Once again, a lack of offense bit the Chicago Blackhawks as they fell 4-1 to the Red Wings on Wednesday night at the United Center.
The first period was scoreless until the final two seconds when Alex Debrincat knocked in a Dylan Larkin rebound after a bit of a broken play, putting the Red Wings up 1-0. Patrick Kane started the play with a stretch pass that sprung Larkin.
Nick Foligno tied the game 1-1 at the 8:42 mark of the second. After winning a puck battle along the boards, Tyler Bertuzzi sent a great feed to Foligno near the side of the net, and the latter tucked the puck in past a sprawling Cam Talbot.
The Red Wings took the lead again at 12:27 of the middle period, this time thanks to a beautiful rush play by Dylan Larkin.
The Red Wings went up 3-1 about three minutes into the third. Joe Veleno tipped a shot from Moritz Seider and the puck then deflected off of Nolan Allan’s skate for the goal.
Andrew Copp added an empty-netter in the final few minutes, making it 4-1 Red Wings.
Notes
This was kind of snooze-fest of a game, wasn’t it? It didn’t feel like much of significance really happened outside of two to three moments on the ice. It was also another game in which the Blackhawks did fairly well in terms of overall puck possession — especially in the first two periods, when they owned 56.9 percent of the shot attempts. But the quality of those chances was poor: Chicago had just a 31 percent expected goal share. I’d give credit to the Red Wings for being able keep the Blackhawks to the edge, but a lot of teams have been able to do the same thing, so it’s really an issue of the Blackhawks not being able to generate quality chances consistently at this point. Right now on the season, their expected goals percentage is 45.69 percent and their expected goals for rate is 2.3, both up from last or second-to-last in the previous season, but still just 26th and 27th in the league, respectively.
The lack of offense at 5-on-5 has been an issue all season so far, but the fact that the power play has games like tonight where it looks like the Clown Shoes years past is frustrating.
The worst of these games do seem to be at the United Center, where Chicago only has one win.
Connor Murphy noted postgame that the Blackhawks lack of speed is playing a role in these types of defeats, which is definitely a factor. The Red Wings ended up with over twice as many high-danger chances (11) as the Blackhawks (5) at 5-on-5, and all but two of those came after a rush.
This was the fourth game in his last five that Connor Bedard did not have a point. It’s not really time for concern at an individual level, because Bedard is getting his chances, but Richardson needs to figure out what combination of players will work best so the results start reflecting the hard work. I know Teravainen went a bit cold on his line, but maybe they let those two work it out on the ice instead of breaking them up. Tonight, Bedard played predominantly with Ryan Donato and Philipp Kurashev, and they were decent enough individually but weren’t as in-sync as you’d hope. But maybe they just need some more time together and the results will come.
After a few stinkers from Seth Jones recently, it was Alex Vlasic’s turn to have a bad game. He wasn’t without some positive moments, though: he broke up a couple of rushes and scoring chances early on. But it was one of those games where he didn’t look as on top of things as usual.
Speaking of some defensive gaffes, Isaak Phillips did not play that Larkin rush very well. Although, let’s be honest: there aren’t many who can defend well on that type of play. Considering Phillips’ age, it can be chalked up to a learning experience and we’ll just hope he’s better in similar situations in the future.
Normally, the Dickinson line is quite good at shutting down opponents, but the Larkin, DeBrincat, and Kane line gave them fits. It’s the worst stat line game from Dickinson in some time: when he was on the ice against the Wings’ top line, the Blackhawks were out-attempted 11-5, outshot 4-1, out-chanced 6-1 and ended up with less than four percent of the expected goals.
Mrazek’s save percentage looks pretty ugly at just .875, but he did make a handful of big saves that kept this game from going completely off the rails.
The only line that was really going full steam was the Foligno line with Bertuzzi and Taylor Hall. The shot metrics favored the Blackhawks whenever the trio was on the ice — 17-5 shot attempts, 9-4 shots on goal, and 76.95 percent of the expected goals — and they were responsible for the Blackhawks lone goal.
Lukas Reichel still looked pretty solid this game, so much so that Richardson moved him up to the top line and power-play unit later in the game for some spins. I still don’t like him with Bedard much, but they’re a fine enough combination in a “break glass in case of emergency” offensive option for now.
The only positive pairing from the game was Seth Jones and Wyatt Kaiser. At 5-on-5, they were quite good when together: for example, when matched up against the Larkin line, the Blackhawks had 60 percent or more of the shot attempt and expected goals share with the pair on the ice. Kaiser had a clean, poised game with a couple of noticeable defensive standout moves, and Jones looked closer to back to his regular self. Well, outside of the power play, which was quite bad. Still: baby steps.
Game Charts


Three Stars
- Dylan Larkin (DET) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Alex DeBrincat (DET) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Nick Foligno (CHI) — 1 goal
What’s Next
The Blackhawks are back at it on Thursday night, heading down to Dallas to face the Stars at 7 p.m.