Arizona Coyotes Theoretical Playoff Series: Chicago Blackhawks

The Arizona Coyotes are not in the playoffs, but the first round is nearly complete. One series still ongoing is St. Louis vs Chicago, who play their winner take all Game 7 in St. Louis Monday night. Interestingly enough, the last team to do away with Chicago before a game seven; the Arizona Coyotes.

The Arizona Coyotes are not part of the playoff festivities, but the show continues on.

With breakdowns of eliminated Minnesota and Los Angeles already out their for your enjoyment, Howlin’ Hockey is turning to the elite Western Conference playoff contenders to size up how they would have fared against the Arizona Coyotes, should the Coyotes have made the playoffs.

One of these elite teams, the Chicago Blackhawks, is a particularly interesting matchup because of some of the storylines between the two teams, most prominently Antoine Vermette‘s assistance in gaining Chicago a third Stanley Cup in five years and Chicago’s regular season dominance over Arizona.

Let’s dive into the season series, look at some notable stats and the coaching matchup, then go line by line to see who would come out on top if Chicago were to have met Arizona in a 2015 playoff scenario.

Season Series Review, Standout Statistics and Coaching

The season series was not the prettiest of records the Coyotes touted this season against Western Conference opponents, showing an 0-2-1 record against CHI. Arizona only managed one point out of six possible over the two team’s three meetings. The specifics are as follows in chronological fashion:

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The first game of three, the Yotes and Hawks met just before New Years in a competitive game but ultimately falling short, 7-5. Shane Doan netted his second career hat trick, while the other two goals came from Connor Murphy and Zbynek Michalek. Chicago power play goals came from Duncan Keith, Artem Anisimov and Artemi Panarin. The three other Chicago goals came from Andrew Desjardins, Jonathon Toews (a shorthanded empty-netter) and Patrick Kane. The game a had a laundry list of penalties, although Chicago couldn’t stay out of the penalty box in the third period.

Game 2 was even closer than Game 1 with Arizona falling just short of Chicago at home in Glendale, 5-4. Chicago goals came from Marian Hossa, Toews twice (both at even-strength and shorthanded), Patrick Kane and former Coyote Michal Rozsival. Arizona’s goals came on the power play from Oliver Ekman-Larsson and another PPG from Mikkel Boedker. Jordan Martinook scored the third goal and Shane Doan the 4th talley. Again, the penalty sheet for this game was longer than the score sheet.

Game 3

was the most painful game of the season, or at least for me. Going to college in Chicago for the past 9 months, I looked forward to this game all school year. And then the puck was actually dropped at center ice at the United Center. Things went downhill from there.

Richard Panik

scored at 5:16 in the first period.

Photo Credit: Alex Temes /

I buried my head in hands.

Then Jonathon Toews scored his 3rd shorty against Arizona in three games.

I looked up into the rafters at the Hawks 6 Stanley Cup banners.

Patrick Kane scored once and Andrew Ladd twice in the third, all of which were PPGs.

I hid under my seat.

Connor Murphy scored at 3:57 in the third, at which point I was the only person in the stadium cheering, mostly out of frustration. Andrew Desjardins notched one more Chicago goal shortly after Murphy’s and Brad Richardson scored a futile goal at 13:27. Antoine Vermette also was ejected on an admittedly dangerous but unintentional hit midway through the second period. The penalty sheet followed a similar theme as the first two games and Chelsea Dagger is still the theme song to every single one of my nightmares.

An overarching theme of these games was the massive amount of penalties. In total, the Coyotes amassed 51 minutes of penalties over just 3 games, 20 minutes of which were for ejections via 2 10-minute game (one by Oliver Ekman-Larsson in the OT period of Game 2 and one from the previously noted Vermette altercation). That averaged out to 17 minutes of penalty time a game, which is far too much man-advantage time to give nearly any team, let alone the 2nd best PP team in the NHL.

On the flip side, Chicago committed more penalties against Arizona than most teams, but Arizona’s 20th ranked PP only was able to convert a few times. So a main key to a series would be to stay out of the penalty box so Chicago has to work to get their goals as opposed to having them handed out as freebies.

