NEWSLETTER
Another night against the Nashville Predators, another frustrating loss for the Chicago Blackhawks.
This time, Chicago squandered an Alex DeBrincat-led comeback effort in the third period to fall 3-2 to the Predators. With the loss, the Predators move into fourth-place in the Central Division standings and the Blackhawks fall to fifth-place. Both teams have 37 points in the standings, but Nashville holds the tiebreaker based on regulation wins.
With the loss, the Blackhawks are 0-2-2 against the Predators this season and remain the only team that they have not beaten this year. Chicago is 4-11-3 when opponents score the first goal of the game this season, and this is also the first loss of the season for the Blackhawks while wearing their reverse retro sweaters.
FINAL: Predators 3, #Blackhawks 2
Shot attempts: 53-51 NSH
Shots on goal: 31-29 NSH
5-on-5 scoring chances: 22-10 NSH
5-on-5 high danger chances: 6-4 NSH pic.twitter.com/KMmlIXs2up— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) March 29, 2021
For the second night in-a-row, turnovers were the downfall of the Blackhawks. Turnovers and Calvin de Haan’s skates. Nashville took the first two goals of the game in the opening period, with both getting by Malcolm Subban after being deflected off of the skates of de Haan.
Subban made 28 saves on 31 shots tonight, but saw his record fall to 4-5-1 with the loss. He has dropped four of his last five starts and has allowed 21 goals over that stretch. Subban made a handful of spectacular saves to keep Chicago in this game, but he’s not going to be able to stand on his head every night or on every shift for the Blackhawks.
It took until the mid-way point of the third period for Chicago to find life thanks to DeBrincat.
https://twitter.com/NBCSBlackhawks/status/1376356818742558727?s=20
Scoring his 17th goal of the season wasn’t enough for DeBrincat as he would tie the game just moments later with his 18th goal of the season.
https://twitter.com/NBCSBlackhawks/status/1376357490573590528?s=20
Last year, DeBrincat scored 18 goals in 70 games played. This season, he took 32 games to reach the 18-goal mark. He leads the Blackhawks in goals this season and only Auston Matthews (6) has more multi-goal games than DeBrincat (4) this season.
Shortly after tying the game, Chicago threw away (literally) the lead as Kirby Dach made an ill-fated pass up the middle of the ice (stop me if you’ve heard this before this weekend) that ended up on Roman Josi’s stick and ultimately into the back of the net with six and a half minutes to play in the game.
DeBrincat was the only reason the Blackhawks had any sort of life in this game. After a sluggish effort on Saturday night, you would have thought the Blackhawks would have got some jump into their game tonight, trying to avoid the two-game sweep.
They did not.
Now Chicago turns its attention to the Carolina Hurricanes for a two-game set to end March and begin the month of April. They’ll do it now trying to play catch-up in the Central Division playoff race.
Final Thoughts
• The Blackhawks held the Predators to just one powerplay opportunity in the two-game set this weekend, killing-off the only chance they had. Chicago is nine-for-nine on the penalty-kill against the Predators this season. On the flip side to that, the Predators have killed-off 24 of their last 25 power plays against them over the last eight games, including killing five Blackhawks power plays this weekend. Chicago is 1-for-11 on the powerplay against Nashville this season.
• With assists on both of DeBrincat’s goals tonight, both Patrick Kane and Pius Suter extend point streaks to four games each.
• Kirby Dach finished the game with 21:18 minutes tonight in his second game of the season. He played the third-most minutes of any Blackhawks player, trailing only Duncan Keith and Patrick Kane. Expect that to be the norm for Dach the rest of this season.
