First off, I apologize for not updating sooner. Four games into the
season and already it feels like a runaway train. After spending a year
on the more laid-back and casual baseball beat, it's taken a little
while to adjust to the series of sprints that make-up an NHL season.



So as I sit in Denver wondering what happened to the foot of snow that
fell here yesterday, I figure it's a good time for some observations as
we officially close the book on the first week of the season. Four
down, 78 to go and at this rate, it will only be 78.



** In what is starting to become a sad tradition, winger Eric Daze is
sidelined already with what the team is calling a "muscle pull" in his
back. Daze hasn't looked right since early in the preseason and when he
had to come off the ice early in pre-game warm-ups last Friday, the
question wasn't whether Daze will be sideline, but for how long.



Daze has already had three surgeries on his back and few believe that
the current pain he is experiencing isn't somehow related to his past
problems. Daze said himself in training camp that he's not sure if his
back can hold up to the grind and abuse of an NHL season and the longer
he is out, the question of another surgery will be visited. At some
point, he and his wife will have to decide how much longer he can put
himself through this and not risk being a cripple when he leaves the
game.



Daze is only 30 years old and should be in the prime of his career.
Last season's lockout and the fact that the Hawks hold an option for
next season means Daze could potentially be out a lot of money. When
healthy, he's as pure a goalscorer as there is. But it appears as
though his healthy days are going to be few and far between. For a
class act like Daze, that is truly a shame.



** Anytime Nikolai Khabibulin wants to show us why we all salivated
over him when he signed with the Hawks is fine by me. Through the first
four games, Khabibulin has looked more like Murray Bannerman than a
Stanley Cup winner.



Maybe he's still getting adjusted to his new equipment, maybe it's the
rust from not playing much last season, maybe it's the faster pace of
the game and the new angles that he hasn't mastered yet. Whatever it
is, whatever hopes the Hawks have of playing in the spring rest on his
well-chiseled physique. He doesn't seem to be worried?yet?so maybe no
one else should be. Yet.



** This is the time of year when the most popular quote in NHL rooms is
"It's still early." It is early, no question. But when is it no longer
early? If four games is too early, is 10. Or is early defined not by
games played but rather by points behind...either a division leader or
playoff spot. The Hawks have played four games, that's still early.
They are four points behind Detroit. Ok, still early. But at the end of
the month, they play Detroit three times and Nashville once. Once those
games are played, it's no longer early and, depending on the results,
it could quickly become very late.



** I'm still a big fan of the new NHL after four games. It's incredible
how well teams have adjusted and it's only going to get better. Hawks
coach Trent Yawney talked yesterday about how defensemen have to change
the way they play. In the past, they were perceived as being "soft" if
they didn't take the body hard and try to punish forwards. Now, it's
more of a thinking man's game and Yawney said there is no disgrace for
defensemen in letting the offensive player get around them and then
trying to sweep the puck away with their sticks. Yawney said it also
may make more sense for defensemen to let forwards retrieve the puck
first on dump-ins and then play a positional game or try to poke check
the puck loose, instead of being hammered by unimpeded forwards.



** Another interesting observation from Yawney is this: The way the
game is played now, and assuming it doesn't revert back to the bad old
days. Teams are going to have to re-think the kind of players they
draft. You wonder if teams would have drafted the same players they did
had they known how fast the league would be or how much it's changed.



That's all for now, first long trip of the season takes us to one of my
favorite cities in the league Sunday-Vancouver. Hopefully I'll have
something new and fresh from there early next week. Until then.



For more Blackhawk coverage go to:



http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/hockey/blackhawks/

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