The Blackhawks take on the San Jose Sharks for the first time this season on Tuesday evening at the United Center in the official Macklin Celebrini Bowl/bottom of the league battle.
For as bad as things have been the last few years at 1901 W. Madison Street, at least we can say that the Hawks already found their bottom and are in the midst of fighting their way back up, even if the progress feels incremental at the moment. While he’s still weeks away from coming back, we know who the franchise savior is around these parts. He’s been drafted, signed, and was already showing the rest of the NHL what he’s capable of as an 18-year-old before he ran face-first into Brendan Smith. The rest of the roster may still be varying levels of questions, but the expectation is that Connor Bedard will be tearing a hole through the league while leading the Blackhawks back into the playoffs sometime within the next few seasons. And that gives us hope.
There is none of that right now in San Jose.
The Sharks may very well have their No. 1 center of the future in fellow 2023 draftee Will Smith, but he’s not even in their system yet as he’s currently centering Boston College’s top line until at least the end of this college season. And once he gets there, which San Jose fans have to pray will be next season, the current roster doesn’t offer him much in the way of help. Wingers Fabian Zetterlund (12 goals, 6 assists in 44 games), and William Eklund (7 goals, 11 assists in 43 games), are really the only two prospect-y players currently up on their big club, and that’s very much by design. GM Mike Grier set the Sharks up to crater spectacularly both last season as well as this one — moving out both Timo Meier and Erik Karlsson for underwhelming returns to make sure they’re bad enough to have the best crack at drafting first overall (sound familiar) — and so far that’s exactly what they’ve done.
San Jose didn’t get their first win until their 12th game of the season. They just broke their second double-digit winless streak, this one was at 12 (one game away from what would have been their longest losing streak in 31 years). And they’ve won once in their last 15 games, while being outscored 64-22 in the process. You can pick just about any meaningful stat, in both regular or fancy metrics, and San Jose is either the worst or second-worst team across the board (though the same can mostly be said for the Blackhawks as well).
The Sharks’ leading scorers are Tomas Hertl, who has to be absolutely loving the eight-year extension he signed in 2022, with 30 points (13 G, 17 A) in 43 games and Mikael Granlund (5 G, 24 A in 37 games) whom the Penguins forced San Jose to take back as part of the deal for Karlsson. The remainder of their offensive roster, aside from Zetterlund and Eklund, is filled out by a bunch of journeymen players like Mike Hoffman and Anthony Duclair (who didn’t get a fair shot here) and Nico Sturm, who at this point have been on so many different teams it’s hard to keep track of them all.
And the Sharks’ back end might be even scarier. The husk of Marc-Edouard Vlasic is still roaming around and, not only does he have the worst possession numbers on the entire team, he’s still signed for an additional two seasons after this one. They took a flyer on Calen Addison to quarterback their power play after the Minnesota Wild decided he was expendable, and he’s looked completely overwhelmed while only putting up seven points (1 G, 6 A) so far. Their best overall defender is either Mario Ferraro or Jan Rutta, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
All in all, San Jose is a tremendously untalented team that was created to be as bad as possible and are doing just that. They lead the entire NHL with a minus-90 goal differential, and are currently on pace for a 42-point season.
The Sharks played early on Monday, losing 3-0 to the Buffalo Sabres, and had an optional skate this morning, so expect them to roll out a similar lineup as yesterday, save for Mackenzie Blackwood starting in goal.
As for the Blackhawks, life continues without Bedard (even if he’s already skating). They’ve switched up their game to be more conservative with No. 98 out, and Ben Pope dug further into the results.
The big news at practice this morning was the announcement of the two-year extension for Jason Dickinson, and the fact Connor Murphy is out tonight while dealing with a lower-body injury.
Petr Mrazek gets the crease tonight, his fifth start in the last six games, and at some point soon I’d really like to hear what the plan for Arvid Soderblom is going to be moving forward if he’s not even getting the start against the worst team in the league. While none of us would say Soderblom has been good by any stretch of the imagination so far this season, I don’t see how being stapled to the bench is going to help change that anytime soon.
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Sharks
44.20% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 42.87% (32nd)
42.49% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 42.00% (32nd)
2.26 (31st) — Goals per game — 2.0 (32nd)
3.65 (29th) — Goals against per game — 4.05 (32nd)
44.4% (32nd) — Faceoffs — 50.5% (t-13th)
12.8% (31st) — Power play — 18.2% (22nd)
75.4% (27th) — Penalty kill — 71.3% (32nd)
How to watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago, IL
TV: NBC Sports Chicago
Webstream: ESPN+/Hulu
Radio: WGN 720