The Chicago Blackhawks are riding high on a three-game win streak as they enter Saturday’s matinee matchup in Calgary against the Flames.
The Flames are closing out a five-game homestead against the Blackhawks, going 1-1-2 in the other four games so far. The two overtime losses were their most recent games played: first, they were defeated by the Boston Bruins 4-3 on Tuesday and then fell 3-2 to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday. It brought their 10-game record to a paltry 3-4-3, disappointing results for a team just one place out of a wild card spot.
Despite the lack of wins recently, the Flames seem to be playing decent hockey: they’ve owned 51.97 percent of the shot attempts and 53.32 percent of the expected goals at 5-on-5 in their last five games. The Flames have been scoring decently in those games as well — their 2.93 goals per 60 is top-10 in that span — but the goaltending hasn’t been as sharp, putting up just a .897 save percentage.
Despite scoring well lately, the offense for the Flames for the season as a whole has been lackluster. This is the third season in a row that Jonathan Huberdeau (0.7 points per game) hasn’t been able to come close to the production he had in Florida (115 points in 80 games in his last season there), and Nazem Kadri (0.64) has dropped significantly year-over-year in terms of results as well. The Flames have a couple of exciting young forwards in Matt Coronato (8 G, 8 A in 28 games) and Connor Zary (7 G, 11 A in 33 games) who are contributing solidly, but they don’t have another active player above 0.5 points-per-game (Anthony Mantha, currently on IR, had 7 points in 13 games). Another young gun, Jakob Pelletier (1 G, 2 A), has been with the team for the last seven games and recently has been playing on the top line.
On defense, they have MacKenzie Weegar and Rasmus Andersson — who have 16 and 15 points in 33 games, respectively — making an impact offensively and defensively, but the rest of the defense core is kind of meh.
No morning skate with the afternoon start, but here was the Calgary lineup during a practice on Friday:
#Flames at practice Friday with Lomberg and Pospisil taking maintenance days:
— Pat Steinberg (@Fan960Steinberg) December 20, 2024
Huberdeau-Kadri-Kuzmenko
Coleman-Backlund-Coronato
Sharangovich-Zary-Pelletier
Rooney-Duehr
Bahl-Andersson
Hanley-Weegar
Bean-Pachal
Barrie-Miromanov
In net, Dan Vladar has a .886 save percentage in 17 games while Dustin Wolf has fared better with a .913 in 16 games. Since Vladar started on Thursday, it’s expected that Wolf will start in this game but that won’t be known until later on Saturday.
It’s practically all sunshine and rainbows in Blackhawks fandom right now: not only did the team win a third game in a row for the first time in almost two years — thanks to their latest 3-1 victory over the Seattle Kraken on Thursday — the play on the ice has been quite exciting since the coaching change. In those seven games, Chicago is 4-3-0, the first time they’ve been above .500 this season. The change to an aggressive forecheck and a fast breakout system has done wonders for the entire team, but none more so than the young defenders — especially Alex Vlasic, Nolan Allan, and Kevin Korchinski — who are thriving at the moment.
While the young defensemen have been excellent, their forward counterparts in Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, and Lukas Reichel have been good but aren’t getting the same results — at least not at 5-on-5. Bedard and Reichel are definitely the results of less-than-ideal line combinations, and that could be true for Nazar as well, but the latter also is basically brand new to the NHL and still trying to find his footing (and probably being played out of his ideal position). Still, all three have been fine with some really great flashes, just not quite as consistent as the defensemen.
The Blackhawks made a couple of moves on Friday: they assigned Wyatt Kaiser to the Rockford IceHogs and placed Craig Smith (back) on injured reserve retroactive to Dec. 12.
It’s not that surprising Kaiser was demoted since he’s been in the press box the last few games and the preference is having him skating, but it’s disappointing that a couple of bad games after a fairly consistent season was all it took.
Still, the two moves combined made room for the possible return of Seth Jones (right foot) or Alec Martinez (neck) to return, and it appears to be the former. Jones was a full participant in Friday’s practice, and coach Anders Sorensen said the veteran defenseman “should be good to go” against the Flames.
He’s officially back on the active roster, too, after being activated from injured reserve on Saturday morning:
Blackhawks activate Seth Jones. Curious to see how he fares in Sorensen's system, though it might take a few games for him to adapt.
— Mark Lazerus (@marklazerus.bsky.social) December 21, 2024 at 10:07 AM
Jones spoke a little after practice on Thursday to discuss both his initial injury and how he’s stayed prepared to step into a completely different style of system than the team ran when he was injured.
No lines to report from Friday’s practice and with Jones’ returning, the lineup will probably change from Thursday’s game, at least on the blue line. It seems most likely Jones will simply swap with Louis Crevier to reunite with Alex Vlasic, but that’s not actually known. Additionally, no word on if Philipp Kurashev draws back into the lineup.
Blackhawks — Statistic — Flames
45.21% (31st) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 51.17% (11th)
45.51% (29th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 49.40% (19th)
2.52 (29th) — Goals per game — 2.61 (26th)
3.09 (t-19th) — Goals against per game — 3.06 (t-17th)
43.1% (31st) — Faceoffs — 44.6% (25th)
22.1% (13th) — Power play — 21.6% (15th)
85.4% (3rd) — Penalty kill — 72.7% (t-27th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 3 p.m. CT
Where: Scotiabank Saddledome, Calgary
TV: CHSN (How to Watch) Crazy that we still have to provide a how-to-watch guide in mid-December, right?
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720