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Today is Where Your Book Begins: Blackhawks 4, Islanders 3

The Blackhawks are 1-0 in the Anton Frondell era.

Posted on by L_B_R
Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images

Anton Frondell picked up his first NHL point in his debut, recording an assist in the Blackhawks’ 4-3 win over the New York Islanders on Tuesday night.

The Islanders struck first just 49 seconds into the game. Anders Lee got his stick on Matthew Schaefer’s blast from the blue line and redirected it past the glove of Arvid Soderblom.

The Blackhawks tied it 1-1 at 12:46 of the first on a Nick Lardis five-hole goal. Frank Nazar had just been denied on a breakaway, but he quickly tracked down the puck behind the net and set up Lardis in the slot.

Ilya Mikheyev gave the Blackhawks a 2-1 lead with 1:54 left in the first period. Anton Frondell hit Mikheyev streaking down the left wing with a perfectly places pass, and Mikheyev slipped behind the defense before beating David Rittich blocker side on a partial breakaway.

Tyler Bertuzzi extended the lead to 3-1 with 29 seconds remaining in the period, tapping in the rebound off Alex Vlasic’s one-timer from the left point hit the forward in the shoulder and landed behind Rittich.

Frank Nazar scored the lone goal of the second period around the six-minute mark, hammering home a one-timer off a feed from Nick Lardis near the edge of the circle to make it 4-1.

The Islanders cut the deficit to 4-2 at 8:45 of the third period after Scott Mayfield found Simon Holmstrom in the low slot, and he snapped a shot high blocker side.

Calum Ritchie then made it 4-3 with less than four minutes remaining. Mathew Barzal sliced through the Blackhawks’ defense before finding Carson Soucy at the point, and his shot trickled behind Soderblom, where Ritchie was there to tuck it home.

The Blackhawks managed to hold off the Islanders in the final minutes of regulation and pull off the win 4-3.

Notes

In the opening 10 or so minutes, this looked like it was heading toward a long night for the Blackhawks. The Islanders came out flying, drew blood so quickly, and then kept pushing the pace and spending extended time in the offensive zone while the Blackhawks struggled just to survive for a bit. But to the Blackhawks’ credit, they didn’t let things spiral after that goal. They gradually settled in, started making cleaner exits, and began to push play the other way. The turning point was the Lardis goal, which came off exactly the kind of sequence this team needs to lean into: capitalizing on an Islanders mistake, quick transition, and two young guys connecting beautifully. From there, the Blackhawks looked far more composed — not dominant by any means, but purposeful. Even though the Islanders still controlled the shot attempts at 5-on-5 (24-17), the actual shots were much closer at 12-10, which speaks to the Blackhawks doing a better job limiting attempts to the outside and finding their own looks off the rush.

The second period was the most balanced oof the night: the teams split shot attempts right down the middle at 50 percent, but the Blackhawks arguably had the edge early in the period by dictating pace and playing with more structure. They were connecting passes through the neutral zone, supporting the puck well, and sustaining pressure in a way we don’t always see from this group. It wasn’t perfect — the Islanders still generated the more dangerous looks overall with a 6-3 edge in high-danger chances, but the Blackhawks countered by creating a higher volume of overall scoring chances (10-9).

Then came the third period, where things got a little uncomfortable. Whether it was the Blackhawks easing off the gas or the Islanders cranking things up — probably a bit of both — the ice tilted hard in New York’s favor almost immediately. The Islanders were flooding the zone, pinching aggressively, and keeping plays alive over and over again. The numbers tell the story: a 45-13 advantage in shot attempts, 22-5 in shots, and 25-4 in total scoring chances. It was wave after wave, with Chicago spending far too much time hemmed in their own end and struggling to get clean clears.

Coach Jeff Blashill said they’d be going what could have been done better in this third period at practice tomorrow:

Thankfully, Arvid Soderblom had a strong game in net: he did allow two goals in the third, but he also came up with several key stops under heavy pressure, did an admirable job controlling his rebounds (not his best strength) and tracking pucks through traffic in a way he hasn’t always done this season. The skaters in front of him bent quite a bit, but they didn’t fully break, getting just enough clears and shot blocks to close things out in regulation.

It wasn’t always pretty, but a win is a win.

I’m going to keep things mostly positive tonight because this is my first recap win in a while — my points percentage is still just 0.419 this season, so only the Vancouver Canucks have worse luck than me.

Starting with Soderblom: it was probably really nice for him to have back-to-back good-to-great games. He didn’t win the game against the Colorado Avalanche, but a .918 save percentage while facing nearly 50 shots is nothing to sneeze at. The Swedish netminder hasn’t had a particularly strong season overall — there have been some soft goals at inopportune times — but when he’s on, he’s really on.

Tonight was also the sixth time this season Soderblom has faced over 40 shots, and none of those games went to overtime. Here are a couple of his bigger saves from the game:

And Nazar singing Soderblom’s praises post-game:

Next, there was obviously Anton Frondell’s debut, where he picked up his first NHL point and played an otherwise very solid game. He came out swinging, putting up five shot attempts, two on net, and two scoring chances. He was getting into good areas to score, but his shot felt a bit rushed at times, which led to some misses and blocks. It’s easy to see how, with a bit more acclimation and experience, Frondell could become a lethal scoring threat.

The rest of his game was encouraging too: more patient with the puck in playmaking situations, active in disrupting the opponent’s play — resulted in some forced turnovers and steals, even — and generally reading the ice well at both ends. Plenty to be excited about here.

