The Blackhawks were handed their second defeat of the season on Saturday night, falling 3-2 to the Montreal Canadiens. It wasn’t a pretty game, but the Blackhawks did manage to make it close at the end, at least.
After a scoreless and mostly uneventful first period, the Blackhawks were outshot 14-5 and outscored 3-0 in the second period.
The first goal for Montreal was a beautiful backhand from Cole Caufield about four minutes into the middle frame. Very Patrick Kane-esque.
The Canadiens went up 2-0 at 7:56 off a laser of a snapshot from Tanner Pearson that beat Petr Mrazek high. Credit to Kaiden Guhle on the entry and backhand pass to set Pearson up.
The Canadiens third goal was a top-shelf shot from Sean Monahan after a breakaway while shorthanded with 2:22 left in the period.
The third period opened with 4-on-4 play as Corey Perry and Arber Xhekaj got matching roughing penalties with 23 seconds left at the end of the second.
While at 4-on-4, Tyler Johnson got the Blackhawks on the board, making it 3-1 just 35 seconds in to the third period. Seth Jones’ shot hit the skates of Guhle, and Johnson swatted the rebounding puck past Montembeault.
The Blackhawks got within one after pulling Mrazek for the extra attacker with 1:21 left in the game. Connor Bedard got the puck through to the net and, after some scrambling, T. Johnson knocked in his second of the game to make it 3-2.
Despite being on the power play for the final 22 seconds, the Blackhawks came up short and lost 3-2 to the Canadiens.
Notes
- This was objectively a poor game from net on out. The Blackhawks were out attempted 53-36, outshot 26-14, and chanced 26-20 by Montreal just in the first 40 minutes alone. Not ideal.
- The third period was more entertaining as the Blackhawks chased, and credit for the effort, especially in the final few minutes. It’s too bad they didn’t play more like that for the whole game or it might have been closer from the start and/or a winning outing. The first game against Pittsburgh was fun, but the last two are likely more in line with the expected quality the Blackhawks will be this season.
- The most interesting thing to me about the Habs goals in the second period is that a player under the age of 25 factored in: Caulfield (22), Ghule (21), and Rafaël Harvey-Pinard (24) respectively. The Habs are a little ahead of the Blackhawks in terms of their rebuild — for example, they have 12 young players on their roster compared to the Hawks 8, including goaltenders — but hopefully in the next couple of years the Blackhawks will see similar contributions from their young guns.
- The Blackhawks power play continues to struggle to find the back of the net as they went 0-for-7 tonight, making it 0-for-14 in three games. They definitely had some good looks, especially in the third period between Bedard and Lukas Reichel, but no dice so far.
- Beyond actually scoring on the power play, the Blackhawks also need to be better at giving up shorthanded chances against. They’ve been excellent on the penalty kill, so they need to bring some of that defensive awareness to the power play.
- Other than the miscue above, Jones was one of the few defensemen who had a consistently decent game. Murphy was very, very rough. Kaiser and Vlasic had some good moments but also some duds. Korchinski had more mistakes tonight than the two previous games combined, but I’d rather watch him working through his kinks along with the other kids than the human cinderblock that is Tinordi. Might as well give him one of these costumes and call it a day:
- Unsurprisingly, Bedard’s line was the only one at 5-on-5 that generated much of anything: they had 10 shot attempts, six shots on goal, and six scoring chances, though none were high danger by location. The other lines didn’t even have half of those shot metrics.
- It is somewhat frustrating to see players flub nice passes from Bedard, though. There just aren’t a lot of players on this team that can keep up with him with Taylor Hall out. He’ll either need to learn to adjust a bit to the lower quality of teammate or his teammates need to be more ready to crash the net for rebounds ala T. Johnson’s second goal. Hall was skating with the team this morning, so he may be back sooner than expected.
- Habs fan booing Bedard just because he wasn’t drafted by Montreal is pretty silly, but Bedard seems to thrive on attention:
- Reichel had a very two-worlds type of game tonight: he led the team with 1.88 expected goals, but that offensive effort only came on the power play — he did nothing much at 5-on-5. I’m not really sold that Reichel is best suited as a center, and that’s impacting his offensive ability, but I’ll give it more time before really complaining. Ultimately, though, I’d prefer for Richardson to go the Savard route of lining up and letting the top two rookies go wild together as they’re already looking sharp on the PP.
- Credit to T. Johnson for really crashing the net hard as much as possible this game. It resulted in two goals, but he probably could have had more if more teammates helped out in front as well.
- Ultimately, the Blackhawks obviously still have to things to work out at the team level. It’s unlikely they’re ever going to be a “good” team, but we do know they can at least give a good effort, which we just didn’t see much of tonight.
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Sean Monahan (MTL) — goal, assist
- Kaiden Guhle (MTL) — assist
- Cole Caufield (MTL) — goal
What’s Next
The Blackhawks head to Toronto to face the Maple Leafs Monday night at 6 p.m.