A late Blackhawks rally was just enough to force overtime but not enough to end the team’s current losing streak as Chicago lost 4-3 to the New York Rangers on Friday night at the United Center.
The Blackhawks opened the scoring 2:39 into the game after a couple of lucky ricochets in front — including off the crossbar — saw an Alex Vlasic shot beat Igor Shesterkin, making it 1-0 Blackhawks.
Alexis Lafrenière tied it up at one around the five-minute mark after a tic-tac-toe passing play between Artemi Panarin and K’Andre Miller.
The Rangers scored again just over a minute later, going up 2-1 at the 6:16 mark of the first. Adam Fox waited out a sprawling Isaak Phillips in front before sliding the puck through the legs of Louis Crevier to Chris Kreider, who tipped the puck home for the goal.
In the second period, New York went ahead 3-1 on this goal from Jonny Brodzinski:
The Blackhawks didn’t go away quietly, though, and the comeback started later in the third period after Chicago started tilting the ice in their favor. With a little over six minutes remaining in the third, Nick Foligno buried this rebound opportunity to make it a 3-2 game:
And the comeback wasn’t done there, either. With Chicago’s net empty, a Seth Jones point shot was redirected by Jason Dickinson into the Rangers net to tie the game at three:
Chicago picked up a point by forcing overtime but New York went home with the second after this OT winner from Mika Zibanejad:
And that’s how the Blackhawks ended up on a six-game losing streak.
Notes
- Ho hum, another game with Alex Vlasic not being on the ice whenever an opponent scores a goal. Oh, and he scored one, too. Vlasic and Seth Jones were on the positive side of the ledger in every worthwhile possession statistic, including a 68.6 percent expected goal share. Decent pairing they’ve got with these two.
- Just don’t look too closely at that Crevier/Megna pairing. Woof.
- Credit to Isaak Phillips to getting back so quickly after helping push Boris Katchouk — who’d lost a skate blade — back to the Chicago bench, just sucks that Fox is the type of player that doesn’t need much room to make you pay.
- Lukas Reichel only skated 9:46 in this game and, per Natural Stat Trick, it was just 6:58 of 5-on-5 ice time and he did not start a single draw in the offensive zone. Not entirely sure what will bust him out of what seems like a season-long slump, but that also does not seem like it’s going to help, either.
- It’s entirely possible that the moral victories have long been insufficient outcomes for anyone watching the Blackhawks this season, given how long it’s been since this team played in a hockey game that mattered. But that’s about all available to us this season, and performances like that are certainly easier to stomach than some of the other defeats on this six-game losing streak.
- We’ll let the players take it from here with some reporting from our man-on-the-scene, Eric Gegenheimer:
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Mika Zibanejad (NYR) — OT winner
- Chris Kreider (NYR) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Jason Dickinson (CHI) — 1 goal
What’s Next
The Blackhawks have a few days off before taking on the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night at the United Center with a 7:30 p.m. puck drop.