The Chicago Blackhawks can’t overcome a sloppy first period, ultimately fall 6-3 to the Vancouver Canucks at United Center on Tuesday for their second loss in a row.
The Canucks scored just 21 seconds into the game after a tic-tac-toe goal ended with Danton Heinen tucking the puck past Petr Mrazek for an early 1-0 lead.
J.T. Miller made it 2-0 Canucks while on the power play about the six minute mark of the first. Quinn Hughes long shot hit the boards and Miller knocked the ricocheted puck in the net.
The Blackhawks got within one at 9:25 of the first: while being pushed down, Jason Dickinson is able to get a pass off to Ryan Donato who scored from the slot. Great pinch by Alex Vlasic to keep the play alive in the offensive zone.
However the joy was short-lived as jus just over a minute later, Heinen potted his second of the game by deflecting a shot from Filip Hronek and put the Canucks back up 3-1.
Connor Murphy forced a turnover which Taylor Hall picked up and his shot from the high slot beat Kevin Laninen clear, making it 3-2 with 6:31 left in the period.
The goals just kept coming, as the Canucks went up by two once again with 4:43 left in the period. Elias Pettersson shoveled the rebound from Miller’s long shot to Conor Garland, who is shot it into an open net.
The second period was scoreless, but the Canucks picked up the offense about midway through the third with two quick goals just 29 second apart and go up 6-2.
The first was a power play goal courtesy of Brock Boeser, who tipped another long shot from Miller.
Next a shot from Eric Brannstrom hit Andrea Athanisou and the deflected puck went right to Pius Suter who slammed the puck home.
The Blackhawks would add a late goal thanks to Tyler Bertuzzi during at 5-on-3 power play with 5:56, but it was basically an empty calorie goal, and the Blackhawks fell 6-3 to the Canucks.
Notes
The Blackhawks weren’t ready to start this game and the Canucks took advantage of that by scoring two quick goals. It was back and forth after that, but honestly the damage was already done, and the final couple of goals in the third were just icing for the Canucks.
Offensive there were some chances, but not a lot at 5-on-5, and then defensively, it was the messiest game of the season from start to finish. The game against the Sabres was sloppy, but this game was hiccup after miscue after after chicken with it’s head cutoff. . Kudos to the effort of everyone on the ice, because no one can fault them in that area, but the Blackhawks just weren’t ever able to pull it together long enough to really be competitive — something they felt in the other games this season.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first.
We’ll start with the referees because that’s going to be one of the biggest talking points of this game. NHL referees have a tough job with how fast paced hockey is, so they’re bound to miss things. But seven players on the ice? Especially with an entire bench yelling about it. And if the photo evidence wasn’t enough, the NHL’s own tracking system had the seven guys out there.
I’m not going to go in depth about the offsides that wasn’t an offsides because my brain may melt, but below is the reasoning given by the NHL situation room, the video of the incident, and Richardson’s comment on it.
The Blackhawks did manage to score goals and it felt like they could have had a couple of more if not for posts, but this was another game in which they couldn’t get quality shots through while at 5-on-5. They had just six high danger chances by location with only half being on net. Hall spoke after the game about trying not to focus on the score as much and basically let the offense come to them, but there is some concern this roster isn’t going to be able to put enough on net to win games consistently.
Seth Jones has been good so far this season, outside a few hiccups, but tonight’s game was quite the stinker — the turnovers/giveaways alone were embarrassing but he just wasn’t clicking on all cylinders defensively tonight either. And sometimes the eye test and stats just really line up, because as you can see from the Game Card below, Jones is at the very bottom. He was doing so badly on the power play during the second, Richardson swapped him with Vlasic in the third. A bad game here and there is expected, but let’s hope Jones keeps these types of a minimum going forward.
Vlasic honestly wasn’t good in the first, but he seemed to right himself more as the game went on.
The Bedard line was somewhat suppressed again this game. I say somewhat because they had the edge in shot attempts (57.58 percent), but only broke even in terms of and shots on goal (50 percent) and expected goals (49.99 percent). Bedard got a a handful of shots off and had some mid-danger chances, but they weren’t all as clean as usual for the young star. Arguably his playmaking was top notch this game, but either his teammates couldn’t handle his passes, they shot directly into Lankinen, or the latter made a good stop.
The Canucks had the pairing of Hughes-Hronek were out against Bedard, Teravainen, and Foligno for the most part, and honestly, the Vancouver kids were like bullies, taking lunch money from the Blackhawks’ top line. I mean, when Hughes was on the ice with Bedard, the Blackhawks were outshot 17 to 5. Bedard was basically breakeven or ahead against almost every other players on the Canucks outside their top defensive pair, so it was just a bad matchup all around.
Athansiou was demoted in the third period but that may have more to do with mixing things up than anything he did because while his game was fine, the his line combination with Hall and Bertuzzi was the worst for the Blackhawks this game. They were out attempted 10-2, outshot 4-2, and had no scoring chances when all together at 5-on-5.
On to some good things!
The Blackhawks power play this game was overall pretty strong, even if the only time they scored with the man advantage was on a 5-on-3. After tonight, they are the seventh best at generating shots while on the power pay (57.69 per 60) and second best at generating expected goals (10.79 per 60). It was because of the power play that the Blackhawks felt like they were kind of in the game more than they really were.
Lukas Reichel had another strong game, so much so that by the third period, he was taking spins on the second line with Hall and Bertuzzi. It’s still not ideal to have him playing center imo, but at least he was with top-nine talent. The trio only played 3:03 together at 5-on-5, but it was a nice little jump start to that line.
The other two players that looked nice in this game were Dickinson and Kaiser. The former is easier to see because Dickinson is a forecheck machine and plays such an aggressive yet controlled game. Again, even if hed doesn’t repeat the offense from last year, he bring so much to table. Kaiser, on the other hand, is much more quiet but that’s good in a game like tonight. I’m not sure why he started with Jones, Kaiser was spinning on the first goal against like everyone else on the ice, but he was chill the rest of the game.
In non-game news, Artyom Levshunov was cleared by the team doctors this afternoon, so he was activated off IR and assigned to the Rockford IceHogs.
P.S. Please ignore any typos/mistakes above, Dave has gone fishing and I’m left without an editor to fix my most egregious errors.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- J.T. Miller (VAN) — 1 goal, 2 assists
- Daniel Heinen (VAN) — 2 goals
- Connor Garland (VAN) — 1 goal, 1 assist
What’s Next
The Blackhawks wrap up their four-game home stand with a match against the Nashville Predators Friday night at 7:30 p.m.