CHICAGO — Connor Bedard may be back on track, but the Blackhawks certainly aren’t.
Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson’s line shuffling found a working combination in Bedard, Jason Dickinson and Joey Anderson, with Bedard setting up Dickinson for two goals, but the rest of the team couldn’t follow and the Blackhawks lost 3-2 to the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday.
How the Blackhawks lost was the same as it ever was this season. They were competitive — for the 18th time in 19 games they either led, were tied or within a goal in the third period — but just not competitive enough. At this point, the sample size is growing to where it almost seems safe to say Blackhawks are what they are. They may be better than they were a season ago, but they are still far from good enough. Nearly a quarter of the way through the season, they have a ton of moral victories, just not many points, ranking last in the NHL with a .342 points percentage.
Tuesday’s loss was especially deflating for any hope the Blackhawks may have been hoping to re-establish. There was little reason coming into the night not to expect the Blackhawks to win. The Ducks were on their second game of a back-to-back. The Blackhawks were rested, back home and desperate for a win. If you’re a believer in the American Thanksgiving standings theory, as Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno is, the Blackhawks were also playing for their season in a way.
And for two periods, the Blackhawks mostly looked like it. They were better offensively than they had been, and Richardson’s new jumbled lines seemed to make more sense. Each line showed some life, and Dickinson’s line provided the much-needed finishing touch. Bedard fed Dickinson with a cross-ice pass for a one-timer in the first period and then found him in the slot in the second period. It was the first time in six games the Blackhawks had scored twice in regulation. Though Bedard’s goal drought reached 10 games, he seemed much more like himself with the puck and was making plays.
The Blackhawks had the game where they wanted it then. They were up 2-1 heading into the third period, and you just knew Foligno and the veterans were reminding everyone during the intermission that they needed to play aggressive in the third period.
As Foligno said on Monday about closing out games, “I think it’s just an understanding of details, the process of what goes into winning a game. When you are up by one, knowing how you have to play and you can’t open yourself up. I think some of those games we opened ourselves up or we’ve clammed up because now the team’s getting momentum because they’re now on full-on attack, and OK, we got time and space to play with because we’re so worried about defending.
“So it’s a balance of both. If you get a goal, get the next one. Understand what that means, how hard that was to get the first one, get the next one. And every game we’ve done that, get the next one, we’ve won. It’s amazing how that recipe works. That’s what I see as our need for improvement.”
The recipe failed the Blackhawks on Tuesday. The Ducks got the next one in the third period, and then the next one, and there were no more goals and the Blackhawks had lost.
The Ducks’ first goal in the period came just seconds after the Blackhawks had killed a penalty and were unable to clear the puck.
“I think it’s just a lack of execution on little plays,” Richardson said. “That’s what I talked about this morning, the one little play on each game that’s kind of hurting us. We kill off a penalty, but we can’t kill the play and get it out of the zone, so really it’s still kind of a result of being shorthanded. We have to find a way to end that. You have to find the inner strength and be strong. I just thought our stick battles weren’t good enough tonight. Part of that is going through the stick and maybe going through the man a little bit more. I thought they did a better job of that than us tonight, kind of caught up with us on a few of those goals in the third period.”
The second goal occurred after the Blackhawks allowed the Ducks too much space on an entry and Leo Carlsson snuck behind defenseman Alec Martinez and scored what would be the game-winner at 9:38 of the period.
“Third goal, the winning goal, I think we’ve got to be more aggressive at the blue line and squeeze that and not let them get in,” Richardson said. “And then when (Alex) Killorn pulls up, he’s got two or three seconds to find people. And he’s just like a nice seeing-eyeball pass to the back door, which we’ve got to try and lock off. But I think it could be killed before that. I think we need to be more aggressive. If we’re having trouble at times to be killing plays in the D-zone, then we’ve got to be more aggressive before we get there.”
As bad as the goals against were, the Blackhawks’ lack of offensive pushback was just as frustrating for Richardson. The Blackhawks only had three shots on goal in the period until the final two minutes, when they pulled Arvid Söderblom from net and created a few more chances. After the final 20 minutes, it was apparent one team talked about having desperation and the other played with it.
Richardson continues to wrestle with what will turn things around for the Blackhawks. While there has been a theme in the losses, the specific reason does seem to change from game to game.
“I don’t know,” Richardson said of why the Blackhawks have been outscored in the third period. “We’ve had good games in the third period where we’re coming from behind and we’re already behind. So I’ve liked some of our pushback then. But, yeah, definitely, when we have the lead, I think that’s something that we’ve got to make sure that we lock down, especially at home. And we talked about good things on the bench and in between periods, we just didn’t execute it well enough in the third period. So it’s something to maybe, we obviously pay attention to it and talk about it, but how do we fix it? The only way we can do it is the next game and do a better job at it.
“So when it starts to compound more and more, it’ll become an issue. But it’s an issue that we’ve brought to attention in the past, and even tonight, we wanted to be hard in the third period. And we just weren’t hard enough – not as desperate as that team. And I think that’s where we’ve got to take a lesson of that and put it into the next game because it’s going to be even a harder game.”
The frustration level is definitely growing within the Blackhawks dressing room. No matter what has been said or what changes have been made, the results have remained the same.
“Definitely frustrating,” Dickinson said. “Like you said, we’ve been in a lot of these games. We could easily be coming out of a lot of these with wins. It’s easy to talk about, easy to say that, ‘Well, shoulda, coulda, woulda,’ but at the end of the day, we’ve got to go out and do it. We’ve got to go out and win an extra battle, find an extra puck, find an extra greasy goal to put them on their heels a little bit more, and not let them feel like they’re in the game still.”
Unless something changes really soon, that will be the story of the 2024-25 Chicago Blackhawks: the shoulda, coulda, woulda season.
(Top photo: Kamil Krzaczynski / Imagn Images)
