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Black Masks & Gasoline: Oilers 4, Blackhawks 3

A late Blackhawks rally forced OT but ultimately fell short.

Posted on by Dave Melton
Credit: Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

The Blackhawks made it interesting once again before ultimately falling 4-3 in overtime to the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night at the United Center.

After a scoreless first period, Viktor Arvidsson put the visitors ahead 1-0 with this second-period snipe:

Edmonton goal! Scored by Viktor Arvidsson with 11:09 remaining in the 2nd period. Assisted by Mattias Janmark and Brett Kulak. Chicago: 0 Edmonton: 1 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 10:07 PM

The second period nearly ended with Edmonton ahead 1-0, until a sequence started by Lukas Reichel winning the puck away from Edmonton ended with Reichel scoring a goal thanks to a nifty setup from Teuvo Teravainen:

Chicago goal! Scored by Lukas Reichel with 00:06 remaining in the 2nd period. Assisted by Teuvo Teravainen and Ilya Mikheyev. Chicago: 1 Edmonton: 1 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 10:30 PM

Things got weird in the third. First, Jeff Skinner scored just over a minute into the final period to put the Oilers back in front:

Edmonton goal! Scored by Jeff Skinner with 18:49 remaining in the 3rd period. Assisted by Leon Draisaitl and Vasily Podkolzin. Chicago: 1 Edmonton: 2 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 10:47 PM

It seemed like the air left the building about eight minutes later when a bad Chicago turnover led to this Leon Draisaitl goal and a 3-1 Oilers lead:

Edmonton goal! Scored by Leon Draisaitl with 11:42 remaining in the 3rd period. Assisted by Jeff Skinner. Chicago: 1 Edmonton: 3 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 10:57 PM

The Hawks weren’t done, though. A power-play goal from Donato made it 3-2 with 7:48 to go in the game:

Power play goal for Chicago! Scored by Ryan Donato with 07:48 remaining in the 3rd period. Assisted by Teuvo Teravainen and Connor Bedard. Chicago: 2 Edmonton: 3 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 11:11 PM

Alec Martinez tied it up four minutes later:

Chicago goal! Scored by Alec Martinez with 03:44 remaining in the 3rd period. Assisted by Ryan Donato. Chicago: 3 Edmonton: 3 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 11:21 PM

Teuvo was inches away from winning the game before regulation ended:

After a penalty for too many men in OT, Edmonton scored on the ensuing man advantage to skate away with both points:

Power play goal for Edmonton! Scored by Zach Hyman with 03:24 remaining in the OT period. Assisted by Connor McDavid and Evan Bouchard. Chicago: 3 Edmonton: 4 #EDMvsCHI #Blackhawks #LetsGoOilers

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) February 5, 2025 at 11:31 PM

Notes

Let’s get into the big talking point from the night, which came from the second intermission during the TNT broadcast:

The initial premise of Bedard still trying things that aren’t working at the NHL level? Yeah, that’ll happen with a 19-year-old in his second professional season. He’s still trying things out. The clip then goes into that back-and-forth between Bedard and Donato from the second period that ended with a shot that Connor Murphy accidentally blocked and Bissonnette is suggesting that Bedard “wanted the puck back.”

Forgive the poor quality of the screenshot but … does that look like a guy who wants the puck back? The guy at the left faceoff dot with his stick pointing towards midnight?

Bedard does visibly slump down after Donato’s shot was blocked but perhaps he a) was disappointed by that result or b) immediately regretted not shooting the puck himself. Bedard plays a style of hockey that someone with Bissonnette’s mind probably can’t conceive, let alone comprehend. Not buying the mind reading there.

The clip then dives into a few instances of Bedard making mistakes at both ends of the ice and it just sounded like the same criticisms that always happen when young, offensively gifted players are trying a little too hard to make something happen. Nothing that’s worth making a large fuss over.

And then this fucking nonsense spilled out of his mouth:

God forbid that Connor Bedard, who is NINETEEN FUCKING YEARS OLD AND PLAYING IN THE BEST HOCKEY LEAGUE IN THE WORLD still have some holes in his game.

