Derek King was given an almost impossible job this season.

Inherit a 1-9-2 Blackhawks team with no general manager, weeks removed from the axe-fall of the NHL’s biggest scandal in decades. Win over frustrated veterans, improve morale and right the ship despite being a mere interim coach with no job security beyond this season. Navigate an in-season rebuild declaration and the trades of the team’s starting goalie and second-leading goal-scorer. Keep the team fighting until the final day of a totally lost season.

Considering the circumstances, King has done an admirable job –arguably as good a job as anyone could’ve done.

“My beard’s grayer, [but] I’ve learned the league,” King told the Sun-Times recently. “I’m comfortable with … the whole day-to-day operations: dealing with the media, dealing with management, dealing with the players. I’ve just gotten better, whether it’s with drills or line changing and managing everything.

“I’ve grown and I’ve improved, and I still have to improve. As a coach, if you think you’ve figured it out, then you’re in trouble. I haven’t figured it out. I never will figure it out. But as long as I keep getting better every year …”

The 55-year-old has managed it all with an unfettered realness rarely seen in the NHL.

His total lack of ego, down-to-earth personality, earnest sense of humor, patience with failure and quiet optimism for each new day are all rare traits for a hockey coach; his combination of all five have made him something of a unicorn in these circles.

“It’s [about] making sure I’m communicating this to everybody,” he said. “My door is always open. I try to make sure everybody knows where they stand. I’m honest with them. I don’t sugarcoat anything. I’m not telling what they want to hear, I’m telling what they should hear. This is just the way it is, and I lay it out for them and it seems to work.”

His honest yet nonchalant approach to the job — giving him the image of a regular guy thrust in charge of the Hawks –worked best the first few months.

He brightened the mood, loosened the clenched fists and tight shoulders and reminded the players that it was “OK to make mistakes.” The team’s 10-6-0 record during his first 16 games in charge felt rather remarkable.

But in mid-December, as it inevitably does for every new coach, King’s honeymoon phase wore off.

“Everything’s going good; everybody’s talking [positively] about the team and the changes,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, you go on one of these losing streaks and everything switches. You get back into being fragile again. … But it was the same [message]: ‘Don’t get all uptight. Don’t let that creep back into this locker room.’ And for the most part, we’ve done a good job.”

Since Dec. 16 (through Sunday), the Hawks have gone 14-24-9. Lack of talent, particularly in the lower half of the lineup, is undoubtedly the biggest factor; this team wouldn’t be close to .500 even if Barry Trotz was coaching.

Some of King’s weaknesses have nonetheless been exposed during these months. He’s not a brilliant tactician, nor would he claim to be. His freedom to change the Hawks’ systems has been limited by his interim tag, too –he dislikes the Hawks’ 1-2-2 neutral-zone trap formation that Jeremy Colliton installed, for example, but has held off on altering it.

He’s also inexperienced with line matchups and situational player deployment, since he’d always rotated everyone equally in the AHL. He describes situations where, for instance, he “maybe shouldn’t have had this guy out for this faceoff” as his biggest learning moments.

But his eagerness to trust his players, even those who haven’t fully earned that trust yet, might actually be the perfect approach for a rebuilding team that will have no choice but to trust unproven players in the years ahead.

“You put these guys in situations where you want them to succeed, and hopefully they can get that job done,” he said. “Sometimes they fail, and that’s when I start thinking the easy way would be to put the veteran guys out all the time. But I like to give these younger guys a chance to have that opportunity.”

King indeed fits the so-called “players’ coach” label to a tee.

“I don’t like to look at it like an ‘everybody works for me’ kind of thing,” he added. “Obviously I have to make the final decisions…but I get a lot of information from our coaching staff, and then I love to hear what the players have to say. These are the guys that are on the ice battling; it’s not me. So it’s nice to get some feedback from them.”

King’s future remains uncertain. The odds seem roughly 50-50 whether he’ll return to the NHL or slide back into the AHL in Rockford come September.

General manager Kyle Davidson has maintained all along that the search for a permanent coach wouldn’t begin until after the season, but that moment is quickly approaching. Numerous other candidates will be interviewed and considered, and the Hawks may be reluctant to ultimately promote another interim guy.

Even if he doesn’t get the permanent job, however, King’s positive impacts in a brutal situation this season deserve commendation.

Read More

An Englewood church that burned down on Good Friday caught fire a third time Monday afternoon.

“It is not unusual that fires this big rekindle,” Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, which was destroyed last week.

The fire re-ignited around 12:15 p.m. Monday at 63rd and Stewart, Merritt said.

No one was inside the church, which was already “pretty much destroyed,” Merritt said.

The church first caught fire Friday afternoon when a construction worker used a torch on the building’s roof. The cause of the fire was deemed accidental on Saturday, when the church briefly reignited a first time.

The congregation, which had used the building since 1958, held Easter Sunday services at a nearby funeral home.

Read More

Alex Caruso was obviously feeling sore on Monday afternoon.

The Bulls guard wasn’t alone, either. Or at least he felt like he shouldn’t be.

Holding the defending NBA Champions to just 93 points in the Game 1 loss less than 24 hours earlier came with a cost. A certain level of physicality that had to be dealt out after weeks of the Bulls looking like they were incapable of playing to that level of intensity.

And as coach Billy Donovan explained, that was just “the price of admission” to playoff basketball.

“You don’t do that, you’ve got no chance,” Donovan said. “So we’ve got to build off of that, but we’ve also got to clean up the mistakes that we made. I think it’s two parts, and I think for some of our guys going through this for the first time it’s not only competing, but it’s also the competing coupled with the attention to detail and the execution on both ends of the floor.

