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Pond Hockey Power: Blackhawks 6, Predators 2

Never a bad night to beat up the Predators

Posted on by L_B_R
Credit: Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

Thanks to a four-point night from Ryan Donato, the Chicago Blackhawks rolled the Nashville Predators 6-2 Friday night in their last home game before the 4 Nations Face-Off break.

The Blackhawks opened the scoring 8:37 into the first period. Alex Vlasic skated the puck in and around the net before sending a slick feed to Frank Nazar at the bottom of the right circle, who snapped a quick shot to make it 1-0.

The Predators answered just 20 seconds later, unfortunately. After Seth Jones fumbled the puck at the blue line, Cole Smith sent a quick pass to Colton Sissons, who slid the puck under a sprawling Petr Mrazek, tying the game 1-1.

Pat Maroon gave the Blackhawks back the lead with 5:06 left in the first. Nick Blankenburg tried to crease a rebound created by a Lukas Reichel shot but the puck went right to Maroon, who made it 2-1 with a quick slapper. Credit Craig Smith for his great pass from down low to Reichel, too. Neither of them got a point on the play, but the goal doesn’t happen without them.

Connor Bedard extended the Blackhawks lead to 3-1 about six minutes into the second period with lethal but almost nonchalant one-timer set up by a nifty Ryan Donato cross-ice pass on the power play.

Donato decided to get in on the goal-scoring fun, skating in close and going backhand five-hole on Saros to put the Blackhawks up 4-1 just with about five left in the second. Frank Nazar started the play by picking off a pass in the defensive zone — off his skate! — before getting it to Teuvo Teravainen, who had a neat slow-down move to get the pass to Donato.

The Blackhawks increased their lead to 5-1 on the power play with nine seconds left in the middle frame. A tic-tac-toe sequence where Bedard sent a quick pass to Donato across the ice, who in turn sent a touch pass to Seth Jones on Saros’ stick side to score, and he tapped the puck in easily.

Donato gave the Blackhawks a 6-1 lead with his second goal of the game at 13:18 of the third period. A big scramble in front of Saros with several scoring chances ended up with the puck going out of the zone, but Alex Vlasic knocked the puck to Donato, who streaked back into the zone and beat Saros with a wrister one-on-one.

Tommy Novak would spoil the fun a little with about a minute left in the game by scoring a goal, but that was all the Predators would muster, and the Blackhawks won 6-2.

Notes

Despite the score, this was a close game in terms of shot metrics, and the two teams traded off possession in waves through the first two periods at 5-on-5. In the first period, the Blackhawks had the edge in shot attempts (51.35 percent) and shots on goal (57.89), while the quality of their chances wasn’t quite as good (just 41.88 percent of the expected goals), even though the actual numbers were very close (high-danger chances were 6-4 in favor of the Predators). The Blackhawks ended up on the wrong side of shot attempts for the whole game (46.03 percent) and expected goals (43.75) but had a slight edge in shots on goal (51.16 percent). It was only after the Blackhawks fourth goal that the numbers shifted in the Predators favor. That’s mostly score effects at work, and the Blackhawks still felt like the more composed, dangerous team. The Blackhawks especially did a good job of limiting chances against in the third, keeping it a low-event period while allowing only one high-danger chance against.

With the score so high, there was bound to be a lot of players with points, but basically every line got in on the action somehow — and this doesn’t include some players who absolutely contributed to goals but didn’t show up on the scorecard. A good, team-wide effort even if some players were especially special tonight.

Obviously the Big Damn Hero was Donato, who seemed to be on another level. He’s been really good for the Blackhawks all season, but this was one of those nights when, every time he touched the puck, good things seemed to happen. He passed his career 200-point mark (201), and extended his new career-highs in goals (18) and points (36) tonight. The Blackhawks will have a tough decision on either re-signing Donato or selling high on him.

Mrazek was also really good in goal tonight, though he had more support than he’s used to, both defensively and offensively. He still faced over 30 shots and made some big saves, especially in the second, finishing with a .939 save percentage. Not a bad work.

