NEWSLETTER
“We’re a better team. That’s just the reality. That’s why the expectation goes up, though. We talked about it: it’s no more moral victories.”
Nick Foligno said that before the Blackhawks boarded a flight home after finishing their season-opening four-game road trip with a 3-1 loss in Calgary (against a still-undefeated Flames team). If you told me before the Blackhawks left on the trip that they would come home 1-2-1, I probably would have taken that… but I wouldn’t have guessed the win would come in Edmonton and the OT loss in Winnipeg.
We’re still sorting out this new-look Blackhawks lineup with some moving pieces and special teams evolving. But here are three big-picture takeaways from the start of the season before the Blackhawks open the United Center on Thursday.
Better Blackhawks Defense
When the Blackhawks brought in Alec Martinez and TJ Brodie this summer, it was clear they wanted to be better in front of the net than they were last year. The early returns are telling us this team is playing a better defensive game.
Through four games, the Blackhawks rank second in the NHL averaging 20.2 blocked shots per game. They also rank seventh averaging 6.48 takeaways per game. The penalty kill (77.8 percent) ranks 19th in the league, but they did a very good job against the Oilers so I’ll give that a slight upward arrow.
Updating a number I cited in my piece about the third line before the game in Calgary, MoneyPuck now has two Blackhawks lines — Foligno-Bedard-Terรยคvรยคinen (6th) and Mikheyev-Dickinson-Anderson (9th) — in the top ten in the league in expected goals for percentage (min. 30 minutes skated together). They also have Hall-Kurashev-Bertuzzi at 51 percent. If the Blackhawks can keep their top three lines all over 50 percent in that category, that’s a roadmap to winning hockey.
Scoring From… Where?
The Blackhawks scored five goals in the win in Edmonton. They scored four goals in the other 9+ periods on the trip. And they rank 29th in the NHL in average number of shots on goal per game (26.0).
With that being said, the Blackhawks have three players who have more points than games played. Connor Bedard, Teuvo Terรยคvรยคinen and… Seth Jones all come home with five points in four games played to start the season. Impressively, 8 of their 15 combined points have come on the power play, which has been improved but is still a work in progress.
Jones having 11 shots on goal in four games is a massive improvement. We’ve begged for him to shoot the puck more frequently since he arrived and he’s doing that more confidently this year.
The Blackhawks are going to need more/any production from their second line, however. They’ve been good at creating chances (as noted above) and have 23 combined shots on goal in four games, but they need more than one goal (from Philipp Kurashev) and one assist (from Taylor Hall) in four games. Tyler Bertuzzi is still fighting his way to get out of the doughnut aisle.
KISS
If you’ve ever been in some very elementary sales training, you’ve probably heard the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid! And that’s what the coaches have been preaching from Day One of training camp. Here’s part of head coach Luke Richardson’s assessment of the loss in Calgary and the Blackhawks’ trip as a whole:
“We played a pretty good game, the first half of the game especially. We didn’t give them hardly anything much. And then we got into some penalty trouble and they scored on the power play. We were just a little disconnected after that, trying to chase it a little bit, not playing simple.”
When the Blackhawks have kept it together and not given their opponent chances, they’ve been able to play with all four teams they’ve skated against. Outside of the first period in Utah, they’ve been on par with the other team for 11+ periods.
This is not a finished product by any means. Players are still talking about learning each other’s tendencies. There are little pieces that we can like from the first four games of the Blackhawks season, and there are other areas where we need to see improvement.
