After a couple of bad days both on and off the ice, the Blackhawks kick off a pair of games at the United Center this week by hosting the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday night.
Not too much has changed for Anaheim since these two teams met a few weeks ago in the OC, with Chicago picking up a 4-2 win that night for a victory that was its second in a row at that time. Yes, you read that right: this Blackhawks team did win a pair of games together earlier this month! Anaheim enters this game on its own two-game surge after beating the Red Wings 6-4 on Friday and then defeating the Stars 4-2 on Monday night. That means the Ducks will enter this game on the tail-end of a back-to-back with a decent flight between those two games, so fresh legs are probably not going to be a luxury Anaheim experiences in this game. Still, Anaheim has won three of four and is averaging four goals per game in that 3-1 stretch, which places the Ducks in far better form than their opponents. And those wins have come in spite of a trio of injuries that sidelined defenseman Cam Fowler along with forwards Robby Fabbri and Mason McTavish, who’ll all remain out for this game.
Troy Terry leads the Ducks with 12 points (6 G, 6 A) in 17 games, the only player on the roster with double-digit points. McTavish is second on the team if you look at points per game with 0.62 (he’s just played in four fewer games) while Leo Carlsson and Ryan Strome (with 9 points in 17 games each) and Brett Leason (7 in 12) are the only other forwards with over a 0.5 point-per-game rate. The once electrifying Trevor Zegras has four points in 17 games, which is only two more than what he had a few weeks ago when the Blackhawks last faced the Ducks.
Anaheim’s lineup will probably be similar to what it trotted out against the Stars:
Ducks lines per x.com/AnaheimDucks Zegras-Carlsson-Killorn Vatrano-Strome-Terry Gauthier-Lundestrom-Leason Johnston-Harkins-McGinn Mintyukov-Gudas Dumoulin-Helleson LaCombe-Zellweger Dostal
— lineslineslines.bsky.social (@lineslineslines.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 6:49 PM
The Blackhawks are coming off a pretty miserable 4-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks Saturday evening at Rogers Arena. Despite scoring first, the Blackhawks lost the plot in the second period, and the Canucks railroaded them the rest of the game. If not for a strong performance in net for Arvid Soderblom — who had a .935 save-percentage on 31 shots — the score could have been even more lopsided. llya Mikheyev scored the lone goal for the Blackhawks, just his second of the season.
More concerning from the game is that Connor Bedard was once again having issues offensively: he had just two shot attempts and one shot on goal in 16:48 of ice time. He also made at least one major mistake that directly led to a goal against. It’s fairly common for young players to have slumps early in their careers, but it does feel like some of his issues are compounded by things outside his control: for instance, the lack of consistent linemates — more on that in a bit.
Speaking of line, the ones for the the Vancouver game will likely look similar to what was observed at Monday’s practice:
Blackhawks' forward lines in practice today — they keep getting wackier: Bedard-Dickinson-Anderson Teravainen-Foligno-Kurashev Hall-Donato-Mikheyev Bertuzzi-Reichel-Smith *Maroon rotating
— Ben Pope (@benpopecst.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 11:17 AM
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If you look at those lines and your stomach doesn’t curdle, you’re dead inside, because those lines are frankly ridiculous. Playing Jason Dickinson with Bedard is fine, because Dickinson is the most experienced center on the team who can contribute offensively at times, but doing so means the Blackhawks do not have a checking line anymore and the rest of the lines are basically a mess. Coach Luke Richardson even admitted these lines are a desperation attempt, but the problem with desperation is that it’s rarely grounded in legitimate reason.
Plus, how in the world are any of these players expected to build chemistry if their lines don’t stay together for more than a game? One-game samples are never a good enough basis for evaluation. It would be better to build some lines that make sense and then let them play for at least 3-5 games to see how they work. Bedard was not struggling until Richardson moved Teravainen off his line to punish the latter. Yes, Teravainen was not playing well, but Bedard and Nick Foligno were still doing well on that line, so Teravainen at least wasn’t impeding them. Not too long after, the blender turned to puree for the roster and Bedard hasn’t had a consistent line for more than two games in a row in his last eight games. Considering Bedard is the single most important player on the Blackhawks right now, there should absolutely be more care to his development than anything else — including winning games. It doesn’t really matter if the team ekes out more wins by playing better defensively (though arguably they’re not consistent with that either) if Bedard doesn’t get going offensively. They’re in a rebuild, the most important thing should be the progress of players who have a future with the team, especially Bedard.
The defensive pairings are a bit unknown because they differed on Monday and Tuesday. Monday’s pairing had too many guys skating on their off-sides, so hopefully they look more like the pairings from Tuesday’s morning skate, which were:
Vlasic-Murphy
Allan-Martinez
Kaiser-Brodie
Anyway, the lines are still wonky, and if the Blackhawks win tonight, it’ll be because the Ducks are even more of a clusterfuck than the Blackhawks, not because these silly lines work.
On top of all this, Richardson had a major misstep when it came to his communication to his team, specifically Taylor Hall:
I disagree with Charlie here, that the coach should be given any credit for taking ownership of this mistake: mostly because I don’t think he took that much ownership. Richardson basically implied it was a single-player issue by saying say he “that’s just something that [he] learned about one player” as if the coach shouldn’t be communicating to all players before a punishment is handed out. This is especially worrisome because, if Richardson is the coach next year and beyond, he’ll be in charge of shepherding young players into the NHL and will need much, much better communication to do that successfully.
Okay, rant over! Back to our regularly scheduled relay of information about the game happening Tuesday night.
Soderblom is expected to be the starter against Anaheim. Normally it would be Petr Mrazek’s turn since Soderblom played on Saturday, but it appears the former will be unavailable for the game tonight for personal reasons. The Blackhawks recalled Drew Commesso from Rockford to be Soderblom’s backup.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Ducks
43.71% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 46.9% (27th)
42.37% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 45.1% (28th)
2.17 (32nd) — Goals per game — 2.48 (30th)
3.52 (29th) — Goals against per game — 3.57 (30th)
46.3% (29th) — Faceoffs — 46.7% (29th)
16.60% (28th) — Power play — 18.3% (23rd)
75.76% (27th) — Penalty kill — 72.42% (31st)
(All stats from last season)
How to Watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN (How to Watch)
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720