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Jane Says: Blackhawks vs. Kings Preview

The Hawks’ latest attempt to break the bad vibes is on Thursday night at the UC.

Posted on by L_B_R
Credit: Matt Marton-Imagn Images

The Chicago Blackhawks look to stop a five-game losing streak against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night at the United Center.

The Kings are securely in the playoffs, sitting third in the Pacific with a 10-point swing between them and the next closest divisional team to them, the Vancouver Canucks. They’ve gone 5-4-1 in their last 10 games, but dropped their most recent match 3-1 to the Minnesota Wild on Monday night. The Kings scored first thanks to their leading producer, Adrian Kempe (55 points in 66 games), but the Wild went on to score three unanswered goals in the latter 40 minutes. No goals during this game came at 5-on-5, either, an interesting fact considering penalties and power-play opportunities are way down this season on top of the typical year-over-year decline.

Much like the Kraken before, the Kings don’t really have any stand-out offensive players and tend to score more by committee. As mentioned above, Kempe (0.83 points-per-game) is their best points-producer with Anze Kopitar (0.80) the only other forward close to Kempe’s PPG rate. There’s a drop between those two and the next handful of players, but the Kings do have six other forwards who are at a 0.5 PPG rate or better: Kevin Fiala (0.69), Quinton Byfield (0.61), Warren Foegele (0.56), Trevor Moore (0.53), Phillip Danault (0.52), and Alex Laferriere (0.52) That’s not a bad forward group, but they’re also not the most impressive either. It’s part of why the Kings offense is just 21st in the league at 2.80 goals per game. Their youngest defender, Brandt Clarke, is the only one somewhat consistently contributing offensively from the back end (0.45 PPG).

What the Kings are good as is shot suppression on defense. During 5-on-5 hockey, they keep shot attempts against low with the fifth best rate (54.33 per 60) in the league but are even better at preventing shots on goal (24.05 per 60) and expected goals against (2.16 per 60), being the absolute best team in the league in both stat categories. Defensively, the Kings are just one of the best teams in the league.

The Kings ran the same lines at Thursday’s morning skate that they did against the Wild on Monday, including Darcy Kuemper — who is having an excellent season with a .918 save percentage behind the strong Kings’ defense — as the starter in net.

As for the Blackhawks, they lost their second straight game by a 6-2 margin, this time to the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday, which brought their losing streak to five games. The Blackhawks’ current skid has been frustrating because there was a brief time earlier in the March when it seemed the team was making positive progress. Maybe they weren’t winning too much then, but the losses were competitive and the feeling around the team was much lighter. That goodwill has been nonexistent lately, as players lamented their frustration after the Kraken game about the defensive issues and lack of cohesion as a group. Connor Bedard scored and Artyom Levshunov picked up the primary assist on the goal, but that was basically the only highlight in the game. It was such a disappointing game, that the Blackhawks practiced and held long video review sessions Wednesday on a day that was originally meant to be an off day.

The Blackhawks lines and pairings at that Wednesday practice were once again shuffled slightly after the Kraken loss. This isn’t surprising, but it’s also hard to see how some of these players can build chemistry with the constant rotations.

Jason Dickinson has been moved back up to the top line to play with Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar, an odd move considering Dickinson has been — by his own admittance — playing poorly since coming back from injury. It was likely just so Ryan Donato could be reunited with Teuvo Teravainen and Ilya Mikheyev, the only line for the Blackhawks this season to consistently produce. Joe Veleno is back in for Pat Maroon on the fourth line, but not in the center position — another head-scratcher.

As for the defenders, Wyatt Kaiser was moved up to play opposite Alex Vlasic on the top pairing. Kaiser has quietly been the Blackhawks most consistently good defender during this decline, so a promotion is somewhat understandable, but it does break up a decently working pairing between Vlasic and Levshunov. As a result, Levshunov is now with Alec Martinez, which is honestly fine: it’ll allow Levshunov to continue to be sheltered with offensively skewed zone starts and Martinez was brought in to be a veteran mentor. It also means Vlasic can be assigned tougher competition with Kaiser.

Since Knight played against the Kraken on Tuesday, it seems like Arvid Soderblom will get the nod against the Kings on Thursday.

The Kings may be one of the better opponents for the Blackhawks to be facing in the hopes of a win, too: Chicago won both times it faced LA so far this season, outscoring them 9-4 in the process. The last time was one Blackhawks fans remember well: Spencer Knight’s 41-save debut with Chicago. However, the Kings had been on a bit of a losing streak the last time they faced the Blackhawks, having lost three in a row and four of five prior to that game. So, LA will be coming in with a bit more momentum this time.

One final note: the Blackhawks would be the second team to be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs if they lose in any way to the Kings on Thursday:

Tale of the Tape

Blackhawks — Statistic — Kings
44.00% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 53.24% (5th)
43.18% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 54.50% (3rd)
2.69 (28th) — Goals per game — 2.80 (21st)
3.54 (30th) — Goals against per game — 2.56 (3rd)
45.1% (31st) — Faceoffs — 50.5% (15th)
24.8% (8th) — Power play — 15.5% (28th)
81.1% (12th) — Penalty kill — 81.7% (9th)
(All stats from this season)

How to watch

When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN+
Webstream: ESPN+, Hulu
Radio: WGN 720

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