It turns out there are limits to love after all.
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This was according to form. The Hawks have played on the road with the vim and vigor of a randy traveling salesman, producing a .500 record, only to return home with all the enthusiasm of a long-bored spouse. (Not 24 hours after this loss, they would travel to Nashville and beat the very same Predators 2-1.) The home loss lowered the Hawks to 2-7-0-1 at the United Center this season–two wins, seven losses, no ties, and one moral victory, a category recently added by the National Hockey League to designate overtime losses–and 8-13-2-2 overall, good for 20 points and fourth place in the Central Division, on track to miss the playoffs for the third straight season. Where two years ago I had decided it must be love in some misguided form that brought people out to see such a team, now it seemed to be little more than force of habit. We loyal fans screamed and clapped our way through the national anthem, but the sound we produced was more a murmur than a roar, and during the game the crowd hummed away like an air conditioner in the next room, leaving this most aural of sports–pocks, thwocks, and occasional bumps against the boards–to be punctuated only by the occasional whistle from the stands, a sound no one would mistake for a wolf call.
This trio produced the Hawks’ only scoring chances of the night, but they were plagued with bad luck and worse timing. In the first period, Zhamnov hit Daze with a crisp crossing pass for a point-blank shot on Nashville goalie Tomas Vokoun, but Daze backhanded it into Vokoun’s pads as if he were spreading manure in a bed of roses. Later Amonte skirted along the blue line, attracting the defense, and then hit Daze with a pass closing on the net, but Vokoun kicked Daze’s shot out. Daze forced a one-on-two rush in the third period, when it was still a game at 2-0, and got off a good shot, but Vokoun stopped it and Zhamnov couldn’t get to the rebound in time. Soon after that, a forechecking Zhamnov picked off a pass in the Nashville zone but shot the puck right into Vokoun’s pads. That was as close as the Hawks would come to scoring. More typical was a play late in the second period when Ryan VandenBussche, Chris Herperger, and Bob Probert came skating up the ice on a three-on-two, only to have VandenBussche skate behind the net with no one to pass to (the ever-slovenly Probert couldn’t get open in a touch football game against the Gore family). The Nashville defense calmly skated up and took the puck from him. Later, Michael Nylander hit Dean McAmmond with a lovely centering pass, but McAmmond couldn’t kick it off his skates and onto his stick, and again the defense closed on him. The Hawks didn’t pull their goalie, Jocelyn Thibault, in the closing minutes. Why bother?
The Hawks have a new coach and many new players, but there’s been no revival of optimism. Even a coach with the best system in the world needs talent, as Tim Floyd has discovered. As the third period dwindled away and the boos increased, and the loyalists who stuck around to the final seconds vented their displeasure, one fan in the upper deck called out, “We want the Bulls!” Hey, no need to get desperate.
