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I’m Livin’ In Shame: Red Wings 5, Blackhawks 3

Posted on by L_B_R
Credit: Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images

Another Blackhawks win has been followed by another Blackhawks loss after Chicago lost 5-3 on the road to the Detroit Red Wings on Friday night.

The Red Wings stuck first with an Alex DeBrincat goal at 4:26 of the first period. Patrick Kane danced into the offensive zone before sending a slick pass to DeBrincat, who scored from above the right hashmarks.

The Blackhawks tied the game 1-1 midway through the first. While on the rush, Connor Bedard set up Ryan Donato in the circle with a beautiful cross-ice pass, and the one-timer beat Cam Talbot clean.

Lucas Raymond put the Red Wings up 2-1 just 41 seconds into the second while on the power play. Dickinson turned the puck over to Kane, then it was a tic-tac-toe passing between Kane, DeBrincat, and Raymond that lead to the goal.

The Red Wings extended their lead to 3-1 at the five-minute mark of the third period. Erik Gustafsson got around Philipp Kurashev with a nifty move, then picked up his own rebound to set up Andrew Copp.

About two minutes later, Albert Johansson scored his first NHL goal, one-timing the puck past Petr Mrazek after receiving a gorgeous backdoor pass from Raymond. The Blackhawks lost the puck battle in the corner right before the goal.

The Blackhawks cut the Red Wings lead to 4-2 at 10:16 of the third. Nolan Allan collected the puck and went around the net before hitting Teravainen with a cross-ice pass through traffic for an open net goal.

Teravainen scored again with 2:54 left in the game when he blasted in a shot from the circle to put the Blackhawks within one goal late in the 3rd.

Any potential comeback was cut short when Marco Kasper scored in the empty net with 1:39 remaining to make it 5-3 Red Wings.

Notes

The Blackhawks often do well in lower event situations, and the first period was no exception. After Detroit scored, the Blackhawks slowly but surely took a slight edge as the period progressed, ending with 60.87 percent of the shot attempts, 55.56 percent of the shots on goal, and 75 percent of the expected goals. Those are a little skewed by the smaller sample, but it’s a good illustration of how the Blackhawks tend to get the better share of quality in periods / games in which they play smart hockey with some pace.

However, that second period … woof. The Blackhawks were out attempted 27-2, out shot 15-2, and had only 11.11 percent of the expected goal at 5-on-5. That’s not the first time this season the expected goals were so lopsided, but it is for the shot attempt share to be under 10 percent. It was discouraging, especially since the Blackhawks are coming off a game where they were technically outplayed, but they still played the aforementioned smart way, making the most of their chances and keeping their opponents from setting up for extended time, which opened the door for a possible win — and succeeded. It obviously won’t always end up in a victory, but it’s at least a commendable way to play. But then the Blackhawks have a period like the second tonight where they’re spanked because of their poor, messy decisions, and you just feel like this is a Jekyll and Hyde team.

The third was more even in terms of who had the puck, but the individual breakdown and mistakes by players really reflected in the score. Shot attempts were 9-9 and shots actually favored the Blackhawks slightly at 6-5, but scoring chances were 5-3 to the Red Wings. Golf clap to Teravainen for making it interesting at the end, but it was too little, too late and without consistent time in the offensive zone to feel meaningful.

Frustrations are mounting for the Blackhawks players, too. Although, honestly, Nick Foligno is partially to blame for the empty-net goal with his messy play at the end, so I hope he’s breaking his stick in anger over his own mistakes.

I admire Sorensen for keeping his top lines consistent for a handful of games to see if they can have chemistry, but it’s time to reunite Teravainen with Bedard and Ilya Mikheyev with Dickinson. Terevainen has been good with Frank Nazar and Colton Dach, don’t get me wrong, but Bedard deserves a quality playmaker on his line already. Bedard has looked great offensively lately — he had another three shot attempts, one on goal, and a pair of scoring chances — yet it still feels like he’s playing with a hand tied behind his back at times.

Then, I’d love to see Lukas Reichel with Nazar and Dach, just for a short while. Like, Sorensen, you coward: give us an all kids line! Unfortunately, that does seem like a pipe dream at this point if Sorensen is continuing to sit Reichel. After the morning skate, Sorensen explained why Reichel (and Philipp Kurashev) have been healthy scratches lately:

You know what time it is, right? Rant time with LBR!

