Happy Monday.
Man, does COVID suck. For the past few days, I haven’t been able to do much other than rot away in bed and lead my Blackhawks team to two Stanley Cups in Eastside Hockey Manager.
The secret is signing UFA’s in Igor Shesterkin, Mitch Marner, and Nico Hischier.
I also signed Mike Sullivan as head coach with Jaromir Jagr, Dave Hakstol, and Jim Montgomery as assistant coaches.
Anyways, back to reality, I guess.
Some Laz Thoughts
Read about it:
”Blackhawks need to finally turn the corner before Chicago turns its back”
Over the weekend I read an article from Mark Lazerus.
In it, Mark is looking at how the Hawks have a lot of pressure this season to keep the attention of the city. They don’t need to make the playoffs (which shouldn’t be an expectation of ANYONE), but they need to start winning more.
So, I return to beating the dead horse to a pulp when I say that the Hawks are going to be bad again.
Like 70 points bad.
And it’s not going to repulse fans away. At least, not to the extent that Laz is writing about.
I think Hawks fans are wise enough to understand what this rebuild is and that we aren’t going to magically make the playoffs anytime soon. The Hawks haven’t won a playoff series since 2015. Since that time, a lot of bad as happened including a failed “pseudo-rebuild/retool” by Stan Bowman.
Chicago is and always will be a Bears city first. The Cubs are the Cubs. The Bulls haven’t been great since the 90’s, but people still care. The Sox are currently going through it right now.
As for the Hawks, while I don’t think Chicago is a hockey town, it is a Blackhawks town. The cup runs of the Hawks left a long-lasting impression on Chicago that will prevent the team from going into obscurity like it did in the early 2000s.
That’s not to say that the ebb and flow of popularity will not be there.
If fans cared about the team before Bedard even arrived, fans will care about this team for a long time. Even if the losses pile on again, the Hawks won’t fall into irrelevancy like Laz is saying. Don’t get me wrong, there would be a lot of gnashing of teeth and frustration.
Anyways. Those are my 2 cents.
Trash Bin
For all things not Hawks related
Hockey League Manager 25
As alluded to in the opener of today’s post, I like hockey management sims. EHM has been my go-to. As far as GM sims go, I think it’s one of the better ones. It just suffers from abandonment issues from the devs and is taped together with the iron will of a few dedicated fans.
If you’re not familiar with these types of games, it’s like franchise mode in the NHL games on steroids.
Other games are quickly closing in on EHM as the top “hockey sim” game. One of them being Hockey League Manager, or HLM.
HLM 25 was released recently and is available on mobile and PC. The mobile version of this game is great. You won’t find a better mobile GM game.
I hate being glued to my phone though, so I have the PC version.
Now, I’m currently waiting for another similar game to drop (Franchise Hockey Manager, which looks better than HLM) but in the meantime, I’ll be playing HLM.
I already see some things that could use some improvement, but overall it’s alright. I’ll be back here later with more thoughts on the game.
“Don’t Like”
Getting weird today.
It’s Halloween season and man, this full-length certainly fits the bill.
I don’t do drugs, but watching this made me feel like it. Either that or my cold medicine was really acting up.
You get some footy from Chicago in here, which is always cool to see. Even cooler than that is a Spanky part. I envy his hair at his age and style. Kevin is ripping it lately.
Every week I feel like there is a video being dropped that I didn’t expect and I end up thinking “This is the video of the year.” (Sorry, Honeymoon and Hoban’s part was not one of those videos).
Out.