The Blackhawks got their ass kicked in Minnesota on Tuesday night, losing 7-2 in a preseason game that comes exactly one week before Chicago is slated to start its regular-season schedule.
So, we’re all feeling great, aren’t we?
The game actually started on a much more positive note, with Jason Dickinson pouncing on a rebound to put the Blackhawks ahead 1-0 a little over six minutes into the first period:
Everything slowly spiraled down into the toilet from there, as a combination of bad turnovers and worse penalties helped the Wild tally six straight goals.
Chicago got one more goal in the final moments of the second period as Connor Bedard tapped home a loose puck while on the power play:
Jared Spurgeon added the extra point in the third period for the final margin of victory.
Notes
Going to keep this brief so as to it not beat this horse to death but it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous that a Blackhawks game is so difficult to watch on TV in 2024. Scott Powers of The Athletic put up a Twitter poll that got nearly 2,000 results and SEVENTY-TWO-POINT-SIX percent of the respondents said they could not access the game. That’s a team doing a disservice to its fans by not making its product accessible. This new network launches and it’s not available on Comast, which the Chicago Tribune reported earlier on Tuesday as being the top provider in the market at almost one million subscribers. The details do not matter here: fix this shit. The reality is that the people in charge of all this, whoever they are, will ensure this drags out until the very last minute, which is probably the first CHSN broadcast from the regular season next Friday.
In the samples of the broadcast available, though, it looked like CHSN has a pretty good product to share and the Rick Ball/Darren Pang broadcast duo sounded wonderful. Just hope it’s not so difficult to access it next time around!
Oh right, the game. The tricky part is trying to find something good to say about this events because everything went so far downhill so quickly that it’s hard to remember anything positive. Kevin Korchinski had a few bad giveaways that led to goals. His D partner, Connor Murphy added one a little later. The line of Lukas Reichel, Andreas Athanasiou and Taylor Hall would have been an improvement if it had been a non-factor based on how detrimental it was to the team’s overall success in this game. Tyler Bertuzzi and Ilya Mikheyev took bad/dumb penalties that resulted in Minnesota PPGs. The possession stats from Natural Stat Trick are comically lopsided. Everything was bad!
Seriously, there’s no reason to ruminate any longer on this one. Yes, it is just a preseason game. If the Hawks won this game 8-1 we’d likely be suggesting to not get too wrapped up in excitement over the result, so the opposite holds true as well. But it’s still hard to shake the fact that the Hawks lost this game and lost it this badly. Wasn’t like their AHL-bound goalie let up a bunch of softies, either: he was repeatedly hung out to dry by his teammates through turnovers and ill-timed penalties and countless other errors. This was as close to a season-opening lineup as we’ve seen this preseason (save for Teuvo, who still rules but can’t do this all by himself) and the Wild kicked their collective ass all over the rink. Friday’s rematch simply has to result in a better performance from the Hawks. Full stop.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Kirill Kaprizov (MIN) — 1 goal, 3 assists
- Mats Zuccarello (MIN) — 3 assists
- Jared Spurgeon (MIN) — 2 goals
What’s Next
These two teams meet at the United Center on Friday night for a 7:30 p.m. puck drop. Maybe the Blackhawks will show up this time!