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Are The Hawks Hogtied With Huet?

by David Morris on 10/20/09 at 10:29 AM ET
Comments (12)

Many thanks to Paul for the invitation to do this blog…hoping Hawk fans, friends and foes will join us here at Kukla’s Korner. Okay, as little about me as possible, as this is all about talking Hawkey. Born in Ottawa, Canada in the mid-fifties, and traveling the world since then. I remember watching my heroes on a flickering black and white RCA Victor—Bobby, Stan, Ken, Glenn, Moose, Pierre, Nesterenko, Reggie Fleming and the gang, coached by Rudy Pilous—beating the Wings to win the Cup. Boy, has that been forever.

The Blackhawks goalie-go-round is back in heavy rotation. When Cristobal Huet gave up two game losing soft goals Saturday night, October 17th, in front of an already trigger-happy United Center sellout crowd, he might have sealed his fate as forecast by the soothsayers.

Or maybe not. 

Chicago management anointed Huet as the ‘go to guy’ this year—at least for, as Coach Joel Quenneville said in a recent Daily Herald interview, “The early part”. So, presumably Monsieur H gets an elastic rope, or maybe a bungee cord, to wear around his neck until he figures out what it means to be a Number One netminder. In any case, with goalie struggles rampant around the NHL in the early part of the season, can we call Huet a victim of the current epidemic of ‘Twine Flu’? Plainly said, the Hawks don’t have a lot of options except to hope Cristo gets better.
They might have the ‘Antti-dote’ in a certain Finnish netminder named Niemi, but winning a few games does not he a savior make. GMs play Russian roulette when making deals involving pipe patrollers; Cristo’s contract probably cost Dale Tallon his job. Current Hawkey honcho Stan Bowman hasn’t been able to make a swap that swabs the festering wound which has been Chicago’s goalie situation since Ed Belfour escaped to Dallas. 

Left to right: When Glenn Hall snagged Stanley’s silver in 1961, most Hawks fans weren’t even a glimmer in their father’s eye; Tony Esposito blames himself for the Hawks’ ‘71 Cup Final loss; Eddie Belfour—close, but no champagne in Chicago.

Snapshot: Do Huet’s Stats Tell The Real Story?

The stats spin positive. According to Oilers webzine Copper And Blue, and HockeyReference.com , “The (Almost) Top Fifty Goalies Over the Past Three Seasons”, ranked Huet seventh among goaltenders who played at least 60 games over the past three years. This, just behind Tim Thomas, Roberto Luongo and Martin Brodeur; and ahead of Henrik Lundqvist, Steve Mason, Marc-Andre Fleury and Chris Osgood. 
Since his arrival in Montreal, Huet had kept a Habs team with more questions than answers at least within reach of playoff respectability. The confirmation of Carey Price as The Franchise, however, had made him expendable, the highlight reels notwithstanding.

Huet’s critics in Montreal had one word:  ‘Consistency’—specifically, the lack thereof.
When Tallon signed Huet for four years at over five and a half million dollars per, Cristobal’s numbers apparently spoke louder. He was coming off a stunning end of season stint with the Washington Capitals : 11-2, a 1.63 GAA, 2 shutouts and a .936 save percentage. In a hot UFA market, reportedly wooed by the Capitals and Red Wings as well as the Hawks, Cristo cashed in as he approached his 33rd birthday.

But performance hasn’t met expectation.
Citizens of Hawk Nation are ready to frog-march The Count of Monte Cristo to the guillotine, judgment having been rendered by the mob.  From the gnashing of teeth to outright xenophobia, a roar emanates from the bowels of the United Center to the nerve endings of Hawkey Faithful. It is outrage at the betrayal perpetrated by ‘The Man From France’, as Chicago broadcaster and ex-Hawk Eddie Olczyk playfully dubbed him.

It matters little to the angry masses that Monsieur Huet formed half of a goaltender tandem that took Les Éperviers Noirs from 88 to 104 points last year;  5th best defensively in the NHL; from long time losers to cocky contenders. And that in the Western Conference Final against the hated Wings, Huet was capable of remarkable acrobatic saves worthy of Cirque Du Soleil. But that is so yesterday, Mesdames et Messieurs, and zat ees le showbiz du hockey, hein?

His teammates say what they should: after all, hockey is a team game, and ‘win as a team, lose as a team’ is the maxim. Captain Jonathan Toews makes a noble statement to The Chicago Tribune , stoicism resonating in every syllable. “It’s pretty unfair. There’s way more pressure than there should be.”
But Mr. Toews understates the tsunami of pressure that is the back story of the franchise.  With just three Stanley Cups since their 1926 NHL debut, Hawks fans’ hunger for ultimate victory is teased by a taste most have never experienced, and accompanied by a fatalism that drips with gallows humor.

