The Blackhawks’ stretch of meeting up with their fellow cellar-dwellers at the bottom of the league standings continues on Tuesday night at the United Center with the Anaheim Ducks in town.
These teams met back on Dec. 7 in a scintillating 1-0 Chicago win, with a lone power-play goal from Philipp Kurashev providing the night’s only tally. That was the first of back-to-back wins for the Blackhawks in early December. They haven’t paired wins together since.
Anaheim’s season hasn’t been that much better, with a 23-38-3 record (49 points) that’s good for seventh in the Pacific and 30th overall in the league standings. The Ducks didn’t have much to sell at the deadline, although they did ship out forward Adam Henrique and defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin while picking up a trio of draft picks in the process. There’s a well-stocked prospect cupboard in Anaheim, which was ranked No. 5 in the league at The Athletic last month. Some of that young talent is already up at the NHL level, too. Mason McTavish, who just turned 21 and was the No. 3 overall pick in 2021, is third among active Anaheim skaters with 40 points (17 G, 23 A) in 54 games. Pavel Mintyukov, a 20-year-old blue-liner who was taken 10th in 2022, is skating an average of 18:33 per night and has 25 points (3 G, 22 A) in 53 games. And don’t forget about the player drafted after Connor Bedard in Leo Carlsson, who turned 19 in December and has 23 points (9 G, 14 A) in 40 games. He hasn’t played since Feb. 29 while dealing with a concussion, though, and will not play in this game.
Zegras, meanwhile, hasn’t played since Jan. 9 because of a broken ankle and has just 7 points (4 G, 3 A) in the 20 games he’s skated this season. It’s been a subpar fourth NHL season for Zegras, who hit the 200-game mark the last time he appeared this season but looks to fall well below the pace of 65 points in 81 games (0.80 per game) he’d amassed in the prior season.
Veteran forwards Frank Vatrano (50 points in 64 games) and Troy Terry (46 in 58) make up the top two leading scorers for the Ducks, while the ice time leaders are two more veterans: Cam Fowler (24:34) and Radko Gudas (19:41). Neither John Gibson (13-21-2 record, .896 save percentage, 3.22 goals-against average) nor Lukas Dostal (10-17-1, .899, 3.60) have been any good in goal, another key reason why Anaheim’s front office has likely been eyeing draft boards since the calendar flipped to 2024 — if not earlier. Similar to their opponents, the question for this current era of the Ducks franchise is when it’ll start being more aggressive in acquiring talent ready to play at the NHL level now.
Anaheim’s last game was a 6-1 throttling handed out by the New York Islanders, a second defeat in a row for the Ducks with six goals allowed. They’d won three of four prior to this recent two-game slide, though. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a similar lineup from Anaheim as the one that skated on Sunday:
As for the Blackhawks, Sunday night’s Goalapalooza provided for, perhaps, the most entertaining evening of the season in a moment with painfully few candidates for that title. And the Chicago lineup that’ll skate onto the ice on Tuesday evening is actually a mild improvement with the apparent return of Andreas Athanasiou, who’s been out since November with a groin injury. He was on the ice for the morning skate, though, providing another proven, NHL-caliber player into a lineup that could use several such additions in the future.
Chicago’s power play has been comically good of late, converting six times on the 14 chances (42.9 percent) it’s had in the last three games. Anaheim’s 27th-ranked penalty kill wouldn’t seem to offer much discouragement against that pace, although the Blackhawks’ power play has often been its own worst enemy this season.
This feels like a game where just about anything could happen. Another 1-0 game? Sure. A 7-6 shootout? Of course. Anaheim pumping the Hawks 6-1? Fine. Chicago running the Ducks out of the building at 8-2? That, too. It’s two teams with little to play for in the present, so any possibility has some plausability.
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Ducks
44.42% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 46.46% (22nd)
43.29% (30th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 46.05% (28th)
2.11 (32nd) — Goals per game — 2.59 (30th)
3.57 (30th) — Goals against per game — 3.56 (29th)
46.5% (30th) — Faceoffs — 48.4% (23rd)
14.9% (28th) — Power play — 19.2% (t-20th)
77.7% (21st) — Penalty kill — 75.2% (27th)
How to watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago, IL
TV: NBC Sports Chicago
Webstream: NBC Sports App, ESPN+/Hulu
Radio: WGN 720