“There’s things that we can do better, but [the physicality] is just the price of admission to get into to play. And if you don’t have that piece of it, even if we shot the ball better … like I don’t think the game for us in my opinion was lost because we didn’t shoot well. Would that have helped? Absolutely. [Milwaukee’s] been in these situations, they’ve got a lot of experience in it, been battle-tested, so they understand what they have to do.”

Which is what Wednesday’s Game 2 of the first-round playoff series could come down to. Not only playing with the same physicality that was on display by both teams Sunday at the Fiserv Forum, but also better in executing on the details.

That’s why Caruso took offense to the idea that Sunday was a poorly played game, despite both teams shooting well below their averages, as well as the Bucks turning the ball over 21 times.

“I don’t know if I agree with the statement,” Caruso said, when asked about the level of play being below standard. “I thought both teams fought, I thought both teams executed kind of what they wanted to do. Their imprint on the game. Making or missing shots doesn’t necessarily mean you played well or played bad. To hold that team to 91 points, bunch of turnovers, not a lot of teams this year did that. For them to hold us to whatever it was, [86], guys miss open shots, but at the end of the day the physicality of the game, the intensity of the game, I thought both teams played pretty well. Both teams played like they’re here to fight for their lives.”

That’s also why the Monday practice wasn’t about making all sorts of adjustments and reworking the rotation. According to Caruso, there was nothing new even gone over.

It was about cleaning up missed assignments and better recognizing tendencies. Also a result of playing a team that the Bulls played four times in the regular season.

“I don’t think we’re down on ourselves, I don’t think we’re taking a moral victory from it by any means,” Caruso said. “I think we’re in a good spot.”

A spot made better by this group at least showing in Game 1 that they were willing to throw their bodies around and try and go chest-to-chest with a much more experienced team. A practice they seemed allergic to most of March.

So how did that message finally get through to this group?

“It’s the playoffs,” Caruso said. “You lose, you go home. If you can’t get up for that then you shouldn’t play basketball.

“If you’ve got to hype yourself up or you’ve got to worry about bringing effort and physicality to the playoffs then you probably shouldn’t be there.”

Read More

The past few seasons the Chicago Cubs were a team that depended on the home run ball way too much when it came to scoring runs. Home runs are great, but teams that often rely on hitting home runs usually strikeout a lot more as a result.

The Cubs definitely in the past fit that description which is why this past offseason they made a change at hitting coach with removing Anthony Iapoce from the staff. In 2021, the Cubs hit only .237 as team under Iapoce, so a change was needed.

Make sure to check out our Cubs forum for the latest on the team.

Read More

Chicago Bulls Milwaukee Bucks

Share.

Facebook

Pinterest


LinkedIn


WhatsApp


Reddit


Tumblr


Email

Read More

Japanese rookie sensation Seiya Suzuki is off to an incredible start for the Chicago Cubs. While expectations within the organization were high, few could have expected Suzuki to produce this many quality plate appearances this early in the season.

As @CodifyBaseball pointed out on Twitter, Suzuki has 40 swings total this year, and has hit 4 singles, 2 doubles, and 4 home runs. His patient approach at the plate has led to a remarkable OBP of .543, as he has also drawn 9 walks to go along with his 10 hits.

Suzuki has been hitting in the middle of the lineup to begin the season, but given how well he is seeing the ball right now, that may change very soon. The Cubs right fielder leads the team in batting average, home runs, and RBI’s, so manager David Ross may try and squeeze some more at bats out of his rising star. Suzuki’s OPS+ of 321 is currently the best in all of baseball, which would make him an ideal 2 or 3 hole hitter should he continue on his current pace. With a batter like Suzuki, who is capable of making the pitcher work and capitalizing on mistakes, at the top of the order the Cubs can make life hard on starting pitchers right out of the gate, and possibly tack on a few early runs to help their starting pitching.

Suzuki is not the only Cubs outfielder to shine early in the year. Center fielder Jason Heyward is also off to a nice start, hitting .333 with a .400 OBP. Meanwhile, Left fielder Ian Happ rounds out the outfield with .346 batting average and a .433 OPS, giving the Cubs one of the best hitting outfields in the league. The excitement continues to grow as Seiya Suzuki proves the hype was real, and the Cubs are on track to have a very exciting outfield for the rest of the 2022 season.

Make sure to check out our Cubs forum for the latest on the team.

Read More

Monday’s White Sox-Guardians game has been postponed because of bad weather in Cleveland.

The game will be rescheduled as part of a split doubleheader on Tuesday, July 12. The first game will start at 12:10 p.m. Chicago time, with the second game at 6:10 p.m.

The postponement washed out a matchup of AL Cy Young Award winners between the White Sox’ Dallas Keuchel (1-0, 5.40 ERA) and Cleveland’s Shane Bieber (0-0, 2.70). The pair will instead go on Tuesday.

The Sox pushed their rotation back a day, with Jimmy Lambert going on Wednesday and Dylan Cease starting Thursday.

They lead the AL Central despite having several key players on the injured list, including pitchers Lucas Giolito (left abdominal strain) and Lance Lynn (right knee surgery), third baseman Yoan Moncada (right oblique strain) and outfielder AJ Pollock (hamstring).

The White Sox are coming off a 4-2 homestand that ended with Sunday’s 9-3 loss to Tampa.

Cleveland was swept in a three-game series by San Francisco after winning four in a row.

The White Sox were entering what was supposed to be a four-game series against a division rival after taking two of three from the Rays at Guaranteed Rate Field. They managed to win the series despite scoring a combined nine runs in three games.

”We’ve swung the bat well but not to our potential yet,” designated hitter Gavin Sheets said after Sunday’s game. “I think that’s just part of being early in the season with cold weather. We’ll get it going. I think we’ve done a tremendous job so far winning series without our best stuff, but I think we’ll get it going as a team collectively.”

Read More