Another important piece of information to note is the goaltending over these three games. Arizona’s goaltending woes are well-noted among Coyotes fans, but the story here is that we played Chicago twice while Mike Smith was recovering from his core injury and the last game was on the backside of a doubleheader against St. Louis, where the Coyotes blew an early lead in front of Smitty.

I can’t say in any form of certainty that Mike Smith would have won any of those games for Arizona, but I can say the dynamic of the game would have been different. Louis Domingue is a good, young goalie. But he played against one of the best teams and largest fanbases in the league with no experience of such an atmosphere. Smith has experience in the United center and against large crowds. So one can’t help but wonder if a health Mike Smith in a playoff series could have made these two teams more competitive.

One last thing to cover before direct line comparisons is the coaching. Dave Tippett‘s north-south style is flexible to a point. He can manipulate his line to try and get the best out of the talent he is working with.

But Joel Quenneville takes line blending to a whole new level. On top of his give and go zone entry style, Quenneville is not afraid to separate his star players and mold them into lines with unconventional grinders. He will move his players up and down the line list every shift if it means winning games. The craziest part of all in his coaching; it works.

Now on to the line match ups. Since Quenneville is so slap happy with line changes, these lines are what the Blackhawks most recently started as. If the lines are wrong, blame Quenneville.

First Lines:

Arizona Coyotes: Tanguay-Vermette-Duclair

Chicago Blackhawks: Shaw-Toews-Kane

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Alex Tanguay, Antoine Vermette and Anthony Duclair are in no way equal (in terms of scoring, raw talent, or skating) better than Jonathon Toews and Patrick Kane.

Now we could feasibly argue whether any of those three are better than Andrew Shaw, but for Shaw’s purposes with Chicago, he’s essentially as good as Kane and Toews. Shaw brings the best out of any line mates he’s given and gives 100% effort all of the time. He also has a knack for saying and doing some some unintelligent things on TV; whoops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Winner: Blackhawks.

Second Line:

Arizona Coyotes: Rieder-Hanzal-Sekac

Chicago Blackhawks: Panarin-Anisimov-Teravainen

If Artemi Panarin and Jiri Sekac were not on the lines and comparable talents were inserted, this is a very competitive matchup.

However that is not the case.

Panarin is the preeminent Calder Trophy choice despite not really being a rookie in my eyes (but rules are rules and he’s technically a rookie so…), Artem Anisimov has been stellar this season after being acquired from Columbus for Brandon Saad and Teuvo Teravainen is the next wave of Blackhawks talent moving forward.

On the other side, Sekac is a wandering forward looking for a stable home and finding no such thing. Martin Hanzal and Tobias Rieder are both qualified players, but the downside of Sekac and the tremendous upside of Panarin is just too much to bare.

Winner: Blackhawks.

Third Line:

Arizona Coyotes: Domi-Richardson-Doan

Chicago Blackhawks: Ladd-Kruger-Hossa

I’ve been writing over the past two weeks that Arizona’s forward depth lines are pretty much some of the best in the league.

But they don’t matchup against Chicago, at all.

Max Domi is a great young talent, but Andrew Ladd is a proven talent. Marcus Kruger, in my eyes, is just more playoff proven and qualified than Brad Richardson and as much as every Coyotes fan loves Shane Doan, Marian Hossa is, to quote B’Hawks Twitter, a “Demigod”; an ageless wonder akin to the likes of Jaromir Jagr.

Winner: Blackhawks.

Fourth Line:

Arizona Coyotes: Martinook-Gordon-Chipchura

Defensive Pairings:

Arizona Coyotes: Ekman-Larsson-Murphy, Connauton–Michalek, Dahlbeck–Stone

Chicago Blackhawks:Keith-Hjalmarsson, van Riemsdyk-Seabrook, Gustafsson–Rundblad

Do we really have to have this conversation?

Like, do we really?

