The Chicago Blackhawks carried their shootout struggles over from last season in a 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers on Friday night. The Hawks scored just once in eight shootout rounds as the Rangers came away with their second win against Chicago this preseason.
Teuvo Teravainen connected on the only successful shootout attempt for the Hawks, and it was a beauty:
The Hawks lost but Teuvo Teravainen is as awesome as we hoped for. Check out this shootout finish. https://t.co/FGZ0xPVvlg
— Second City Hockey (@2ndCityHockey) October 4, 2014
Unfortunately, nobody else could get a shot past Henrik Lundqvist, and Ryan Malone, who tied the game in the third period, put things away.
The first period was largely dominated by the New York, continuing something of a trend for the Blackhawks this preseason. The Rangers held a 10-2 shot advantage over the first 20 minutes and from Chicago’s perspective, it was a positive simply getting to the intermission in a scoreless tie.
The Hawks couldn’t keep the Rangers off the scoreboard much longer than that. Martin St. Louis got the scoring started by tipping one past Corey Crawford, and New York had a 1-0 lead roughly five minutes into the second period. The Rangers got whistled for a penalty less than a minute later, however, and while they would kill that Hawks power play, they wouldn’t be successful later in the period.
Patrick Kane snapped the power play drought with a slapshot roughly 14 minutes into the second period, following a tripping call on St. Louis. Andrew Shaw followed it up less than three minutes later with another one, putting the Hawks up, 2-1, going into the final period.
Chicago appeared to be on its way to victory until the Rangers put together an impressive scoring play with just over four minutes left in regulation. J.T. Miller found Malone wide open on the weak side and he made a nice move to quickly collect and fire the puck past Crawford. Both teams had some chances in the final minutes after that, but couldn’t capitalize before overtime.
Teravainen was certainly impressive in the shootout, but otherwise it’s disappointing the team couldn’t come away with a victory after being minutes away. The Hawks finish the preseason at 2-4, and now it’s back to being stressed about the roster.