For the second time in three days, the Blackhawks are facing the Pittsburgh Penguins, with Tuesday’s game taking place out in western Pennsylvania after the two teams met over the weekend in Chicago.
The home side won that game 3-1, with Ilya Mikheyev providing a pair of Chicago’s goals and Frank Nazar the other. Considering these two teams met just a few days ago, there’s not much more to be said about either team that wasn’t already mentioned in Sunday’s preview. Pittsburgh still has names like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and now Erik Karlsson, but those four weren’t enough to carry the team into playoff contention because it’s now 2025, not 2015. That quartet is still good but not at the height of their powers anymore, and the lack of quality depth around them has the Penguins joining the Blackhawks in the draft lottery coming next month. All four of those players are also under contract through at least next season, though, and the top two scorers behind Crosby’s 86 (30 G, 56 A) in 76 games are also on the wrong side of 30 in Rickard Rakell (67 points in 77 games) and Bryan Rust (59 in 67) — who are both under contract through the 2027-28 season. Pittsburgh’s roster is only getting older and the contracts in place won’t be helping it get younger anytime soon, either.
Here is Pittsburgh’s expected lineup for this one:
Penguins’ lines, pairs and power-play groups: pic.twitter.com/ZStDNwiCT4
— Seth Rorabaugh (@SethRorabaugh) April 8, 2025
As for the Hawks, Sunday’s game was a victory so lineup changes aren’t expected, and that includes the goalie:
#Blackhawks lineup in Pittsburgh:
— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) April 8, 2025
Donato-Bedard-Mikheyev
Teravainen-Nazar-Bertuzzi
Slaggert-Moore-Kurashev
Reichel-Veleno-Foligno
Vlasic-Rinzel
Korchinski-Murphy
Kaiser-Levshunov
Knight
Söderblom
Extras: Maroon, Crevier, Del Mastro
Not on the ice: Brodie, Martinez (hip)
One thing that is changing for this game: the broadcast channel! It’s on WCIU, which is available through most cable providers in the Chicagoland area. So we’ve got that going for us.
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Penguins
44.03% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 50.71% (12th)
42.87% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 50.29% (16th)
2.70 (26th) — Goals per game — 2.94 (19th)
3.61 (31st) — Goals against per game — 3.58 (30th)
45.0% (31st) — Faceoffs — 52.8 (5th)
24.4% (10th) — Power play — 24.8% (9th)
80.4% (12th) — Penalty kill — 77.6% (21st)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 6 p.m. CT
Where: PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh
TV: WCIU
Webstream: ESPN+, Hulu
Radio: WGN 720