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Endless Sky: Canucks 6, Blackhawks 3

The Hawks were unable to overcome a one-goal deficit or score with the goaltender pulled, yet again.

Posted on by Steve Kwiatkowski
Credit: Matt Marton-Imagn Images

The Vancouver Canucks snapped a nine-game losing streak on the road with a 6-3 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday night at the United Center. While the game wasn’t as dreadful as the score suggests, let’s recap this very winnable game for the Hawks.

Ryan Donato opened up scoring just over a minute into the game after collecting his own dump-in.

Exactly one minute later, the Hawks struggled to get the puck out of their zone, and Drew O’Connor tied the game with a tip-in.

30 seconds after that goal, Jake DeBrusk redirected a shot from Zeev Buium to put the Canucks up 2-1 just over three minutes into the game.

Teddy Blueger put the Canucks up 3-1 after some soft defending from the Hawks with 13:28 left in the first period.

Some great passing from both Oliver Moore and Tyler Bertuzzi gave Ilya Mikheyev his 12th goal of the season, cutting Vancouver’s lead to 3-2.

Frank Nazar scored the lone goal of the second period to tie the game, 3-3.

Brock Boeser batted in a rebound for a power play goal to grab the game-winner early in the third period.

Landon Slaggert’s goal was called off due to kicking after an excellent setup from Andrew Mangiapane in his Blackhawks debut.

The final two goals of the game were both empty-netters. Max Sasson scored with under two minutes remaining, and Boeser scored his second of the night with under 20 seconds left.

Notes

Boy, the Blackhawks really can’t figure out how to score with the goalie pulled, huh? This was a winnable game for Chicago, and if it wasn’t for a sloppy first period, the Hawks could have ended the night with a “W”. The Hawks had the advantage in 5-on-5 shot attempts (45-29), a 24-16 advantage in 5-on-5 scoring chances, and owned a 60.3 percent share of the expected goals. At 5-on-5, Chicago was the better team. Let’s break down some trends in each period.

Both teams were even in 5-on-5 shot attempts in the first period (13 each). But Vancouver had the edge in scoring chances with an 11-8 advantage and an 8-3 advantage for high-danger chances. Some of that has to do with the soft defending from the young Blackhawks. This was especially evident on the Canucks third goal, as Nazar could have done a much better job at defending. Ethan Del Mastro also had some puck-handling miscues at the offensive blue line and bobbled the puck a couple of times. Here’s another look at Boeser’s goal with some commentary from SportsNet.

But Vancouver’s defense wasn’t exactly stout, either. The Hawks could have pressed a little harder in the first period to take advantage of the Canucks immobile defense. The second period saw the Hawks press harder as the Canucks struggled with the long line change. Chicago had a 15-8 shot attempt advantage, a 7-2 scoring chance advantage, and an 80.48 percent expected goals share (all at 5-on-5). Connor Bedard had a couple of great looks at 4-on-4, and he would finish the night with a whopping nine shot attempts, four shots on goal, and five scoring chances in all situations (across all periods). Here’s a look from Bedard in the middle frame:

Even though it took nearly all of the second period for the Hawks to score the tying goal, they carried a strong effort into the third period, but couldn’t find the back of the net. Bedard’s line started strong, and he even hit the knob of the goaltender’s stick on his first shift — a common trend for Bedard because he tries to pick corners when sometimes he should maybe select a different area to snipe. The Hawks had a 9-3 advantage in scoring chances, a 4-0 advantage in high danger chances, and a 17-8 advantage in shot attempts at 5-on-5. We still saw the Hawks struggle to break out of their zone, including a dangerous giveaway from Matt Grzelcyk, who passed to the middle of the ice with zero support. Oh, and winning 32.7 percent of your faceoffs isn’t going to help either. Let’s close with a couple more notes.

Other than a shaky first period from Del Mastro, I thought he had a decent game. He finished with strong analytics (83.75 percent expected goals share and a 72.73 percent shot attempt share at 5-on-5) but only played 7:42. Head coach Jeff Blashill said he went with 11 forwards and 7 defensemen to give Del Mastro a look. I personally think that going with seven defensemen skews with line chemistry, and I’d much rather have consistent linemates, especially when this young team has struggled in the defensive zone.

Oliver Moore’s line with Bertuzzi and Mikheyev had a 5-6 shot attempt disadvantage, were even at shots on goal (two for and two against), and were on the ice for one goal and against for one. Moore had 14:10 of ice time, and I thought he had an alright game. The pass he made for Mikheyev’s goal was notable, and there were a few other solid passes from him on Friday night.

Game Charts

#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Chicago Blackhawks on 2026-03-06 #Blackhawks

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— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) March 6, 2026 at 8:21 PM

Three Stars

  1. Jake DeBrusk (VAN) — 1 goal, 1 assist
  2. Frank Nazar (CHI) — 1 goal, 1 assist
  3. Marcus Pettersson (VAN) — 2 assists

What’s Next

The Blackhawks have one night off before hitting the road to take on the Dallas Stars on Sunday at 5 p.m.

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