The Chicago Blackhawks lost their 14th road game in a row on Friday night, falling 4-2 to the New Jersey Devils.
More importantly, they might have lost Connor Bedard and Nick Foligno to injuries.
The Blackhawks opened the scoring with a Jason Dickinson power-play goal 15:05 into the first period. Nikita Zaitsev took a hit along the boards but was able to get the puck back to Alex Vlasic, who set up Dickinson.
The Devils tied the game 1-1 at the halfway mark of the second period after Alexander Holtz finished a give-and-go with Simon Nemec.
Boris Katchouk put the Blackhawks back up 2-1 with 1:36 left in the second period. His shorthanded tally was unassisted as he walked around a couple of Devils players and used another as a partial screen to score.
The Devils evened things back up 2-2 just under six minutes into the third off a wrister from Nemec that hit the far post and bounced in.
Michael McLeod gave the Devils their first lead of the night with 8:04 remaining in the game after he tapped in a great backhand pass from Curtis Lazar into the net.
The Devils added an empty-net goal courtesy of Tyler Toffoli with 27 seconds remaining to put this one away 4-2.
Notes
- In terms of performance, the Blackhawks were outplayed in every period, but they did get better as the game went on. It just wasn’t enough, unfortunately, as the Devils were clearly the better team. Ultimately, though, the Blackhawks were in the red for this game, owning just 43.59 percent of the shot attempts and 46.08 percent of the expected goals.
- This was a chippy game as well, which is odd considering these two teams don’t play each other much. The game was already rocky even before Brendan Smith laid that big hit on Bedard, but it only intensified after. I’d rather players like Vlasic didn’t fight because the Blackhawks definitely cannot afford to lose him, but it’s understandable why gloves were dropped at times in this game, especially in that instance after Donato was boarded.
- Can we take a minute to really appreciate Vlasic? He’s been one of the best, most consistent players on the Blackhawks this season. He’s not been perfect by any means, but his mistakes are usually fairly minor and typically not repeated. In a season with a lot of uncertainty, it’s nice that Vlasic has been so steady.
- The Blackhawks haven’t been good this season, but they’ve also been really unlucky too. And I’m not just talking about the injuries — if something can go wrong, it does go wrong. For example, on the third Devils goal, the Blackhawks had not one but two players go down: Entwistle at the far end to give the Devils numbers back and Zaitsev in front of the net. Credit Zaitsev for getting up so quickly to take away some space but the slight delay was enough for Lazar to make a great move.
- Söderblom was in net for another loss, but it honestly was an average performance overall. The only goal that he was off on was the Nemec one but, otherwise, the Devils scored three goals on 3.17 expected goals, and Söderblom’s .903 save-percentage is right where the league average is currently. This was a little down from his Predators performance: he let in a so-so/bad goal in that game too, but posted a .943 save-percentage. It’d be nice if Söderblom could be more consistent, but an average game is still improvement
- Speaking of injuries, the Blackhawks lost Connor Bedard and Nick Foligno in this game. Bedard left after a high but clean hit from Brendan Smith in the first period and then Foligno didn’t take a shift after a fight with Smith in the second.
- Unfortunately, the extent to which Bedard and Foligno are injured is still unknown: they’re going to be evaluated once back in Chicago. That brings the Blackhawks current injury count to nine (in order of occurrence): Andreas Athanasiou, Taylor Hall, Seth Jones, Joey Anderson, Taylor Raddysh, Tyler Johnson, Anthony Beauvillier, and now Bedard and Foligno.
- Final question: was the Smith hit on Bedard clean? It looked like it to me if only because, while the head was hit, it wasn’t the primary point of contact. The height difference plus Bedard being hunched over made it seem worse than it was. I ask this because Katchouk said immediately postgame that it was dirty, but coach Luke Richardson didn’t agree.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Simon Nemec (NJD) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Alexander Holtz (NJD) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Michael McLeod (NJD) — 1 goal
What’s Next
The Blackhawks are back home at the United Center to host the Calgary Flames on Sunday for an afternoon game at 2 p.m.