Jonathan Toews scored in overtime to help the Blackhawks extend their season-long win streak to six games with a 4-3 victory over the Canucks on Thursday night at the United Center.
3 up
Dylan Strome
Strome had three primary assists, including two on the power play with Alex DeBrincat. Both passes showed off Strome’s skill, vision and his chemistry with DeBrincat. The first one he sent between Toews’ legs to DeBrincat at the left face-off dot then he dished a no-look backhand pass to DeBrincat in the same spot again.
It was Strome’s fifth multi-point game in his last eight games. His scoring during that span is almost even with eight points at even strength and the other five on the power play.
Strome has 27 points (10 goals, 17 assists) in 31 games since being acquired in November.
Brandon Saad
Patrick Kane, DeBrincat and Toews are receiving lots of praise for their play and rightfully so. But Saad is also finding his scoring groove. With a power-play goal Thursday night, he has eight points in his last 10 games and matched his goal total from last season at 18 in 29 fewer games. He’s four points shy of surpassing his 35-point total from last season.
Penalty kill
The Blackhawks’ penalty kill unit last in the league, but to their credit they went 4 for 5 against the Canucks. It wasn’t easy for the Blackhawks, who had 70 seconds of a 5-on-3 to kill midway through the first. Vancouver pulled their goaltender for an extra attacker in the third period to score on the power play with 1:52 left in regulation.
3 down
Shot attempts
The Canucks were the better team throughout the game during 5-on-5 play. They registered a higher Corsi-For percentage in each period: 13, 28 and 20, respectively, according to naturalstattrick.com. Vancouver also generated more scoring chances and high-danger chances on 5-on-5 in every stanza.
Brendan Perlini
With David Kampf out 3-4 weeks with a broken bone in his right foot, Artem Anisimov slotted into the third line center role and Perlini took the right wing spot.
Perlini was largely just there in his 9:50 of ice time and committed a bad high-sticking penalty late in the third period that the Canucks cashed in on to send the game to overtime.
Giveaways
Chicago coughed up the puck 12 times to Vancouver’s three. Duncan Keith had the most with three and Brent Seabrook had two. Seabrook leads the team in giveaways with 52, followed by Gustafsson and Keith at 48 and 42, respectively. Gustafsson, for his credit, only had one giveaway and had two takeaways.