This comment vexes me so much in relation to Reichel because, again, it’s not applied equally to all players. There are moments when older veterans are looking like they’re phoning it in, but it’s always the kids being sat. And if the veterans aren’t actually phoning it in, then they’re just natutally so ineffective, it looks like a lack of effort. I don’t mind the argument that Reichel needs to get more actual results — though it’s a very surface level argument, imo — but anyone claiming he hasn’t been busting it out there isn’t watching the game.

By surface level, I mean that Reichel has a top-five points-per-60 rate (1.47), his individual expected goals rate (0.71) is fourth, and he has team-leading higher involvement in goals scored when he’s on the ice (90 percent) among forwards at 5-on-5 this season. Even if those numbers aren’t translating into huge point totals (just nine), it should be enough to get him more playing time, not less, just to see if Reichel could expand on that. Did all those numbers drop once Craig Smith was injured? Yes, but that’s not really saying much when the replacement was Joey Anderson (again, good checking player, offensive black hole). Nothing in Reichel’s pass assist habits have really changed (except the reception rate tanked), his transition game is still strong (he entered the zone alone more, though), but his shooting is down (because no one is passing to him).But all that aside, I just think there’s enough there in watching Reichel play hard every game but then we get told there may be an effort issue with him — it just doesn’t really fly with me.

Okay rant over!

As for Kurashev, I think his effort was hit or miss enough in the beginning to merit a sitting, though I did not mind either of his two games in late December. Tonight was another one where he was all over the place, where he looked decently clocked in sometimes and then, at other times, it looked like his controller disconnected, such as on the Copp goal against. Kurashev had been on the ice for 50 seconds before that, so he was probably somewhat tired, but he also made a bad play at the blue line which led to the Red Wings initial rush. Even tired at the end of a shift, the fact that he stood in the same spot after Gustafsson got around here — not the end of the world, it let Mrazek have a clear view of the shooter and he made the initial stop — and didn’t even attempt to prevent Copp from getting over for a rebound is not good.

It doesn’t seem fair to rag on Kurashev so much, but it was one of the most noticeable breakdowns of the night when the game was theoretically still in reach. Just look at the breakdowns issues on Detroit goals were:

  • Goal 1: Dickinson had poor positioning and was overall too passive on Kane in the neutral zone, Alex Vlasic skewed too far left so DeBrincat had too much space, and Hall’s ill-timed line change meant the Blackhawks lacked number back.
  • Goal 2: Dickinson turned the puck over, Vlasic was flying the zone a bit too quick to recover the puck. I don’t know if Dickinson was worried about Kane trying to check him or what, but it just wasn’t smart to throw the puck out there. I’m less mad at Vlasic because he was probably anticipating Dickinson pushing the puck further up the ice, which would be the safer option.
  • Goal 3: See Kurashev above. Vlasic is also puck watching a bit too and doesn’t notice Copp being unattended.
  • Goal 4: Seth Jones and Mikheyev lose the board battle in the corner, then neither get back in time to cover Raymond, Tyler Bertuzzi is too far from Raymond to be useful in any coverage too, and Bedard completely lost his guy and eventual goal scorer.

So yeah, this was maybe the worst game from Dickinson as a Blackhawk, Vlasic wasn’t his normal self, Seth Jones reverted to how bad he was that first game back from injury, and Foligno was kind of a mess more often than not. Bertuzzi and Mikheyev were inconsistent, Hall and Maroon were irrelevant. I honestly did not mind TJ Brodie this game — he had issues but they seemed minor in comparison to some others — and Louis Crevier was fine individually. Teravainen, Nazar, Dach, Donato, Allan, and Kaiser were the least mistake-riddled set of skaters and had the best positive impact. And Bedard, again, was good offensively — third behind Teravainen, Dach, and Donato in my opinion — but he did have a pretty major mistake at the end. And of course Mrazek, without whom the Red Wings would have likely scored a touchdown, was very good.

I’m going to leave it there and go eat ice cream to console myself for having to recap this game.

P.S. I probably have myself to blame: I was just bragging to Dave about how the Blackhawks were .500 in games I recapped while they were .225 for his recaps.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Patrick Kane (DET) — 3 assists
  2. Lucas Raymond (DET) — 1 goal, 1 assist
  3. Alex DeBrincat (DET) — 1 goal, 1 assist

What’s Next

The Blackhawks have no time to lick their wounds: they head back to the United Center Saturday to host the Edmonton Oilers at 6 p.m.

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