The Chicago Blackhawks couldn’t hold onto a lead heading into the the third period, surrendering two unanswered goals in a 4-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night.
The Blackhawks struck first about eight minutes into the opening period. After taking a pass from Alex Vlasic, Ryan Donato cut through the slot before ripping a shot off the crossbar and past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for the 1-0 lead.
Tyler Bertuzzi doubled the lead at 11:24 in the first when Anton Frondell slipped a quick pass across the crease to Bertuzzi, who tapped it home to make it 2-0.
The Sabres got one back with 3:36 left in the first. Jack Quinn got the puck up high and beat Spencer Knight with a top-shelf wrister through traffic from above the slot, making it 2-1.
Tage Thompson evened the score at 2-2 just under six minutes into the second period. He cut to the slot after the Sabres won the faceoff and then tipped a long shot from Louis Crevier to beat Knight.
The Blackhawks restored their lead with less than two minutes remaining in the second. Fresh out of the penalty box, Oliver Moore joined Anton Frondell on a two-on-one rush, took the feed and squeaked a wrist shot from the right circle through Luukkonen to make it 3-2.
The Sabres tied the game once again at 6:10 of the third when Rasmus Dahlin took a pass from Peyton Krebs at the right hashmark off the rush and snapped a shot past Knight on the stick side.
The Sabres took the lead at 13:20 of the third after a Blackhawks turnover and defensive breakdown at the end of a long shift. During 4-on-4 play, Owen Power found Jiri Kulich in the left circle, where he snapped the puck short side past Knight to make it 4-3.
Notes
This game seemed to be starting on a better note than the previous two, primarily because the Blackhawks ended the first period up 2-1, but there was a bit of a mirage to that score thanks primarily to Knight’s play in net. The Sabres controlled everything: the Blackhawks were out-attempted 29-10, outshot 14-5 and owned just 23.41 percent of the expected goals at 5-on-5. Knight had to face almost 20 scoring chances and probably would have hit that mark if not for the Blackhawks’ power-play time. To be fair, the offense got rewarded for some things they were doing pretty well in the last couple of games, but there were still too many one-and-done opportunities without much sustained pressure. The defense was still sloppy, mistakes were plentiful in their own zone, and the sheer number of rush attempts against we saw in just 20 minutes was wild.
The Blackhawks scored another goal in the second, but it was basically a repeat of the first, in terms of the Sabres’ dominance when it came to dictating play. Chicago managed even fewer shots on goal at 5-on-5 in this period (3) than in the previous one, but did a marginally better job of keeping quality chances down, allowing only 10 scoring chances (two high-danger) in the middle frame. That’s still too much to be giving up, though, and it felt inevitable that the Sabres would score (spoiler: they did).
Unfortunately, the teams spent less than 10 minutes at 5-on-5 in the third, so even though the Blackhawks played the Sabres pretty evenly there — shots were 5-5, scoring chances 6-6 and high-danger chances 3-3 — they seemed to run out of gas at inopportune moments, and the Sabres capitalized with two goals. Even after being outplayed through the first 40 minutes, the Blackhawks went into the third with a lead, and it was disappointing to see that slip away.
There were some comments about this game being better than the last two, which depends on how you qualify “better.” Yes, yes, I know this is a semantics thing. I just personally didn’t think there was a lack of effort in the previous games, but rather a lack of execution, both in terms of structure and control, and I’m more interested in the latter. Others can definitely disagree, obviously, but that’s how I saw those games. As mentioned above, some good elements (mostly offense) got rewarded in this one, but they had moments like those in the other games where the opposing defenders and/or goalie was just better. From a less subjective evaluation, we can look at the 5-on-5 shot stats from both games, where the margins are pretty close:
| CF | CA | SF | SA | SCF | SCA | HDCF | HDCA | |
| vs. Utah | 38 | 59 | 22 | 28 | 16 | 34 | 4 | 13 |
| vs. Buffalo | 32 | 58 | 13 | 25 | 16 | 32 | 7 | 13 |
The game was overall more watchable because the Blackhawks scoring is much more fun than them not scoring, but there’s not enough of a meaningful difference in quality between this game and the Utah one for me to be too excited. That doesn’t mean I don’t think the Blackhawks can be better, but they would need to show bigger improvements than the marginal ones we saw tonight. A caveat to these numbers: there were six more minutes at 5-on-5 tonight, but that’s not really a meaningful difference.
