Fresh off one Original Six victory on Friday night, the Blackhawks look for another on Sunday afternoon at the United Center against the New York Rangers.
New York enters this game still in the midst of the same downward spiral as it was when these two teams met at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 9. The Blackhawks won that game 2-1, snapping a five-game losing streak while kicking off a three-game winning streak of their own. The Rangers? They were bad in that game, before that game and after that game. On Saturday, they were in Washington for a 7-4 loss to the Capitals — New York’s eight defeat in the last 10 games.
The touchdown and extra point allowed are part of an overall trend of New York’s defense being mostly a rumor at this point, as that was the fourth time in the last five games that NY allowed five or more goals. Starting goalie Igor Shesterkin is now on injured reserve, moving the No. 1 role temporarily to 38-year-old Jonathan Quick, who has been solid this season (6-4 record, .913 save percentage, 2.54 goals-against average) but was not as solid against Washington on Saturday. The expectation here is that Louis Domingue will be in net for this game to spell Quick, and Domingue has been more of an AHL goalie than an NHL one in the last few seasons. Regardless of who’s in net, our friends over at Blueshirt Banter recently explored the causes of this team’s latest struggles, pointing to issues in the slot at both ends of the ice.
There’s been a consistent dark cloud hovering over this team for several months now, and the trading away of former captain Jacob Trouba didn’t change that. The dismissal of coach Peter Laviolette feels like an inevitability at this point but it may already be too late for anything to be salvaged from this season. The Rangers are five points out of the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference as of this writing but still have six teams to leap. A serious heater would do the trick but there’s little reason to believe the Rangers would do much of anything in the postseason if they somehow managed to make an appearance there. It feels more likely that New York is doing some selling before the trade deadline passes in a few months — something that’s pretty shocking to think about when considering that the Rangers were sitting at 12-4-1 on Nov. 19.
Anyway, here’s the Rangers lineup from Saturday’s game:
Rangers lines and pairings: Panarin-Trocheck-Lafrenière Kreider-Zibanejad-Smith Cuylle-Chytil-Berard Edstrom-Carrick-Vesey Lindgren-Fox Borgen-Miller Vaakanainen-Schneider Quick
— Stephen Whyno (@swhyno.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 10:46 AM
As for the Blackhawks, nothing major to report from Saturday’s practice between home games at the UC. Petr Mrazek seems to be the one in net while Lukas Reichel and Phillip Kurashev appear to be back in the press box for another night:
#Blackhawks lineup at practice:
— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) January 4, 2025
Bertuzzi-Bedard-Mikheyev
Hall-Dickinson-Foligno
Dach-Nazar-Teravainen
Maroon-Donato-Smith
Kaiser-Jones
Vlasic-Crevier
Allan-Brodie
Mrazek
Söderblom
Extras: Kurashev, Reichel
Not practicing: Murphy (groin)
Friday’s win over the Canadiens halted an ugly five-game losing streak that had things feeling awfully bleak around these parts. One win doesn’t cure all of that and a second probably won’t either, but having some youngsters chip in with significant contributions toward a pair of points earned from this game certainly would. Frank Nazar has had moments but not a ton of results yet while Colton Dach had a strong NHL debut on Friday. Perhaps those guys or some of the blue-liners or even that Connor Bedard guy have a night against a team that’s been rolling out the red carpet in its own end for opponents lately.
Let’s go Hawks.
Blackhawks — Statistic — Rangers
45.24% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 48.81% (21st)
45.23% (30th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 48.64% (24th)
2.54 (30th) — Goals per game — 2.78 (23rd)
3.36 (26th) — Goals against per game — 3.08 (18th)
43.9% (31st) — Faceoffs — 53.9% (2nd)
23.5% (12th) — Power play — 17.8% (23rd)
83.6% (t-5th) — Penalty kill — 84.9% (3rd)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 2 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: ABC
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720