They’re gonna continue to lose hockey games because of the way he is playing? They’re gonna be a lottery team because what he does is gonna trickle down the lineup? Are you fucking kidding me? They’re gonna be a lottery team because the roster sucks out loud and the “help” the GM brought in during the offseason will probably be sitting in the TNT studio next season because it sure isn’t doing anything too make life easy for Bedard who, again, is a teenager playing professional hockey. Hell, here’s a perfect example from the same fucking game! Bedard makes a mistake but recovers in time to create a 2-on-0 for his teammates, both free-agent signings from the summer. Anyone want to guess what happened?

Cannot believe anyone would look at this team and decide Bedard is a problem. Holy shit.

A quick follow-up thought: this is when it’d be real, real cool for the team’s captain to come to the defense of the franchise’s young star and tell both Bissonnette and Messier where they can put those thoughts. Foligno wasn’t part of the media availability after this game but he can certainly speak up at the next practice.

Back to the on-ice stuff now, because there was some genuinely entertaining stuff occurring this evening.

Eric mentioned it after the win over Tampa last week and there’s no objection here from his point that Arvid Soderblom is the No. 1 goalie in Chicago right now. He was especially good in this game but he’s also been consistently playing at a high level for quite a while now, and that consistency is something he struggled to locate last season. Him allowing four goals against a juggernaut like Edmonton should not be viewed as any sort of negative because the point Chicago picked up in this game was largely due to his performance.

There is a suddenness to everything Frank Nazar does that’s really fun to watch. His speed in the open ice obviously jumps off the screen the most, but every little movement he makes seems to happen so quickly, whether it’s a few steps to close the space between him and an opponent or quickly moving a puck from backhand to forehand so he can fire a shot or pass. It all happens in a hurry and continuing to do that will bode very well for his hockey career. Also, his smothering of McDavid in a 1-on-1 situation during overtime was textbook defense against the best player on the planet.

The Jason Dickinson injury looked extremely bad and if he’s out for substantial time, that’s going to be a massive blow for a team that’s already woefully shorthanded when it comes to centers.

Let’s go ahead and exempt Teuvo from the complaints regarding the offseason signings because he was excellent once again this evening. With his usual center likely out for a while, perhaps we’ll finally get to see Teuvo get another run with Bedard because it still seems like we haven’t had anywhere enough of those two together on the ice this season — which is another element of the argument from above.

Ryan Donato’s best value to this team is likely as a trade piece before the deadline passes given that he’s on the final year of an extremely affordable $2M AAV contract but if circumstances were different there would be plenty of space on this roster for someone who plays the steady, consistent, inspired brand of hockey that he does.

Back to Bedard: it’s a little difficult to avoid both McDavid and Draisaitl when those two aren’t skating on the same line, even with the benefit of the last change. Chicago seemed content with Bedard facing McDavid instead of Draisaitl and the Hawks actually won out in that matchup. With those two on the ice together for 11:54 of 5-on-5 hockey, Chicago had the better in every category: 17-11 in shot attempts, 7-5 in shots on goal, 9-4 in scoring chances and 4-0 in high-danger chances, all adding up to a 72.15 expected goal share. Oh, and one goal scored by the Hawks without one allowed. That’ll work, kid.

Landon Slaggert deserves plenty of credit for helping his team have the better of the play in those Bedard/McDavid matchups, too. Not sure if he’ll ever quite develop the hands to be above the bottom-six consistently but he’s absolutely someone you can envision in a spot down the lineup for the next handful of seasons.

Looks like no more national broadcasts until late March. Probably for the best.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Leon Draisaitl (EDM) — 1 goal, 1 assist
  2. Ryan Donato (CHI) — 1 goal, 1 assist
  3. Jeff Skinner (EDM) — 1 goal, 1 assist

What’s Next

The Blackhawks will get one night off before hosting the Nashville Predators on Friday night at the United Center for a 7:30 p.m.

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