But hey, the players and Blashill think they did better and their confidence in themselves is going to be key for any improvement:
One of the more frustrating things about the three games so far (and much of last season) is that you can see the young players make some great plays on occasion, but they’re just not consistent enough to really get your hopes up too much. It’s like a tease: you know the potential there could be so high, but we’ve yet to see it fully unlocked. You just want to shake these kids sometimes and be like “do the good things more often, please.”
Like, Artyom Levshunov has been great on the penalty kill and had some breakout moments that were wow-worthy tonight, but then would make a defensive miscue that made you wonder if his brain disconnected from the rest of his body. Kevin Korchinski played at times like defensive structure was a subscription service he occasionally forgot to renew, but then looked really good pushing offensively and was one of the better players at getting the puck out of the defensive zone. Ethan Del Mastro was mostly invisible in that his mistakes were less big, but he lagged a lot and did he even play going the other way? I can’t recall single instance of him being helpful. Sam Rinzel played similarly in the previous two games and was press-boxed for it, but you can’t send all the young defenders to the naughty corner at the same time.
Here are a couple of instances of Levshunov and Korchinski doing well:
Wyatt Kaiser and Alex Vlasic were both steadier, but that should be expected from them as being older and with more experience. Vlasic honestly had a pretty strong individual game, especially offensively. He did a nice job pushing the pace the other way and jumping into the offensive play when needed. Obviously, the assist to set up Donato was slick, but the little bounce off the boards almost directly to Teuvo Teravainen ahead of the Bertuzzi goal was also quite clever. Being paired with a more defense-first player like Ian Cole definitely opened Vlasic up to be more adventurous than usual. Kaiser also had some cool moments (like below), but they weren’t as prevalent, and he didn’t end up on the scoresheet.
Frank Nazar, Oliver Moore and Nick Lardis all had “he giveth and taketh away” moments in this game, too, but I think some of the veterans (especially Patrick Kane and Ryan Donato) made bigger flubs more often than the kids. The forwards as a group definitely make the young defense’s job much harder. Why aren’t they supporting the defenders better? Why are they passing to opponents so much? Why can’t they regularly win board battles? Why are they giving opponents so much space? It boggles the mind. Teuvo Teravainen, Cole Smith, and Jordan Greenway along with Ryan Greene are somewhat exempt from this complaint — or at least they had less issues overall.
Nazar was better overall than the other two, but he still needs to figure out how to finish more on his breakaways, something we talked about more in depth during our post-season player recap from the spring. He’d be a stone cold killer if he could do this one thing.
Frondell and Kantserov were the least mistake-prone young forwards defensively, which is interesting considering they were just unboxed for NHL action like five minutes ago. Frondell also had some spectacular offensive moments that showed how well he sees the ice, resulting in two assists. Kantserov is also still showing some good offensive chemistry with Nazar and Kane, but that line was buried more often than not.
Knight was a bright spot most of the night, even though his save percentage (.857) suggests otherwise. He weathered the barrage and kept the game from going off the rails early, and some of the goals against were screened or tipped or really the fault of the guys in front. His goals saved above expected ended up basically even for the night.
Anyway, enough (mostly) complaining! It’s still super early, there were always going to be growing pains, and we have the home opener to look forward too, where the players will hopefully put on the best performance.
PS. Here is a quick not-really-an-update on Connor Bedard:
Game Charts
Three Stars
- Ramus Dahlin (BUF) — 1 goal
- Jiri Kulich (BUF) — 1 goal
- Anton Frondell (CHI) — 2 assists
What’s Next
The Blackhawks get a few days off before their home opener on Tuesday, when they host the St. Louis Blues at 7 p.m.