The Chicago Blackhawks look to end a five-game skid on Friday night as they host the Montreal Canadiens at the United Center.
The Canadiens are on a nice little run, going 7-3-0 in their last 10, including a current three-game winning streak. Their latest three wins have been pretty impressive, too: they outscored the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Vegas Golden Knights to an aggregate tune of 12-4. Against the Golden Knights, the Canadiens showed resiliency by overcoming a two-goal deficit and scoring three unanswered goals to win 3-2 on Tuesday. Cole Caufield, Emil Heineman, and Kirby Dach were the goal scorers for the Canadiens and Sam Montembeault made 27 saves for Montreal. It was also their third game in four nights, and puts Montreal just three points out of a playoff spot.
Speaking of Caufield, he’s the scoring leader for the Canadiens with 19 goals as well as second on the team in points with 34 in 39 games. Nick Suzuki has a couple more points (11 G, 25 A) in the same span for team lead in points. After those two, Montreal’s top-six is solid but there’s a a gap in production. Patrik Laine is the next closest with his 0.77 points-per-game rate in 13 games while Jake Evans and Juraj Slafkovsky each have a 0.62 PPG rate.
However, during the current run of success, it’s really the fourth line of Joel Armia, Jake Evans, and Emil Heineman that have been having quite an impact. In their last seven games, for example, Armia has been on the ice for half the goals scored by the Canadiens (11 of 23) while his two linemates have been on for nine goals each. Conversely, the trio has only been on ice for one goal against.
On defense, the story has of course been rookie Lane Hutson, who’ll likely be a Calder finalist with his 26 points (2 G, 24 A) in 37 games while playing the second most minutes (22:26 per game) among the Habs’ defensemen behind Mike Matheson (24:19, with 18 points in 35 games). The top-four is rounded out by Alexandre Carrier, who was acquired from the Nashville Predators on Dec. 18 and has four assists in six games, and Kaiden Guhle, his up-and-coming young partner.
The Canadiens will likely run the same lines and pairings as they did on Tuesday against VGK:
One final thing for the Blackhawks to look out for: the Canadiens are one of the most penalized teams in the league, but they’ve killed 20 of 21 penalties over their latest seven-game run, making them a top-10 penalty kill team.
Unlike the Canadiens, the Blackhawks finished the 2024 year on a whopper of a bad note, losing five straight while being outscored 27-12 in that span. This included their 6-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues in the Winter Classic on Tuesday, when the play on the ice was closer than the score indicated, but it was still an embarrassing outing. Taylor Hall and Tyler Bertuzzi each scored. Connor Bedard also picked up an assist, extending his point streak (3G, 4A) to five games — a season high.
The Blackhawks held an optional morning skate on Friday with only several of the younger players attending — specifically, Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Colton Dach, Lukas Reichel, Philipp Kurashev, and Louis Crevier — along with Petr Mrazek, so they’ll likely roll the lines they did Thursday. Arvid Soderblom will star in net. Connor Murphy, who still needs to have his groin injury evaluated, has been ruled out for Friday night, and Wyatt Kaiser will draw back into the lineup on a pairing with Seth Jones.
Rant incoming … The issue with sitting Reichel because he need more of an “attack mentality,” as Anders Sorensen stated Thursday, is that it’s like they want Reichel to be a player he’s not and then also put him in a situation where that is difficult to achieve. Reichel absolutely does need to shoot more, but who on his line is passing him the puck much? Nazar, who is also a playmaker first, has only a marginally better shot rate (3.4) than Reichel (3.2) at 5-on-5, but he’s absolutely has better linemates and also has zero finish so far since the coaching change. Pat Maroon has a better shots rate but nearly 70 percent of those are preceded by a touch from Reichel. On top of that, despite shooting less, Reichel’s so-so expected goals rate of 0.46 is exactly the same as Nick Foligno (0.46) and basically the same as Connor Bedard (0.47) and Teuvo Teravainen (0.48) in the same span. Considering Reichel, Bedard and Teravainen are all the primary acting playmakers on their lines, it’s no wonder their rates are similar — there’s less of an excuse for Foligno.
None of this is to say that Reichel has fully proven he’s an NHL player or that he doesn’t have issues in his game, but this is a rebuild — play the young players — and there’s no objective way to say Reichel has been the worst player on the ice. As Mark Lazerus of The Athletic pointed out, “this feels like the Kaapo Kakko thing: ‘I have not been the worst guy.'” The concern is that Reichel will be re;egated to the press box for long periods like Kurashev, who has only played in two games since Dec. 15. As long as this is a temporary “get your head straight” kind of thing, it’s fine. Too much beyond that and it’s makes me worry about how the Blackhawks will handle all their mid-first round picks who aren’t immediate plug-in successes.
Alright, rant over.
The big story of the game is the call-up of Colton Dach: injuries derailed his first professional season in 2023-24, but he’s been a consistent force for the Rockford IceHogs, and it’ll be exciting to see him in action. Dach is being slotted on a line with former IceHogs linemate Frank Nazar, a duo that had strong chemistry with Rockford.
One final thing to watch out for Friday will be how much playing time and where Jones is used. He’s still listed on the top pairing, but he’s been playing slightly less than Alex Vlasic the last couple of games, with the Winter Classic being Jones’ lowest TOI (20:29) of the season. Considering the penalty kill and power play were both doing better without Jones on them, it might be in the Blackhawks best interest if they could lower his involvement somewhat. He’s struggled mightily on the defense side of things since coming back from injury, which is not unexpected, so easing him into a bigger role may be the more prudent strategy.
Blackhawks — Statistic — Habs
45.04% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 47.30% (28th)
45.36% (30th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 46.18% (27th)
2.50 (31st) — Goals per game — 3.03 (17th)
3.39 (26th) — Goals against per game — 3.41 (27th)
43.8% (31st) — Faceoffs — 49.2% (21st)
23.5% (11th) — Power play — 21.4% (17th)
84.1% (4th) — Penalty kill — 82.7% (8th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 7 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN (How to Watch)
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720