Frondell called the game a “dream” and noted how quick the pace was from the start:

And he did have to start fast because Bedard let Frondell take the opening faceoff:

One point down, hopefully many, many to come!

Speaking of Bedard, despite not picking up a point, he had a good individual game with five shot attempt, four on goal, and two scoring chances as well as some really elite playmaking opportunities. The lack of a true checking line does kind of hurt Bedard along with his linemates Frondell and Ryan Greene because they’re going to be facing either other top lines or shutdown lines with little relief, so their on-ice shot metrics were poor (24.32 percent shot attempts).

The best line of the night was obviously Nazar, Bertuzzi, and Lardis as they were on the ice for and involved in three of the four Blackhawks goals. They were the only line of the three that got over 10 minutes at 5-on-5 to have a positive shot possession share (54.84 percent) and basically broken even in terms of expected goals (49.43 percent). Bertuzzi scored his 29th goal of the season and played the role of “go fetch that puck” very well. Nazar had some of his best moves in a while and had the top individual expected goal number (1.18), even if his scoring touch is still inconsistent.

As for the third member of that line, Lardis has now put together three very impressive games in a row, each better than the last. He wasn’t quite the shooting machine we’ve seen in other outings, despite scoring one of the three goals, but he played a more nuanced, secondary yet vital role for much of the night. The key to Lardis’ success at every level has been his ability to play smart, and that’s starting to show more consistently here, especially as he works around his size limitations with positioning, applying just the right about of pressure and timing rather than brute force.

Now, I want to take a minute to talk about some comments in the game thread that suggested Lardis’ recent improvement is due to his time on the fourth line, particularly in terms of board battles and off-puck play. This is vast oversimplification of the discussion, I know and apologize, and I actually agree with many points made. But the general premise of the “fourth line learning experience” in this exact case, anyway, is what I disagree with for a few reasons.

First, I didn’t really see these elements from Lardis during his fourth-line stint — he wasn’t especially active in cycles, his puck retrieval numbers were low, he wasn’t driving play much, and so on. (His linemates weren’t do any of that either, but more on that in a second.) Second, a handful of games on the fourth line just isn’t suddenly going to teach a player to pick up those off-puck instincts, like thrive along the boards or support his linemates puck movement more. More time in a bottom-six role could help with those things, absolutely, but in this specific case, I don’t see how six games averaging just 8:12 at 5-on-5 is enough to do any remarkable learning, especially (back to the first reason) when he didn’t display those attributes when in that role either.

Third — and most importantly — this isn’t actually new behavior from Lardis as this is much closer to how he played in Rockford. He’s never been an elite off-puck player or anything, but he’s solid enough, and certainly better than what he’d shown in Chicago up to this point. That’s where I absolutely do agree with that segment of commenters: we hadn’t really seen this version of him yet at the NHL level. Or rather, we’ve seen flashes of it, especially in the early months, but he got away from it — he wasn’t engaging properly when he didn’t have the puck, or at least not consistently, and he needed to be better in those situations. That point was fully accurate.

Personally, I do think some of the improvement does come down to deployment and linemates, though not all of it. Some players just click better with certain teammates, and if Lardis projects as a top-six offensive player, he should be playing with guys who can complement that skill set and with whom he can feed off of himself. He and Oliver Moore showed bouts of chemistry early, but they were also two rookies trying to figure things out at the same time. Now, Lardis with Bertuzzi and Nazar is a different level — more experience, more controlled pace, easier to work in their flow and just a higher overall ceiling than what he was working with alongside Sam Lafferty and Landon Slaggert.

But in my opinion, a bigger reason for the improvement was because of Lardis’ time back in the AHL. And while this mini rant might sound like a critique of Blashill’s choices, it’s meant to be more balanced look at them and then to give credit where credit is due. When Lardis was struggling, Blashill likely had a hand in sending him back to Rockford during the Olympic break, where he could play big minutes and rediscover his full game. I wasn’t thrilled with the fourth-line deployment when Lardis returned, but again, credit to Blashill for adjusting after only a handful of games — something other coaches can be (and have been) far too slow, or outright resistant, to do in similar situations. This could have easily drifted into Dylan Strome 2.0 territory — something I was vocally worried about — but Blashill corrected course pretty quickly and put Lardis with the right linemates to gain confidence in playing how he’s has played at lower levels. This to me is a perfect example of being able to dislike one decision from a coach but then be quite happy with another decision or two, and as long as the positives outweigh the negatives, it works out.

Anyway, all of this is to say: however it’s come together, hopefully Lardis can keep this level of play going for the rest of the season and beyond.

Finally, just a quick shoutout to the young defensemen. Kaiser had a nice bounce back game from his poor showing against Nashville, especially when jumping into the play. Sam Rinzel and Alex Vlasic both had some really good individual moments, and Artyom Levshunov was solid although mostly quiet (which we’ll take). It got a bit dicey in the third for basically all of them, but not too outrageously.

PS. Please excuse any major mistakes — Dave is on PTO so not here to correct the big ones (or reel me in)!

Game Charts

Three Stars

  1. Arvid Soderblom (CHI) — 44 saves on 47 shots, .936 save percentage
  2. Nick Lardis (CHI) — 3 assists
  3. Frank Nazar (CHI) — 1 goal, 2 assists

What’s Next

The Blackhawks second stop on their current roadtrip is Philadelphia to take on the Flyers Thursday at 6 p.m.

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