The end of the calendar year is upon us and I thought to myself, what better time to reflect on all the wonderful athletic teams from Chicago. After quickly coming to my senses, I realized that I only have good things to say about the Blackhawks. Either way though, here is my run down of Chicago sports right now:
1. The Blackhawks: Where do I begin? The Hawks are.... how do you say in French... Rolling. Their 24-9-3 record has them tied for 1st in the Western Conference with San Jose and they are 7-3 in their last 10 games. Though, what has to most staggering, after an offseason that brought in Marion Hossa, John Madden and other offensive stars, is the continued brilliance of the Hawks defense. They lead the league with only 74 goals given up (which is 1 better than the Eastern Conference Devils and 11 better than the next Western Conference team), are 2nd in PK percentage (87%), Cristobol Huet is 4th in GAA (2.05), and Antti Niemi has been making the most of his playing time by posting 4 shut outs in only 9 games played (tied for the league lead). The one area the Hawks are struggling is on the PP, converting only 18.8% of their chances (good for 14th in the league). It'll be important to get this percentage up as the season progresses and they enter the postseason, but for the time being, I can accept the just plain domination that they dishing out and the continuous stream of W's.
2. The Bears: I'm pretty sure that the combination of the Titanic and Tiger Woods' popularity didn't sink as fast as the Bears have in recent weeks. They enter this week 2-8 in their last 10, beating only the lowly Browns and Rams. Their issues are numerous and wide spread. Offensively, the line needs incredulous amounts of work in general, Cutler needs a QB coach to reemphasize the fundamentals (e.g. throwing the ball away, looking off defenders, and not throwing off your back foot), and Matt Forte needs to refind that killer, hole-hitting instinct that made him great last season (He's had one 100 yard game this season and the Bears are dead last in rush yards/game this season in the league). The only upside has been the development of Johnny Knox, Devin Aromashadu, and Earl Bennett as WRs (maybe this is a sign to finally move Devin Hester by to KR full time). Defensively, things are just as bad. Injuries galore and just overall sloppy play have hurt the Bears. They are usually good to drafting defensive talent in the mid-to-late rounds of the draft but the Cutler trade has someone depleted their selection numbers, so it will be interesting to see what they do in the offseason. Overall, the Bears need a firey coach who will scream at them when wrong and celebrate with them when right. Someone who is old school and doesn't put up with any shit. It's time for the Lovie train to pull into the station and the Bears to go in a new direction. I love Mike Singletary to replace (love the no-nonsense attitude and that he still wears a stopwatch around his neck during games) but we'll see if what happens.
3. The Bulls: Like it wasn't excruciating enough to write about the Bears, now I have to write about the Bulls. They started the season 4-2 and looked promising. Unfortunately, since then, they are 6-15 and dropping faster than it took to write out the public option in the new Healthcare bill. John Salmons has been shooting the ball atrociously and the defense has been lackluster (that's the nicest way I can put it). They have currently lost 8 straight on the road. Joakim Noah put it best when he said that the team "definitely have a lot of soul searching to do." There has been no fire in this team all year. It looks like they just go out there and play flat every game, which is just plain not going to win you games. Del Negro hasn't done anything to demonstrate that he has any idea how to coach, especially after allowing the Bulls to blow their 35 point lead to Sacramento and lose by 4. After watching all this, I say, much like the Bears, its time to clean house. Get rid of Del Negro and a number of the players. Keep Rose, Noah, Gibson, James Johnson, and Kirk and just start over. There was a very interesting articles on ESPN.com recently regarding how the Blackhawks are slowly overtaking the Bulls for popularity in Chicago (article).
Ok, that's enough for now. I'll get to some winter meeting deals and such in regards to the White Sox and Cubbies sometimes in the next day or 2. Have a great holidays to all those out there in internet land.
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