GREAT, now I have your attention.
The intarweb has been abuzz with talk of newest Blackhawk center, Marcus Krüger, and probably for good reason. This season has been full of terrible let downs for Chicago fans, after winning the Stanley Cup last June, and we all need something to look forward to. The resulting Stanley Cup salary cap purge upset many fans even though we all knew, or should have known, it was coming. The signing of Marty Turco was suppose to lighten the burden of losing Antti Niemi to the turdly Sharks, but Turco has not been the important piece we thought he would be. The Hammer signing, though storied and dramatic, was important but he has been quietly and under the radar. El Capitan started very slow this season, and Deuce has his head firmly jammed up his tuchus for a majority of the year. New guys Stalberg, Skille, Dowell, Johnson, and Leddy have all done serviceable jobs, but didn't quite fill the shoes of their predecessors. Jack Skillington brought us Michael Frolik and Alex Salak, but we have yet to get anything special out of those two, yet. The trade from Stromboli brought us a game winning goal the other night, but he too has been up and down. The only real nice surprises have been the jump in production from Shooter, the 36 points of Bryan Bickell, and the unexpected success of Corey Crawford, which brings me to my initial point:
Marcus Krüger will disappoint you all.
Before I get a hundred nasty twatter messages, and a boatload of angrily typed Facebook comments, hear me out. When Kruger steps out on the ice, tonight, wearing his brand new #16 jersey, he will probably show some flash and talent. What he will NOT do, is become the next Chicago Hockey Messiah, aka Jonathan Toews. He is twenty years old, and has played European style hockey his whole life. It is going to take him time to adjust, and he might even have some awful games before he gets acclimated. This is what young, European, 5th round draft picks do. They take some time to adjust to the NHL. It wouldn't be the NHL if everyone could step right in, at 20, and do it. You're not going to see Toews, or Kane numbers out of him, maybe EVER. He has the tools to become a smaller, David Bolland, and that's not too shabby, folks. We should expect that he will get out muscled in his own zone a bit, but make some smart, and maybe even dazzling, plays in the offensive end. Young, smallish players can usually keep up offensively, but take some time to get use to the bigger and rougher NHL, not to mention the smaller ice surface. He's not going to be able to dance around people like Chris Pronger or Niklas Kronwall, so he's likely to be planted onto his doopa a time or two. Lets face it, if he was best thing since the "Slap Chop", StanBo and Quenneville never would have let him board that plane back to Sweden, in training camp. All this is fine and well, and I think the guy has some solid NHL talent, but lets all set our expectations at a reasonable level, before this bandwagon even gets-a-rollin, cowboys and girls.
Now, you can all now hit delete, on those hate laced messages. Remember, sarcasm; It's alive and well right here. I'll leave you on a slightly better note. Here is Krüger's first Blackhawks interview, this morning. Go Hawks!
Lastly, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In the crossover version, Jason Vorhees was Kruger's enemy, so all this "he should wear #13" jazz is just plain dumb. Come up with something that is actually CLEVER.
