There are stages players travel through when they struggle to score goals, according to Blackhawks coach Brian Sutter.
The first is when they start feeling sorry for themselves. The second is when they say they are frustrated. The third is when the frustration turns to anger.
Despite losing 3-1 Wednesday night to the Toronto Maple Leafs before an announced crowd of 15,797 at the United Center, Sutter doesn’t think his team has gotten to the third stage yet.
“Not even close,” Sutter said. “If they think they have, they haven’t, believe me.”
Wednesday was the fourth time in five games in which the Hawks have scored two or fewer goals. It was their eighth loss in their last 12 games and their seventh at home. They lost seven at home all of last season.
Wednesday was the first time all season in which Sutter had a full roster from which to pick his lineup. Eric Daze returned after a five-game absence with a groin injury and defenseman Alexander Karpovtsev returned from his bruised ankle.
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Daze’s return prompted Sutter to change his lines. He put Daze with center Alex Zhamnov and winger Steve Sullivan and moved Theo Fleury to a line with Andrei Nikolishin and Steve Thomas.
Sutter kept the unit of Tyler Arnason, Mark Bell and Kyle Calder together, and for the sixth straight game, someone from that line scored. This time it was Bell providing the lone goal for the second straight game. Monday in Vancouver he scored in the final minute; Wednesday he scored after 64 seconds. But that was it for the offense, despite outshooting the Leafs 33-28.
“We can’t score,” Zhamnov said. “We can’t say we didn’t try to play hard. We just can’t score.”
Less than two minutes after Bell gave the Hawks the lead, Toronto tied it and then put the game away. Former Hawk Tom Fitzgerald sent a long shot from the point that Jocelyn Thibault stopped. But Alyn McCauley beat Zhamnov to the loose puck and slipped it past Thibault to make it 1-1 at 2:51 of the first.
The Leafs added the other two within 1 minute 12 seconds of each other when Jyrki Lumme beat Thibault from just inside the blue line and Tie Domi sent a bad-angle shot past Thibault to close the scoring before the 10-minute mark of the first period.
The last half of this season is becoming reminiscent of last year, when the offense went into a funk and Thibault had to nearly pitch a shutout every night just to give his team a chance.
The Hawks had chances to get back into the game on the power play. They failed in four attempts Wednesday and now have just two goals in their last 37 power-play attempts.
“The only way to get through this is to get through it,” Fleury said. “If you’re working hard, eventually good things happen.”