The Chicago Blackhawks host the Winnipeg Jets for a Saturday matinee, just two days after firing head coach Luke Richardson.
After an impressive start to the season when the Jets won their first eight games and were 17-0-3 in their first 20, the team from Winnipeg has slowed down slightly in the last few weeks, including losing four of their last five games. In their latest game, the Jets traded goals with their opponent –courtesy of Gabriel Vilardi and Kyle Connor — before Adam Lowry scored with about a minute left in overtime to give the Winnipeg Jets a 3-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres. That win snapped their four-game losing streak, so the Jets are coming to Chicago at least on a positive note.
The offensive depth of Winnipeg has been a strength of the team for a few years, as the team likes to score by committee, and this year isn’t any different. The Jets are led by three players producing at over a point-per-game rate in Kyler Connor (1.11), Mark Scheifele (1.07), and Nikolaj Ehlers (1.04). Then the top-nine has a mix of older veterans — like Adam Lowry (0.63), Nino Niederreiter (0.56), and Vladislav Namestnikov (0.56) — as well as 25-and-under players — like Vilardi (0.70) and Cole Perfetti (0.63) — rounding out their ranks. The Jets even have Josh Morrissey (0.93) and Neal Pionk (0.81) pitching in considerably on offense from the blue line.
As a result of that team depth, the Jets offense is fifth overall in terms of goals scored per game (3.63), and especially dangerous on the power play where they are ranked third in the league (30.0 percent).
One of the most impressive aspects of this group is that all but Ehlers had played in all 27 games for the Jets, and he only missed three games. The team pretty much rolls the same four lines every game, except for sometimes rotating in the 13th forward on the fourth line. The lines in Chicago are expected to be:
In net will be Connor Hellebuyck, the current frontrunner for the Vezina Trophy at this point in the season. The Jets team in front helps him with goal support but, defensively, they’re a little lacking: the Jets are 18th, 22nd, and 26th in the league in terms shot attempts, shots on goal, and expected goals against per 60, respectively, at 5-on-5. Hellebuyck has been quite the force for the Jets, so it’s really going to be a tall task for the Blackhawks to break through on him.
Obviously the biggest news for the Blackhawks is that they fired head coach Luke Richardson on Thursday after the team lost it’s fifth game in a row, which puts them sitting comfortably in last place in the league. The Blackhawks latest loss was a lackluster 4-2 affair against the Boston Bruins with one too many defensive mistakes. That was kind of the moral of the story for a lot of the season: there was some minor improvement in team defense, but with just enough defensive breakdowns and lack of offense to be detrimental to any sustainable success. I mean, their 2.13 expected goals per 60 rate is basically the same as their 2.11 rate last season, which is just bleak. The offensive and defensive issues also both declined as the season progressed:
In particular, the handling of Bedard has been a sore subject for a while. To summarize the latest issues, though, Bedard was basically been neutered of his transition game in November: he was in the 99th percentile last season and he was down to close to the 60th percentile the second month of the season. Considering his quick transition game was a big part of how he produced to start the season and all of the prior one, the decline there obviously hit Bedard hard.
Interestingly, a key point that interim coach Anders Sorenson brought up after Friday’s practice was the team rush game as well, along with making sure Bedard could “get the puck more in motion”:
The lines the Blackhawks are expected to roll out on Saturday are slightly tweaked from their last game, notably that Bedard and Ryan Donato have switched linemates. This means that Bedard will finally be reunited with Teuvo Teravainen as well as Philipp Kurashev.
Personally, I don’t like the two European playmakers together as they tend to overthink passing plays, but it’s understandable if the two of them were put there with speed and skill being the focus for Bedard’s line. The trio has spent a short period together this season — just over 30 minutes — and the Blackhawks owned 52.63 percent of the shot attempts, 51.61 of the shots on goal, and 46.19 percent of the expected goals when they were together. That’s obviously much too small a sample to know if the line works, and replacing Kurashev with Nick Foligno would reunite the best offensive line the Blackhawks had this season, but I guess we’ll see what will happen against Winnipeg.
It’s very possible the Blackhawks are too in the red for them to do much of anything this season — at least at a team level — but there has to be hope that some of the more important players (mainly Bedard) can find a way to turn things around on an individual basis.
One last note: GM Kyle Davidson did speak to the media on Friday about why Sorenson was made interim head coach instead of someone like Derek King, current assistant coach and former head interim head coach himself, and it came down to wanting a new person completely:
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Jets
44.72% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 49.11% (21st)
45.05% (29th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 47.40% (26th)
2.42 (31st) — Goals per game — 3.63 (5th)
3.15 (t-22nd) — Goals against per game — 2.56 (t-3rd)
44.2% (30th) — Faceoffs — 48.7% (t-10th)
22.9% (11th) — Power play — 30.0% (2nd)
81.6% (8th) — Penalty kill — 80.3% (13th)
How to Watch
When: 3 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN (How to Watch)
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720