This time of year always makes me itchy for a couple of reasons.  One, because I hate talking about human beings as if they were slabs of meat; commodities to be traded on the open market. The other reason is because inevitably the Hawks will end up getting rid of someone I have grown attached to.  For instance, last year about this time it was James Wisniewski.  Then over the summer it was Matt Walker, Martin Havlat, and Nikolai Khabibulin (in that order of care).

The Blackhawks spend a lot on marketing players — cute/funny promos, the ‘One Goal’ ads, and personal interest stories — until we are made to feel that we know them and that they are family of sorts.  Then they go and trade some of them and I guess we’re just supposed to forget them.  The weird thing is, they keep people they shouldn’t and let go of those that were fundamental to the team.  For instance, I know I keep harping on the Matt Walker thing, but it’s important that the Hawks and the fans in general understand why it was such a mistake to let him go.  Matt Walker represented that heavy ‘D’ that the Blackhawks so desperately needed last year; the kind of ‘D’ that I thought they were trying to cultivate.  The pairing of Matt Walker with Niklas Hjalmarsson during the playoffs was brilliant.  Those two were instrumental in the Hawks getting as far as they did against some very tough teams. And yet, when the season ended Walker was quietly sent packing.  I honestly don’t know that his loss even sent a ripple through the sports pages, but I can tell you this girl had her guts ripped out on that one.  I started to wonder if I had only imagined Walker there; if I had been the only one to see how instrumental he was to the Hawks’ playoff success.

Now here we are again with the trade deadline looming and what do I hear?  That Kris Versteeg should be dangled as bait for a good d-man trade.  Well, if the Hawks had held on to Matt Walker, they wouldn’t need another Niklas Hjalmarsson-type d-man now would they?  Better yet, had the Hawks unloaded Brian Campbell like other fans and myself begged them to do over the summer, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.  But again, instead of looking to dump Campbell, they’re trying to get rid of Cam Barker.

Ok, I understand that.  Barker hasn’t been doing so well, but he’s been doing much better than Brian Campbell.  Campbell has always been a disappointment.  He had what 45 assists last year?  Well, I guess when all you can do is pass from the blue line, yes, you’re going to have that many “assists,” but how much of a help was he really?  It doesn’t mean you’re any good though, especially when you turn over the puck constantly, can’t hit, can’t block shots, and can’t take hits.  So I think most fans would agree he takes up way too much cap space.  And while I normally wouldn’t lobby for a player to go, in Brian Campbell’s case I will make an exception.  Why?  Because he doesn’t even appear to be trying, and I just can’t respect that.  At this point, he’s just collecting a paycheck.  Yes, this time of year the Hawks’ management has to make some tough decisions.  Whether or not to keep Brian Campbell is not one of them.

Let’s look at the run-down shall we?  The Hawks’ injury report looks more like the team roster with Brent Seabrook, Jonathan Toews, Ben Eager, Adam Burish, and Marian Hossa all having been sidelined.  Fans have also been divided between Martin Havlat/Dale Tallon supporters and the no-need-to-dwell-on-the-pasters.  And while Jonathan Toews took a nasty hit a few weeks ago resulting in a fairly serious concussion, Toews was blamed for not seeing oncoming traffic, while Toews’ hit-man Canucks’ Willie Mitchell has all but escaped scrutiny.  Meanwhile, Andrew Ladd has been skewered by sports pundits across the Internet for his “dirty” hit on the Habs’ Matt D’Agostini.

Oh but wait, there’s more.  Recent acquisitions — Jordan Hendry, Andrew Ebbett, Tomas Kopecky, John Madden — have been less than the promised spectacularness, and have yet to even gel with the rest of the team.  And let’s not forget that Cristobal Huet has had an even less ceremonious start this year than last year when he was also booed in his own stadium.

So, putting all these things together, does the evidence speak for itself, or is it still too soon to tell if the Hawks’ management have cursed themselves?  While the Hawks lead the division, it’s been…well…weird.  The United Center feels funny, the players frequently are awkward and bumbling, and the fans appear askew.  There’s a haunting energy surrounding the Hawks, no question.

Well, as other fans and myself said after the Havlat debacle, we know the truth.  Difference is, we don’t have a gag clause.  Like I said, karma’s a tricky thing.  And the Hawks’ management may just be seeing their shenanigans being revisited back on their heads.

It was like both teams had taken Ambien and were sleep walking through the game.  They were slow.  I mean, slooooooow.  You can’t really blame the Hawks.  Why expend more energy than you have to to beat such a lousy team? And the Wild are lousy, at least on the road.  Even Patrick Kane was able to score a goal in the 3rd period, unassisted at that. (Other goals were scored for the Hawks by Dave Bolland and Troy Brouwer, both in the 1st period.)

Watching for the bad calls was the only thing keeping the crowd lively.  At times you could hear a pin drop in the UC.  It was eerily quiet.  Even the fight between the Wild’s Shane Hnidy and the Hawks’ Jake Dowell in the 1st period was blah.  No sooner had they gotten going at each other and the refs were breaking it up (which elicited a resounding, collective boo from Hawks fans), even though neither Hnidy or Dowell had put the other on the ice. And for that little go-around, Hnidy and Dowell got a 5-minute major penalty!  Similarly, in the 2nd period, the ref would independently call boarding on both the Wild’s Cal Clutterbuck and the Hawks’ Tomas Kopecky; both were minor penalties which indicated the hits were no big deal and certainly not severe enough to necessitate a boarding call.  If you blinked, you would have missed it.  I love it when refs try to phase out fighting or what they deem questionable hits by excessively penalizing them.  Yeah, because we don’t know what they’re doing.  Tonight’s game illustrates, at least in one way, why fighting in hockey is necessary.  It picks up an otherwise dreary game.  (And mad props go to the Hawks’ penalty-kill unit tonight.  They were mighty busy.)

Other of tonight’s calls that left us all scratching our heads came in the 3rd period when the Wild’s Benoit Pouliot was called for diving and the Hawks’ Cam Barker was called for interference. Even the scoreboard keeper was confused at those “penalties.”  The scoreboard at first called Cam Barker’s “interference” as “roughing.”  Hey, the statisticians’ guesses were as good as ours because we didn’t see Benoit Pouliot embellishing and we sure as hell didn’t see Cam Barker interfere. We did see Pouliot tripping, which came on the heels of another missed tripping call that should’ve been on the Wild, but how a ref could get diving out of that I don’t know. Perhaps the weirdest call of the night, at least against the Wild, was on goaltender Niklas Backstrom who was called for slashing in the 2nd period. <shrug>  It was about this time that the fans started realizing that the refs were just pulling calls out of their cracks…or they were smoking crack.  Something having to do with a whole lot of crack.

Overall, it was a weird game.  The refs must have been high and the players were in a funk, but the fans were in rare form.  Indeed, many wore their old Martin Havlat sweaters as if to say thank you to Havi for last season.  One fan even pointed to the ‘24′ on his Havlat sweater when he made it on the jumbotron.  That’s what’s great about Hawks fans.  Unlike other fans from other teams, we honor our former players.

Final score: Hawks win 3-1 against the Wild in a very strange game.