Chicago capped off the Thanksgiving weekend with another afternoon loss, this time a 6-3 defeat against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday at the United Center.
The Blackhawks got the game going about three minutes into the first thanks to a power-play goal by Connor Bedard. Ryan Donato picked up a rebound from an Alex Vlasic shot and sent a short pass to set up Bedard for the goal, putting the Blackhawks up 1-0.
The Blue Jackets evened the game up 1-1 a couple of minutes later. Sean Monahan dropped a pass to Ivan Provorov in the high slot, and Petr Mrazek couldn’t make the save due to a Dmitri Voronkov screen.
Kent Johnson gave the Blue Jackets a 2-1 lead at 11:23 of the first period. Johnson started the play with a great zone entry, then CBJ cycled the puck back up top to Devon Severson, who teed up a one-timer for Johnson.
The Blackhawks re-tied the game 2-2 after Craig Smith redirected a shot pass from Taylor Hall’ into the net for a power-play goal at the three-minute mark of the second period.
The Blue Jackets once again answered with a goal of their own less than two minutes later. This time, a centering pass from Sean Kuraly found Sean Monahan, who buried a wrist shot to give the Blue Jackets a 3-2 lead.
Dante Fabbro doubled the Blue Jackets lead just over three minutes into the third. Zack Werenski sprung Fabbro on a solo rush, and the latter used Alec Martinez as a screen to beat Mrazek with a snap shot.
Another power-play goal put the Blackhawks back within one at 8:08 of the third. Nick Foligno tipped a shot-pass from Teuvo Teravainen to make it 3-2. Credit Tyler Bertuzzi for selling that he was the intended target for the down-low pass.
Kirill Marchenko made it 5-3 Blue Jackets with 9:08 left in the game. After Wyatt Kaiser prevented a goal, his clearing attempt was picked off by Marchenko, who went top-shelf for the goal.
Voronkov hit an empty net for the Blue Jackets with 94 seconds remaining to put this one away.
Notes
This was a disorganized game by the Blackhawks overall, but it started pretty well at 5-on-5: they owned 55.56 percent of the shot attempts, 50 percent of the shots on goal, and were only slightly down in terms of expected goals with 44.21 percent in the first period. Now, they also only scored on the power play and allowed two goals against at 5-on-5, but the effort was there. It was in the second period when things started to go off the rails. The Blackhawks were out attempted 31-15 and out shot 21-9 in the final 40 minutes. The Blues Jackets had much better chances in the second (75.54 percent of the expected goals) but the third was more even (51.67 percent for the Blackhawks), though the latter might have been due to score effects.
The shot numbers line up pretty well with what we saw, which was a lot of defensive miscues leading to odd-man rushes for the Blue Jackets and the Blackhawks being ineffective when they got their own rushes.
Coach Luke Richardson said postgame that the issue was the Blackhawks not being disciplined, which is true, but I think he’s deluding himself a bit because they have been plenty of occasions where the Blackhawks were sucked into the game plan of a team with better skaters overall than they have.
The Blackhawks also allowed the Blue Jackets to score within two or three of every goal this game. This was a major issue last year: allowing an opposing team to score fairly quickly in response to a Blackhawks goal, but it’s been less prevalent this season. Hopefully this isn’t the start of that trend again.
It’s annoying how often opposing players are allowed to stand uncontested in front of the Blackhawks goalies. Voronkov is a big guy — 6-foot-5, 227 pounds — but Connor Murphy is a large human as well and did nothing to prevent the Russian kid from acting like the door for Mrazek on the first goal against. Murphy isn’t the only one who fails to clear the crease, it’s not particularly common among Blackhawks players, that was just the most noticeable instance from this game.
But at least Murphy was on the right side of the net on that goal. I don’t know what Alec Martinez was thinking being behind it on the fourth goal against. Even being on the right side didn’t work for Martinez this game, though — he also screened Mrazek on the Monahan goal.
More on defensemen, I felt a little bad for Wyatt Kaiser on the Marchenko goal. He made a great play to prevent a goal into a wide open net, but no one was covering the trailing Marchenko properly. Kaiser had only one more shift in the game in the final minute. Maybe Kaiser should have thrown the puck a different direction, but it was obviously a deperation move to get the puck away from the net. It would have been OK if the Blackhawks hadn’t been slower with their change: Kevin LeBlanc swapped out for Marchenko at 10:44 while Philipp Kurashev replaced Teravainen (who lunged for Marchenko right before his shot) a couple of seconds behind. The Blackhawks couldn’t even complete a full line change properly, as Bedard stayed on the ice and finished with a 1:18 shift.
Kaiser has been playing a smart, albeit quiet, style of hockey this season that has translated into few mistakes, but he’s also not getting a ton of playing time. He’s obviously useful, but do the Blackhawks see a future for him with their organization?
This wasn’t Mrazek’s best game, but the help wasn’t there from the team in front a lot of the time, either. He did make some big saves to keep the game at least within grasp of the Blackhawks, but the team cannot expect him (or Soderblom) to be Superman all the time.
In terms of lines, Richardson kept them basically together the entire game and rolled fairly evenly. The most effective lines were Bedard’s with Taylor Hall and Philipp Kurashev and the fourth line of Pat Maroon, Lukas Reichel, and Craig Smith. The Blackhawks actually owned 84.23 percent of the expected goals on the ice with the latter line, and they had one of the best even-strength chances of the night, too.
The best news from this game was that Bedard scored a goal and picked up an assist, and he’s on a three-game point streak. Now, this was only his second multi-point game since Nov. 3, and all four of those points during his streak have come on the power play, so 5-on-5 still isn’t getting results. However, it’s important to note that, despite the lack of production at even strength, Bedard has been looking more comfortable and confident. If he can get some line chemistry going, it’s easy to imagine that he could go off for a while.
To add some perspective, even with his offensive slump, Bedard is still in good company when it comes to his per-game production rate — and arguably on a much worse team than than almost all of these players.
Richardson both mentioned Bedard was “back on track” but also said he needed to be better defensively like the whole team, which is a little irksome. I still don’t care about Bedard’s defensive progress — that can come later — as long as he’s getting back to his usual offensive standards. Richardson did mention a great back-checking effort by Bedard, and the kid had this blocking moment that actually is more scary than anything else, but it seemed downplayed by the coach.
Ultimately, this was a closer game than the score suggested, but it was easy to see why the Blackhawks lost as well. Little more bad than good, but there were some net positives (Bedard on the power play, mostly).
PS. For every miracle win I recap, I then get a game like tonight that’s basically the opposite.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Sean Monahan (CSJ) — 1 goal, 1 assist
- Damon Severson (CBJ) — 3 assists
- Connor Bedard (CHI) — 1 goal, 1 assist
What’s Next
The Blackhawks have no time to rest as they head to Toronto on Monday night to take on the Maple Leafs at 6:30 p.m.