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No More Blood to Bleed: Kings 3, Blackhawks 1

The Kings brought the Blackhawks back down to Earth a bit.

Posted on by Dave Melton
Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

A red-hot stretch of Blackhawks hockey ran into an icy patch on Sunday night at the United Center as the visiting Los Angeles Kings skated away with a 3-1 victory.

The game started off in Chicago’s favor, though, with Connor Bedard putting the home team ahead 1-0 about seven minutes into the first:

Chicago goal! Scored by Connor Bedard with 12:56 remaining in the 1st period. Assisted by Ilya Mikheyev. Chicago: 1 Los Angeles: 0 #LAKvsCHI #Blackhawks #GoKingsGo

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— NHL Goals (@nhlgoals.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 6:27 PM

A pair of quick LA goals in the second period put the visitors ahead for good, though. First, Alex Laferriere scored on this 2-on-1:

Then Kevin Fiala scored this wrap-around goal and the Kings were ahead for good:

Joel Armia added an empty-netter in the third, and that was that!

Notes

That’s one way to kill off the buzz that been building around this team, eh? What a resounding thud of a game that was. The Blackhawks had the better of the play in the opening 20, sure, but LA seemed to muck up the neutral zone over the final 40 whenever the game was at 5-on-5 and the Blackhawks spent much of the second and third periods dumping the puck into the Kings end without ever being successful at retrieving said dump-in.

Allow me to join anyone with a set of eyeballs who watched that game and lament the wildly ineffective Blackhawks power play. It seemed like most of the five man-advantage opportunities came at a moment when it would have been advantageous for Chicago to score but any possible momentum evaporated as the Hawks spent most of the time retrieving the puck that LA cleared out of the zone with relative ease. Bedard alluded to this postgame:

Later on this season, there will be an interesting discussion to have regarding Ilya Mikheyev. He’s in the final year of a deal worth just over $4M AAV and he plays a brand of hockey that would absolutely appeal to a playoff-bound team as a reliable bottom-six forward who’s especially good on the PK. How much is that going to fetch at the deadline? Almost certainly not a first-rounder unless it’s packaged with something else and the Blackhawks may be closer to the point where they’re no longer needing to stockpiling picks/prospects, anyway. So, perhaps, Mikheyev re-signs for a few more years? We’ll have to stay tuned on that.

Speaking of Mikheyev, this looked pretty gross:

But it’s apparently not anything to be too worried about:

Everything about this game felt disjointed: the breakouts, the navigation of the neutral zone and especially any attempts to enter the LA end with the puck. It looked more like the team that played in the first few games this season than the one of the more recent memory. Yeah, there’s extra disappointment given that the Kings hadn’t won a regulation game this season before this one and were less than 24 hours removed from a road loss in Nashville. But a certain number of games over the course of 82 are going to be extra disappointing.

The Blackhawks had just won four of five, with at least one of those victories being one that they probably didn’t deserve to have. This game feels like a bit of a market correction for that, and no need to analyze it too much beyond that. We’ll see how they respond on Tuesday night against Ottawa.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Kevin Fiala (LAK) — GWG
  2. Alex Laferriere (LAK) — 1 goal
  3. Connor Bedard (CHI) — 1 goal

What’s Next

The Blackhawks are back at the United Center on Tuesday night to host the Ottawa Senators at 7:45 p.m.

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