Oh, right: there’s a hockey game at the United Center on Friday night, with the Blackhawks hosting the Utah Hockey Club.
There’s no need for a lengthy preamble here, as virtually everything said about Utah in last week’s preview of a game between these two games still holds. That game was a disastrous one for the Hawks, as the one-goal gap on the scoreboard could not be less indicative of the one-lightyear gap in performances between Chicago and Utah that evening. There won’t be any “must-win” games for the Blackhawks for a few seasons still but they absolutely need to turn in a better performance than they did the last time these two sides met. The good news is that Chicago has been marginally better at home (12-15-4 record) than on the road (7-20-4).
Utah hosted Detroit on Thursday night and won 4-2, continuing its torrid pace of late with a 7-3-0 record in the team’s last 10 games. Here’s that lineup from the game against the Detroit:
Lines in Detroit 🫡 pic.twitter.com/IMhsrQKEhr
— Utah Hockey Club (@utahhockeyclub) March 6, 2025
Chicago had an optional morning skate and the lines from Thursday’s practice could be shuffled a bit with Craig Smith no longer manning the fourth line after being traded to Detroit earlier on Friday:
Blackhawks forward lines this morning: Dach-Bedard-Nazar Teravainen-Donato-Mikheyev Slaggert-Foligno-Bertuzzi Maroon-Smith-Reichel Athanasiou-Dickinson-Kurashev (extras)
— Greg Boysen (@gregboysen.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 11:07 AM
That lineup also confirms the return of Nick Foligno, who’s been out for a few weeks:
Spencer Knight starts tonight. Foligno back in, Athanasiou out. Blackhawks will go with the lines/D pairs they had at practice yesterday as long as everyone's still here tonight, of course.
— Tracey Myers (@traceymyers.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Would be difficult to have a worse showing than last week’s game in Utah. Let’s not attempt to re-create though, eh?
Let’s go Hawks.
Blackhawks — Statistic — Utah HC
43.90% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 52.75% (6th)
42.88% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 52.61% (6th)
2.76 (25th) — Goals per game — 2.82 (t-22nd)
3.48 (29th) — Goals against per game — 2.92 (t-13th)
44.7% (31st) — Faceoffs — 51.2% (11th)
26.4% (t-6th) — Power play — 23.3% (14th)
81.4% (8th) — Penalty kill — 81.1% (10th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+, Hulu
Radio: WGN 720