Chicago plugging holes

One of the favorites to go all the way in the West, Chicago Blackhawks, suffered a blow to their Cup hopes last week with the regular-season ending injury to star forward Patrick Kane. While replacing Kane is likely impossible, Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman didn’t rest on his laurels for long, but added experienced center Antoine Vermette and in a surprising move Kimmo Timonen, who only recently returned to ice practice after sitting out the beginning of the season because of blood clots. Timonen already featured in the lineup and seems ready to fire with all cylinders.

The impact of Kane missing and the trades are not easy to interpret, so we ran simulations for the rest of the season to find out how would things unfold in alternative reality, and in ours.

Let’s see the rest of the season, without the trades and Kane out:
Chicago Blackhawks W 46 – L 30 – OTL 6 = 98 points

And here’s the current reality with Vermette, Timonen and replacing Ben Smith with Andrew Desjardins:
Chicago Blackhawks W 47 – L 30 – OTL 5 = 99 points


As we see, in the remaining 18 matches the impact of few players is not as deep as many might believe, especially with quality team like Chicago is. Replacements to all but key players are available and can be rotated in case of injuries.

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