Quote:
Originally Posted by hawksfan50
The season was lost once Wirtz allowed the NHL to schedule the Hawks on a 9 game road trip ... We started out ok but as the menace of that long road trip came into the players' consciences by about the 3rd week of January as the looming hurdle to overcome--they go and do the big FAIL ---starting with a 5-2 loss in Nashville followed by a 3-1 loss to Nashville in Chicago and then a tough OT loss to VAN on the first game of the 9 game road trip followed by that 8-4 fiasco loss in EDM---already psychologically "down" fom these 4 straight lossses they STILL faced 7 more staright road games and lost 5 more in a row...before finally beating NYE in New York and CLBS in CLBS to end that segment of 11 games ...THAT is where our season went hayywire..and the fault was on both ROCKY WIRTZ for allowing such monstrous scheduling so he could line his pockets with other UC revenues while the Hawks were away and on Coach Q for preparing his team to mentally poorly to handle this tough stretch of games ...We went into the 9 game trip off 2 losses to Nashvile then proceeded to lose 7 straight more games before fINALLY pulling ourselves out of the "downer" doldrums to re-compete and win...THen we played mediocre till about the beginning of March when we woke up to compete hard again...Of course we lost Toews down the home stretch in March and April but we managed to do ok... SO our season was ruind more by the scheduling "hurdle" we knew we had to overcome but could not -we failed to rise to the challenge ...
This season thank goodness no 9 game road trip --but the NHL still gives us no breaks as we face 16 back to backs --tied for the highest in the league --whereas many other teams have it easier --eg. SJ has ONLY 9 back to backs...
Still i think we prefer greater back to backs than the one lump huge obstacle of 9 straight on the road (even with back to chicago breaks in between)--it is more that knowledge you know it takes more to win on the round and to go 9 straight on the road is an enormous TASK to achieve success and so a team can easily have a mindset of "it willbe a loss most likely" and just FAIL on the games in that huge T
TASK ..
OUR SEASDON WAS LOST when the schedule came out. We put off failure for a long time but once the tASK ahead got close we started beating ourselves in our own minds thinking of the enormity of the Task ahead...
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Regular season schedule means squat in the playoffs, especially this year when seeding in the West meant nothing. You're acting like the Hawks didn't make the playoffs.
It had nothing to do with pathetic PP/PK/Crawford play against Phoenix.
The season was lost when,
1. Hossa was injured
2. Coaches failed to fix special teams
3. Crawford laid an egg in the playoffs
Regular season had little to do with this.