Back in March, I wrote to the venerable Stan Fischler, whose coffee table book “The Chicago Black Hawks” , an early seventies chronicle of the powerhouse that almost won another Stanley Cup, had evoked vivid memories. Stan regaled me with recollections of being at the celebration after the ’61 Cup win and saucy stories about Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita. When asked about the Hawks’ challenges as they prepared to compete in the 2009 playoffs, Stan cited two issues. “Discipline. And that contract for Huet. A disaster.”

In retrospect, I wonder if Fischler knew at that time that Chicago was trying to trade Huet.

‘The Maven’ being one who tells it like it is, his perspective chilled my hopes that the Hawks would finally drink champagne from the silver bucket after almost half a century. Fischler has seen them come and go since before the Original Six, and to name one man as the weak link with such certainty was no less than the kiss of death. 
 
The ‘ Hawkification’ of Huet had been less than smooth. His contract barely executed, Cristobal had stumbled, his bid to wrest the Number One position from Nikolai Khabibulin flattened by The Bulin Wall. When the Hawks soared into the postseason, Huet was the forgotten man until the last stand in Detroit.

As summer came and Nik waved ‘da svidanya’ to the Second City, the tsunami of fan trepidation surged, stoked by the skeptics in the hockey media.  There is nothing prognosticators of disaster love more than to see their scenario play out, and there is no more heated dialogue than the trash talk of hockey fans on the Internet. Many wanted Huet to fail, and they would be ready with YouTube replays and verbal volleys to rip him when he did.

Cristobal shattered in spectacular fashion for the gallery Saturday night. First, Toby Petersen fired a whiffle ball from the suburbs that crept through Huet’s helpless form. Then Stephane Robidas crowned this Theater of the Absurd with a bizarre goal that confirmed for all those who doubted Huet, that their nightmare was reality.

The calls to trade him for a bag of pucks being the most civil of the vitriol heaped, Huet tried post-game to face his accusers with proper contrition. Quoted by The Daily Herald’s Tim Sassone:  “I can blame only myself.  The third goal (by Petersen) is bad. It can’t happen. Right now I feel bad because I feel I let the team down. I know I can play way better than that.”

It was not enough. The legions of virtual GMs, armed to the teeth with proposals, insisted that yesterday was none too soon for Cristo to be liquidated. 

But fantasy hockey being just that, the highly paid braintrusts who run these multi-billion dollar sports conglomerates must deal in less emotional terms. 

So What Are The Options? 

With no easy button to push, the Blackhawks bosses might convene in the offices of W. Rockwell Wirtz, commiserating over a stiff drink and a fine cigar while they ponder the alternatives. A little calm during the storm could be just the ticket, and Joel Quenneville’s a man who enjoys a good stogie. Watching his goalie get smoked, Q’s hair can’t get any whiter. But he might remember there’s a reason why Mike Keenan lost all his in Chicago.

The truth is blunt:  few potential trade partners are available, and Huet’s contract dissuades those who are.

Talk of the waiver wire has surfaced. “Get him off the books”, the ‘experts’ say. The echoes of ‘no takers for Khabby’ are still fresh.

Stan Bowman might lay out the options with the precision one expects from a Notre Dame graduate in Finance and Computer Applications. If the numbers work, ‘the asset’ can be moved; if not, Quenneville can be told to make do.

For Cristobal Huet, the stakes are much higher. The legacy of NHL goalies is strewn with promising starters who flashed and fizzled. How quickly they fade:  where are Marc Denis and Emmanuel Fernandez , not so long ago touted as the standard bearers of their respective franchises? Irony abounds. One who fell from grace after solid seasons in Detroit and St. Louis, Manny Legace, consigned to a tryout with the neighborhood AHL team, the Wolves, is being mentioned by some bloggers as no-risk replacement for Cristobal should Huet be banished.

The thumbs down appears to be unanimous, at least among the fan tribe and hockey scribes. After all, what is five and a half million dollars a year to the Wirtz Corporation? An entry in the ledger, a cost of doing business.  A windfall for Huet and his family, the pay of the mercenary whose services are rendered redundant because he does not have the killer instinct that satiates the audience.

Maybe, as some—like long time Hawks observer Mike Kiley—suggest, Cristo just isn’t tough enough to make it in Chicago.

The NHL is a cruel place. Its gladiators have to love the bloody thrill of humiliating the opponent. They must have the skin of a rhinoceros, and an imperviousness to disdain. In contrast, Huet is a quiet man, perhaps a philosophical man; perhaps too sensitive to overcome the anxiety that plagues the goalie every time a shot is launched in his direction.

Unjust as it may seem—for there is no justice in hockey, only winners and losers—Huet may very well find himself becoming a footnote in Hawk history. Just another goalie who came to the Windy City with an unusual name, but in the end making no more impact than a Thibault, a Skorodenski or a Pang. 

