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So Strange I Remember You: Golden Knights 5, Blackhawks 2

A loss to open this hockey season that felt a lot like many of the losses from the prior one.

Posted on by Dave Melton
Source: Blackhawks official website

The Blackhawks kicked off the 2026-27 season in an all-too-familiar fashion, losing 5-2 on the road to the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday night.

Near the midpoint of the opening period, Victor Olofsson found some open space during a Vegas power play and used it to snipe one past Spencer Knight to open the scoring.

About five minutes later, Trevor Connelly was left all alone on the side of the Chicago net, providing ample space for him to tuck home a rebound for his first NHL goal while making it a 2-0 Vegas lead:

The first Blackhawks goal of the 2026-27 season came from Jordan Greenway — just as we all expected! — at the end of this quick counterattack in the middle of the second period.

About three minutes later, though, Jack Eichel found some open space down low in the Chicago zone, took in a pass from behind the net and quickly fired it past Knight to restore Vegas’ two-goal lead:

eichel goal

Four minutes into the third period, Patrick Kane scored his first goal for Chicago in over three years, hopping on this loose puck and waiting out Carter Hart on a breakaway before casually throwing it into a yawning cage:

The good vibes from that lasted all of 39 seconds, as Noah Hanifin scored at the end of this VGK odd-man rush to make it a 4-2 lead:

Mark Stone added an empty-netter for Vegas, and that was that!

Notes

Before we get into the other items, let’s start with the second-period injury to Andrew Mangiapane, who departed about a minute into that middle frame and did not return to the game.

The postgame reports suggest that Teuvo Teravainen won’t be watching from the press box much longer.

Andrew Mangiapane has a lower-body injury and won't play the rest of the trip.

— Mark Lazerus (@marklazerus.bsky.social) September 30, 2026 at 12:41 AM

How does a rookie end up all alone next to the Blackhawks net for an easy rebound goal? It seems like Frank Nazar may have actually been the player responsible there, as he’s nearest Connelly when the play moves up the far boards.

Note that Rinzel is on the tail of the puck carrier in the photo above. As the puck makes its way to the point then down the blue line, Barbashev (the former puck carrier) ends up atop the faceoff circle and Rinzel starts to peel away while Nazar ends up in a bit of no-man’s-land in the low slot covering nothing. Connelly’s stick is the one at the left side of the screen and no one’s covering him in the screenshot below, taken two seconds after the one above:

And the screenshot below is when the blown D-zone coverage becomes evident. Rinzel saw Connelly open and was heading to cover him but he trips over the Vegas skater who was tied up with Ian Cole. Nazar attempts blocking the point shot from Brayden McNabb but when he doesn’t there’s no one to cover Connelly.

These are the mistakes of in-zone coverage in a man-to-man system that can be prevented through constant communication during games and repeated film sessions outside of games. Yeah, mistakes are going to happen at times. This one didn’t seem so difficult to prevent though, did it?

The first two periods felt brutal and the 5-on-5 numbers from Natural Stat Trick reinforce that. Vegas was up 38-28 in shot attempts, 24-12 in shots on goal and 9-7 in high-danger chances, all adding up to a 70.9 percent share of the expected goals — yikes. The Hawks did muster a push in the third with a 75 percent expected goal share but the lopsided play for the first two periods felt a little familiar, didn’t it?

Kane’s still got it on the offensive side of things, so that’s good. He and Jordan Greenway being the top two forwards on the player card below is not as good of a thing. There needs to be much, much better play from the kids for this season to feel like a step in the right direction.

Related to the last part of that note above: one shot on goal apiece at 5-on-5 from Nick Lardis and Roman Kantserov in this game. None from Anton Frondell. That’s not going to work.

A quick tip of the cap to Wyatt Kaiser for his well-placed stickwork in the neutral zone on the play that led to Greenway’s goal. Here’s hoping we see more of that throughout the season, because Kaiser has the instincts to recognize those plays but also the skating ability to recover if he’s unsuccessful on them.

This game featured the Hawks being largely outplayed for significant portions of the game with some miscues in the defensive zones leading to blown assignments and, ultimately, goals against. That’s a bit of a worrisome development because it was an all-too-common theme last season. But we can also acknowledge that this was Game 1 of 84 with a very young team, and it was against the reigning conference champions. Hopefully there are some games in the near future with different themes to make us forget about this one.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Jack Eichel (VGK) — 1 goal, 2 assists
  2. Trevor Connelly (VGK) — first NHL goal
  3. Noah Hanifin (VGK) — 1 goal

What’s Next

The Blackhawks stay out west for a game on Thursday night against the Utah Mammoth at 8:30 p.m.

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