x

Already member? Login first!

Comments / New

Don’t Call It a Comeback: Blackhawks 4, Wild 1

A game that became the Frank Nazar Show.

Posted on by Dave Melton
Credit: Nick Wosika-Imagn Images

The Blackhawks completed a preseason sweep of two Central Division foes by beating the Minnesota Wild 4-1 on Saturday night in St. Paul.

Frank Nazar was the star of the night and he opened the scoring with this power-play tally after a neat pass from Teuvo in the middle of the first period:

Nazar doubled Chicago’s lead just over a minute into the second period:

Hunter Haight scored Minnesota’s lone goal in the middle of the second period, leaving Chicago ahead 2-1 to start the third. Ryan Donato put the Hawks back up by two after he took in this ridiculous, spinning, backhand pass across the ice from Connor Bedard and then roofed one into the Wild net:

Minnesota’s closest call at cutting into Chicago’s two-goal lead came during this mad scramble in the third period, which required a skate save from Sam Rinzel:

But the Wild would get no closer on the scoreboard and Nazar completed his hat trick with this late empty-netter for the final margin of victory:

Notes

The obvious must be stated in that Minnesota did not run it’s A-team out for this game, but we all learned quite recently that the Blackhawks can be pretty awful against a B or C-team. This was much, much better — Saturday, too

Before we get to the good stuff, let’s start with the bad stuff, which is the injury to Alex Vlasic, who departed during the third period and did not return:

Frank Nazar is very quickly making the claim to be the most exciting player to keep an eye on during the upcoming season, isn’t he? Yes, Connor Bedard is still here and the hope is that he takes a massive step forward in the upcoming season. But Nazar consistently jumped off the screen in the back half of the last Blackhawks season and his performances during the world championships last summer and so far this preseason are steadily raising the bar on his expectations. Here’s hoping he meets and exceeds them, as the Blackhawks are going to need prospects to pop off like that in the present and future to get this thing off the ground.

Nazar didn’t score on this breakaway but I ran the highlight back about a dozen times, trying to decide if Teuvo did this all on purpose. It’s possible he was just clearing the puck but the way this play unfolded … I’m leaning towards it being an absurdly impressive read of the play. Teuvo’s doing just fine, so we can probably sit him til the games count for real in just over a week.

Bedard had the absurd pass on Donato’s goal and had some other decent scoring chances throughout the game, even if he didn’t score himself. Natural Stat Trick had Bedard with team-high marks in shots on goal (5) and individual expected goals (0.24). Nice to see No. 98 being a factor in a game and hope that’s consistently the case throughout the regular season when it arrives.

Feels like the top two lines for the Hawks may be locked in at this point with Bedard between Burakovsky and Donato while Nazar centers Teuvo and Bertuzzi. Those two lines were both above water in all possession stats from this game, with each scoring a goal while not allowing any. Low bar of competition, but we’ll take them passing it for sure.

Sam Rinzel’s agility at the blue line should be fun to watch this season, although he’ll likely face much tougher defensive efforts than the one he did in this clip:

Nolan Allan: not afraid of physicality!

A solid team performance overall and hopefully nothing serious with that injury for Vlasic — with initial reports suggesting that’s the case. Decent weekend of Blackhawks hockey overall, which should help offset some of the pessimism that persisted after Tuesday’s debacle in Detroit. Should be interesting to see what this team puts together in front of the UC faithful on Tuesday night.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Frank Nazar (CHI) — hat trick
  2. Drew Commesso (CHI) — 28 saves on 29 shots
  3. Teuvo Teravainen (CHI) — 2 assists

What’s Next

The Blackhawks play their first home preseason game of the year on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. with the Detroit Red Wings as the opponent.

LOGIN SIGN UP

Talking Points