-DM

PS: A little more about yours truly…Hawkey People will know me from my banter on some of their favorite Hawks blogs, and my weekly Blackhawks column at Chicago Sports Then & Now; motorcycle people know me from my magazine work at Ultimate Motorcycling and my book MotoStars.Thanks for reading, and looking forward to your thoughts, be they kudos or brickbats. Hey, hockey’s a contact sport, right?

—
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared.
- P. J. Plauger

Filed in: NHL Teams, Chicago Blackhawks | KK Hockey | Permalink
 

Comments

UPDATE: Antti Niemi will get the start in goal on Wednesday night against the Vancouver Canucks. Coach Joel Quenneville announced the decision after practice on Tuesday.

“He earned the opportunity,” Quenneville said. “He’s played well. I think at one point in the year, the competition from behind was something we were looking for and you have stretches where you are playing well and you earn the chance to play be it for health or the way you’re going and that’s why he is playing.”

http://espn.go.com/chicag…/columns/blog?name=rogers

Posted by David Morris from Ottawa, Canada on 10/20/09 at 01:52 PM ET

Wonderful article - or was it a book?

Posted by Allan Martel from Ottawa on 10/20/09 at 02:08 PM ET

Terrific blog…bet you’ll get feedback on these brillant comments.

You’d make a great college professor! Those future adults are hockey-crazed and puck-drunk from birth! ;o)

Keep up the great work David!

Dave from Gatineau

Posted by David Remillard from Gatineau Republic of Quebec on 10/20/09 at 02:09 PM ET

Mr. Martel, thanks for your comment—in fact, it IS a book, and Hollywood producers are already calling.

Titles like “Les Miserables” are being bandied about…with Cristo Huet as Jean Valjean.

Posted by David Morris from Ottawa, Canada on 10/20/09 at 02:13 PM ET

You get a one liner from Martel…. I get a book review…. how does that work?

btw: Pang has great ears.

Cheers

Posted by Scot Loucks from Ottawa/Toronto on 10/20/09 at 03:39 PM ET

Mr. Loucks, as one of the resident sages at Maple Leafs Hot Stove, what say you to the rumors being stoked that The Burke will invite Mr Huet to shift his suitcases from Hawktown to Hogtown?

Cheers!

Posted by David Morris from Ottawa, Canada on 10/20/09 at 03:58 PM ET

Mr. Morris;

Zero cap room in the land of the Leafs…. but sending Toskala packing to the minors will clear up 4m, and his contract is done at the end of the year.

Nope, no goalie movement in Toronto this year… they get to play with what they got.

btw: My younger brother Kurt has decided he is a hawks fan this year

Cheers

Posted by Scot Loucks from Ottawa/Toronto on 10/20/09 at 09:55 PM ET

Welcome to the family, David.  That was a fun read!

Love the shot of the puck ringing off Cristo’s noggin.

The Hawks’ defense definitely have their work cut out for them this year.

Posted by Hippy Dave from Portland by way of Detroit on 10/21/09 at 12:17 AM ET

Dave, many thanks, sir! San Francisco is one of my favorite cities, by the way.

Remember the Seals?

I saw Gilles Meloche backstop them back in 1976 at Madison Square Garden against a terrible Rangers team in one of the most boring hockey games in memory.

Ironic because ex-Hawk Meloche was a good and underappreciated goalie—given the clubs in front of him—who has become an even better goalie coach. For one Stanley Cup winning Marc Andre Fleury, to be exact.

But Monsieur Huet may need more than coaching at this point.

And yes, that Hawks defense will have to play like they have an empty net behind them.

Cheers!

Posted by David Morris from Ottawa, Canada on 10/21/09 at 06:42 AM ET

The Seals…with the awesome white hockey skates, courtesy of Charlie O.

Yeah, Huet has gotten a tough row to hoe, but after his performance in the shootout vs. Colorado, you’d think people would be more likely to cut him a little slack.

Posted by Forklift from Section 314 in the United Center on 10/23/09 at 10:52 AM ET

Fork, thanks for your customary insight…I suspect though, that cutting Cristo is probably more on Hawkfans’ agenda, than cutting him some slack.

Ah, the perils of showbusiness.

Monsieur Huet has apparently been texting his countryman Phillippe Petit in the hope of getting some tips to improve his tightwire act. And/or advice on a less stressful career choice.

Posted by David Morris from Ottawa, Canada on 10/23/09 at 11:02 AM ET

Scot Loucks is an idiot.  He knows squat but he thinks he knows all.
He also thought the Leafs were better this year than last and last year he made bets all around that the Leafs would make the playoffs.  How did that work out for ya?
Don’t listen to Loucks, he is an ass.

Posted by Jackass from Tronna on 11/06/09 at 01:28 PM ET

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