Oliver Ekman-Larsson is at the same caliber as Duncan Keith, Nicklas Hjalmarsson and Brent Seabrook. That’s 3 against 1. On top of that, the 3 remaining Hawks d-men are arguably better than the Coyotes defensemen, except Zbynek Michalek. I would expect a lot of goals from one team, and not a lot from the other. Wanna guess who gives up the most goals?

Winner: Blackhawks, by more than enough.

Goaltending:

Arizona Coyotes: Smith, Domingue

Chicago Blackhawks: Crawford, Darling

I mentioned at the beginning of the article how Louis Domingue didn’t handle his three starts against Chicago too well. That says a lot in this section, particularly because I’ve been consistently saying Domingue is a superior backup than a prospective opponent’s backup.

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That is not the case here. Scott Darling is an NHL starter in my eyes. He carried Chicago in the Nashville series last postseason and who knows when he could get the call again. He is the best back up, next to Antti Raanta, in the NHL.

And I know I can blow a lot of hot air over Mike Smith’s 2012 win over the Hawks in the first round but this is a different Corey Crawford. This is the real deal Corey Crawford. A hot Crawford is nearly unbeatable. I can’t see either Arizona goaltender out dueling the Hawk’s tends in a theoretical postseason matchup this year or even next year.

Winner: Blackhawks.

Scratches:

Arizona Coyotes: Dauphin, Vitale, Grant, Grossman, Tinordi

Chicago Blackhawks: Fleischmann, Mashinter, Svedberg, Rozsival, Erhoff

Now since Quenneville is so crazy with the line changes and mixes up his roster game by game, we also have to give heed to the scratched roster players. Again, Chicago takes an edge. Assuming the injuries that had healed and Arizona were playing with its best possible roster, Laurent Dauphin and Alex Grant are decent scratches in terms of solid players to have in your back pocket. A healthy Joe Vitale falls in the same category.

But the scratched (or suspended) defensive depth in Nicklas Grossman and Jarred Tinordi (no, I won’t go after him for his suspension this time) are in no fashion comparable to any of Chicago’s pairings or scratched d-men.

Tomas Fleischmann deserves ice time and if he weren’t on the Blackhawks, he would get it. Brandon Mashinter is a decent but mistake prone rookie and the Hawks are currently carrying 9 d-men, all of which can play at a NHL capacity in one way or another. But hey, on the bright side, one team is carrying more d-men than Arizona!

Winner: Blackhawks.

And now some extracurricular matchups for fun:

-What if the uniforms had any bearing on who would win the series?

I feel bad for putting down Coyotes fans this whole article long, but again, Chicago is superior. Beyond the logos, which I won’t delve into because I don’t want to debate the sensitive matter of using Native Americans as professional sports mascots, the Hawks color combos and jersey designs are simply superior.

The striping at the hip, the shoulder patch and even the socks just look fantastic on ice. The only thing Arizona can beat Chicago on jersey-wise is that the Kachina (for all intents and purposes is a third jersey) is much better than the Stadium Series garbage that the Hawks rolled out with in January.

Winner: Blackhawks.

-What if the local baseball teams had any bearing on the theoretical series winner?

Pick your poison. Both teams are better than the D-Backs in pretty much every way except in the first basemen category. Sorry.

Winner: Cubs and White Sox both (I’m predicting a “Red Line World Series” by the way).

Series Winner: Hawks in 5 games.

I hate to admit it, but Chicago would thump us if the Arizona Coyotes had made the big dance and drawn a trip to the United Center. They are better than the Coyotes in every phase of the game; offense, defense and goaltending.

Next: Coyotes Need Strome To Emulate Tavares, Toews And Become Elite

Heck, their scratches are better than Arizona’s.

Now in the future, the Coyotes have a much better outlook. As Chicago’s cap situation becomes even more dire, their minor league system is middling at best and their older players begin to head for the doors, Arizona’s youth are rising and they have one of the most flexible salary situations in the league.

Look for this series in the future, and look for Arizona to be far more competitive than we would have been had we played Chicago this spring.

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