The Blackhawks will exit California on a winning streak after beating the Anaheim Ducks 4-2 on Sunday night.
Chicago never trailed in this game, with Isaak Phillips opening the scoring near the 13-minute mark of the first period when he jumped into the rush and used Tyler Bertuzzi’s net-front presence as a perfect distraction before uncorking this bar-down wrister to give the Blackhawks an early lead:
Some neat passing during a Chicago power play later in the period ended with Taylor Hall’s cross-ice pass to Teuvo Teravainen, who ripped a one-timer into the net to end a personal scoring drought:
The power play struck again late in the second when this bomb from Seth Jones found its way into the Ducks net:
Anaheim tried making things interesting in the third period, starting with this goal from Brock McGinn:
But Ryan Donato quelled any thoughts of an Anaheim comeback when he completed this goal-mouth scramble by banking the puck into the net off the back of Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal.
Mason McTavish added a garbage-time goal with four seconds left but all that did was pad some Ducks’ stats and dent Soderblom’s.
Notes
Taylor Hall is probably not much for than trade-deadline fodder for this season but every now and then there’s a glimpse of the guy who won a Hart Trophy earlier in his career and this game offered several of those. He’s certainly on the backside of his career and health has obviously been an issue for him but it’d be a delight to watch him fly around the ice in more games like he was this evening.
It’s a similar situation for Ryan Donato most likely, who’d probably appeal to some contending team looking to add another forward to their bottom-six. He’s probably a third-liner on a playoff team but he seems to be worthy of top-six minutes in Chicago right now because of the way he’s playing and the lack of other players proving worthy of those roles.
Not going to sound any alarm bells about Connor Bedard continuing to scuffle through the first month of the season but it’s clear he’s not entirely thrilled with the way things are going, either:
Laurent Brossoit is seemingly going to be back soon which will almost certainly mean Arvid Soderblom is on his way back to Rockford, but he’s looked much better in his three outings this season than he had at just about any point of the 2023-24 season and his saves early on helped Chicago find its legs on the tail end of a back-to-back. Still unsure of his long-term role here, but he remains in the discussion for now.
Let’s go ahead and launch the idea of a Teravainen-Dickinson-Mikheyev line into the sun and never speak of it again. In 10:00 together at 5-on-5 tonight, that was comically outplayed: down 22-2 in shot attempts, 10-1 in shots on goal and 17-1 in scoring chances. That they only allowed one goal against is probably a small miracle.
Seth Jones seems to have recovered from his tough stretch a few weeks ago. He and Wyatt Kaiser were together for 10:13 at 5-on-5 while having the highest percentage of defensive zone starts on the team and still ended up at or near 50/50 in most of the possession numbers.
It was pretty disheartening to see the Blackhawks at the very bottom of the NHL standings on Halloween night following that loss to San Jose, because we were all told by the GM that this team was going to start taking steps forward. Sandwiched around that loss to the Sharks were a trio of wins, ultimately taking six of the 10 points available on this five-game road trip. So, yeah, the results are nice. But the way this team is winning games is not exactly a harbinger of future success. Anaheim had a 2-to-1 or better advantage on most 5-on-5 stats from this game: 70-35 in shot attempts, 40-13 in scoring changes, 19-7 in high-danger chances … all adding up to a 68.47 percent goal share. The win in LA was similarly lopsided in the opponent’s favor. The wins can suffice for now, but it would be more encouraging if there were better signs of collective 5-on-5 play coinciding with these victories.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Taylor Hall (CHI) — 2 assists
- Connor Bedard (CHI) — 3 assists
- Arvid Soderblom (CHI) — 37 saves on 39 shots
What’s Next
The Blackhawks head back home and have a few days off before hosting the Detroit Red Wings at the United Center on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.