It’s Pride Night at the United Center as the Blackhawks return home from a west coast trip to host the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night.
We’ve officially entered the “playing out the stretch” portion of the schedule for the Blackhawks following Saturday’s comeback win in San Jose. An obvious retort there is that Chicago’s been doing that since the first game of the season, but draft lottery odds were still up in the air for the first 71 games of the season. That doesn’t seem the case anymore, with Chicago entering this game at 45 points, behind Anaheim’s 52 in 71 games and ahead of San Jose’s 40 in 70. It’s slightly more likely for San Jose to catch Chicago than it is for Chicago to catch Anaheim, but neither are probable given the number of games left this season for all teams involved.
The good news there is that those mild laments that came with every Chicago win this season, which had an adverse effect on those draft lottery odds, can be dismissed for the final month of the season. Plus there’s the added benefit of several more youngsters to watch than there were at the start of the season. Similar to the Sharks game, roughly half of the lineup includes long-term pieces here.
Ryan Donato is not one of them, but his strong game in San Jose means a promotion to the top line along with Connor Bedard and Philipp Kurashev. Lukas Reichel is on the third line with MacKenzie Entwistle and Andreas Athanasiou, hoping to continue his improved play since the latest recall from Rockford. And rookie Landon Slaggert remains on the fourth line. The blue line has youth on each pairing, with Alex Vlasic, Kevin Korchinski and Wyatt Kaiser paired up with Seth Jones, Jaycob Megna and Nikita Zaitsev, respectively.
Hopefully there are future seasons where the intrigue at this point of the season involves chasing a playoff spot instead of eyeing the development of prospects, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt once again, so play it, we shall.
It’s arguably more bleak for Calgary right now, as the Flames have an older roster that spent the last few months experiencing a minor teardown ahead of the trade deadline. Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin and Chris Tanev were all shipped out, making this a much different team than the one that blanked the Blackhawks 1-0 back on Jan. 27 at the Saddledome. That game also happened while Bedard was out with an injury. Remember how awful that was?
As the trade-deadline teardown suggests, the Flames have no realistic playoff hopes, sitting 14 points behind the Vegas Golden Knights for the second wild card spot with only 12 games remaining. And Calgary’s looked a bit like a team going through the motions recently, losing seven of the last 10 and the last three in a row by an aggregate score of 13-5. There’s some decent talent here, with Nazem Kadri leading the team at 59 points (23 G, 36 A) in 70 games and the combo of Blake Coleman and Yegor Sharangovich behind him with identical scoring lines of 51 (28 G, 23 A) in 70. Jonathan Huberdeau is here with 44 (10 G, 34 A) in 69 but that’s still probably not quite what Calgary was expecting when they threw a $10.5 million AAV at him until the end of time during free agency a few summers ago.
Calgary’s lines will probably be close to what they trotted out against Buffalo two nights prior:
The Flames have more proven talent than the Hawks do, but the Hawks have youth on their side and a home crowd behind them, which could be enough to push Chicago over the top in this game. Again, the wins don’t hurt anything anymore because the Blackhawks are virtually locked in at No. 31 in the league standings. So might as well try and enjoy the win if the Hawks can get one, right?
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Flames
44.73% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 50.31% (17th)
43.24% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 50.19% (18th)
2.2 (t-31st) — Goals per game — 3.09 (17th)
3.59 (30th) — Goals against per game — 3.2 (t-20th)
46.7% (29th) — Faceoffs — 49.6% (t-17th)
15.9% (28th) — Power play — 14.8% (29th)
76.8% (23rd) — Penalty kill — 83.2% (5th)
How to Watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: NBC Sports Chicago
Webstream: NBC Sports App
Radio: WGN 720