The young players continue to make big impressions too. It’s a shame Reichel didn’t get a point on that Maroon goal, because he and his line had several little moments like that in the first two periods. Reichel set up Maroon for about three attempts (two on goal), with the fourth being the rebound goal.

Nazar’s speed really is a joy to see in action: he’s got such great acceleration that he can absolutely clear most opposing players. He just needs to figure out how to finish off the types of rushes we saw tonight, particularly on the penalty kill, to up his danger factor even more.

The young players bring a natural energy with their enthusiasm for the game, their willingness to put it all out there this season, and none exemplify that more than Slaggert right now. Donato had nothing but praise for Slaggert, especially for the vibes he brings to the locker room and on the ice.

Okay, I’m sure everyone knew this was coming, but I have to take a moment to give my take (rant) on the Bedard hoopla lately. For the record, I think some of what Paul Bissonnette said about the technical issues with Bedard’s play against the Oilers in the first period was objectively correct — like his breakdown of those plays was fine, on the surface level. The issue is how he framed those perfectly reasonable call-outs of mistakes: first, by saying Bedard is trying to do things that will never translate to the NHL and, second, by basically saying Bedard’s play was why the Blackhawks were losing.

The first point is also objectively true, but unlike what Biz thinks, this is a good thing at this stage in Bedard’s career because every young player, especially the elite ones, have to figure out what of their impressive skill set works and what doesn’t in the NHL. Bedard is a student of the game, and he’s going to note every mistake without anyone else pointing them out (as he stated the other day), and work on improving. How many times did we see Jonathan Toews and especially Patrick Kane do something in their early years that they either removed from their bag of tricks or honed it a more until it worked? Kane, in particular, did this so much, he had an announcer call what he did “black magic”, a magic he learned through trial and error. As long as the effort is there to get better, then Bedard can try out all his “pond hockey” skills he wants right now — and some of them will probably work just fine for Bedard.

The second point, like Messier’s comments before, was just ludicrously disconnected from reality. I get that these guys don’t watch the team regularly, but it’s crazy to make it seem like the best hockey player on the team should shoulder the primary blame for the team’s poor performance. This is overall a terrible Blackhawks team, and Bedard is the main reason they’re even offensively competitive: he’s on the ice for nearly half their goals and has contributed to over a third of them directly. Does Bedard make mistakes that end up as goals against sometimes? Absolutely. But, again: that’s how he learns. Bedard is basically the last player on the team I blame for the team’s current record.

Especially when Bedard is getting some of the toughest matchups lately — he was mostly against Connor McDavid last game and Filip Forsberg this game — and come out victorious in both cases.

At least there has been some push back from some in the media. Henrik Lundqvist immediately countered Biz during the aforementioned TV segment, which was obviously nice, and now insiders like Frank Seravalli are pointing out that the continued criticism is “odd” (which is an understatement to me, as it’s very bandwagon, attention-wanting behavior). Seravalli goes on to rightly note there is no lack of effort from Bedard, no reason to “beat the high end skill out of [Bedard’s] game,” and really it’s all about finding support for Bedard in the future, something he’s sorely lacking now.

Anyway, this game was a good response from Bedard toward all the criticism. Not a perfect game by any means — he had some miscues in the first that were dicey — but he had some near magical moments throughout as well. Like the plays below are the types of plays we want Bedard trying, because it’s how he’s going to become a better hockey player.

Even the Blackhawks social media admin was feeling kind of petty tonight, which I love. Again, Biz wasn’t completely wrong, but he was just wrong enough to be irksome, so this is amusing af to me.

I said in the preview that in terms of trying to get the best pick in the draft, a loss tonight is better for that goal, but that’s it’s always great to see the Blackhawks beat the Predators. And getting a win, with such a high team effort, is great for team morale, obviously.

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Ryan Donato (CHI) — 2 goals, 2 assists
  2. Connor Bedard (CHI) — 1 goals, 1 assist
  3. Frank Nazar (CHI) — 1 goal, 1 assist

What’s Next

The Blackhawks play their final game before the 4 Nations break on Saturday night in St. Louis against the Blues, starting at 6 p.m.

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