth Jones will be playing for Team USA. The tournament begins on May 10 and takes place in Czechia.
Ethan Del Mastro was called up from Rockford and played 2 games before being sent back down (as expected). I go into more detail on Del Mastro below.
Connor Murphy was cleared to play on April 11 after dealing with a groin injury. With 3 games left in the season (to include the game against the Hurricanes), it might be a risky move as groin injuries can be nasty to deal with.
Denver ended up beating Boston College in the Frozen Four, Hawks prospect Aidan Thompson played in 2 games (against Cornell and Boston University). Thompson logged a total of 4 shots in between both games. At best, he'll pan out to be a depth piece.
Embed from Getty ImagesGame Recaps
4/10 Hawks @ Blues - Hawks Lose 5-2
Game Recap Here
4/12 Hawks vs Predators - Hawks Lose 5-1
I'm not spending too much time on this one, although there are two positives to get out of this snooze-fest of a game...
After the Hawks had a good month in March, they seem to be stringing a lot of games that look like this one. They get stuck in their own zone, can't breakout, struggle through the NZ, can't generate offense... same old song and dance.
One of the good positives is that Bedard got a point to hit 60 on the season.
Connor Bedard connects with Philipp Kurashev, who scores on a 5-on-3 power play for his 18th goal of the season. #Blackhawks pic.twitter.com/MyJvsGGuf1
— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) April 13, 2024
The other positive comes in the form of young defenseman Ethan Del Mastro. Del Mastro, who from henceforth shall be called EDM, looked confident and sure of himself tonight. He didn't look lost. And that's saying something for a kids first NHL game as a defenseman. Sure, he didn't log any individual stats (except for 1 hit), but his fancy pants stats weren't too shabby. At 5v5, he had a 55.56 Corsi (2nd best), team-high expected goals share at 69.42%, and the Hawks owned 54.55% of scoring chances when he was on the ice. All of this comes with 17:49 of 5v5 icetime.
What does the eye test have to say about that? Well, EDM made solid passes, he helped on breakouts, he made good defensive plays, he covered the middle of the ice and stayed in his assignment, and he looked confident. And that's all I really have for this one.
4/14 Hawks vs Hurricanes - Hawks Lose 4-2
Let's ignore that score for one second.
Frank Nazar made his debut and scored on his first shot on goal.
It's been a minute since I automatically yelled in jubilation in my living room over a goal.
Nazar looked solid. Hell, he was better than I expected. Even more so when you consider that he didn't participate in the morning skate. Nazar was quoted as having said that he thought the pace of the game looked slower than he anticipated. I know, it's only one game for him but even a pessimist like myself can get excited about Frank.
Beyond Nazar, about the only other positive was Petr Mrazek. Mrazek saved the skin of some defensive breakdowns (ala Jarred Tinordi) and kept the game close for most of the evening.
Ok. One more positive. Lukas Reichel looked good. He made solid defensive plays and has been looking more aggressive as of late.
Other than that, this was a Hawks team that hit their status quo of getting stuck in the DZ and failing to generate offense. Bedard only logged 1 shot attempt... this wasn't his best game. Not that it's a concern. The Canes, and any other good team, do a good job of stifling the kid. Bedard has also had one long season for an 18-year-old.
Do we need to dig into fancy stats for this one?
Week Ahead
The final two games of the season are upon us. The Hawks fly out to the desert to face the Golden Knights and then over to the City of Angels to play the Kings.
Both are playoff teams. Vegas might be fun if the Hawks can pull off a competitive game somehow. The Kings 1-3-1 system gives the Hawks trouble, so don't expect the final game of the season to be fun.
Daydream Nation
Ethan Del Mastro - LD - 2021 Draft, 4th Round
At 21 years old, Del Mastro made his NHL debut last week. The 205lb, 6'4'' left defensemen looked decent in his 2 NHL games. The 2023 season in Rockford was his first year as a pro, and he made quite the impression. In 66 games, Del Mastro put up 37 points and made his impact as a two-way defenseman with a +15 rating on the top blueline pair.
Ethan is a product of the OHL having played 4 seasons there across two different teams, Captain of the Mississauga Steelheads and the Sarnia Sting. In fact, before he was drafted in the 4th Round, there was a lot of skepticism about his game. Particularly, in the U18's 2021 tournament, he displayed pretty bad passing and puckhandling skills to the point where scouts thought he was on the worst defensive pairing for Team Canada.
The good news is, Del Mastro is looking to prove those doubts wrong. With his success at the pro level, all that remains is to see if he can play well at the NHL level. We won't really know for a couple seasons, to be honest. We can hope he has a good season next year, but we want to see consistency across seasons.
At the NHL level, we can hope that Del Mastro turns out to be a shutdown defenseman. Rather than reacting to plays, Del Mastro needs to prove he can control the play at the NHL level. This will take time to observe as it's much too earlier to say anything.
As our blueline is being constructed with a solid prospect core, I'm very curious to see how the forward core develops. But that's a topic for a different day
Sick Bay
- Taylor Hall – Knee/Out for season
- Reese Johnson - Concussion/unknown