The Chicago Blackhawks wrapped up their five-game road trip to open the season looking mostly listless throughout a 4-0 loss to the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena Thursday.
It’s not the finale the Hawks were looking for after spending 11 days on the road to start the season. Were they tired or simply in over their skis in Colorado?
“That’s just a good team,” Hawks forward Nick Foligno said. “There’s no excuse here for our group. “Every team gets screwed somehow, someway throughout the year. Who cares? We’re a team that needs to fight for respect now. We’re not a team that’s going to be given any easy nights and we shouldn’t expect that.”
The Hawks certainly haven’t had it easy, playing in three straight Avs home openers, but at least they scored in the previous two games.
The Hawks looked like they were up to the challenge at first. But that lasted for all of half a period before they unraveled. Ironically, the catalyst was the Hawks’ own power play.
Logan O’Connor had clear sailing to a shorthanded goal, his second in as many games, to put the Avs up 1-0.
It’s not the first time the Hawks have left themselves exposed defensively on the power play, more on that later.
“Abysmal,” Seth Jones muttered at the mere mention of the words “power play” before the question was even finished.
The penalty kill, the main bright spot that hadn’t given up a goal in 10 previous tries, finally fell Thursday.
The Avalanche created a mess around goalie Petr Mrázek’s crease and Ryan Johnasen cleaned up his own rebound with 1:19 left.
Offensively, the Hawks just shut down.
After their eighth shot on goal, by Taylor Raddysh with 10:35 left in the first, they went shirtless until 6:28 into the second period on a Kevin Korchinski wrister. Boris Katchouk shortly followed with another shot.
During that drought, the Hawks were outshot 20-0.
For the game, the Avalanche outshot the Hawks 41-18. Devon Toews and Nathan MacKinnon added goals in the second and third periods for the home team.
“Definitely a really strong team,” Hawks coach Luke Richardson said. “I thought we skated well in the first 10 minutes and then unfortunately they got a shorthanded goal and then a power-play goal, and it seemed like we were chasing after that.
“They’re very strong on their sticks and they’re a fast team. When we started standing still a little bit the second half of the first period and trying to make plays doing that they just gobbled us up.”
Here are three takeaways.
1. Connor Bedard got a dose of reality.
In his four previous games, he had no fewer than four shots on goal. Against the Avalanche, he couldn’t manage one.
He was bounced around by defenders, forced into turnovers and made some errant passes — one in which he tried to pull off a backhand pass from high in the zone to the backdoor.
Was this his most rookie moment of rookie moments so far?
“I think he’s getting a good dose of learning, right?” Foligno said. “Not ju
st him. I think he’s understanding how hard this league is and he’s still up to the task. He’s a great player, he’s going to learn.”
Richardson said Bedard’s a smart player and will incorporate what he learns.
“We played a high-powered Toronto team and a very experienced Pittsburgh team — but not like this team — they’re a different, whole other animal,” Richardson said. “And when they get moving and skating and they’re powerful, and it sometimes paralyzes you a little bit when you’re not playing well.”
Bedard wasn’t playing well. Perhaps Richardson needs to pull the reins a little on his playmaking decisions?
“No, I talked to him once on the bench,” Richardson said. “He sees the ice well, it’s the strength and speed of these players. You can’t do a little floating backhand pass through people. They’re going to knock that down and go the other way. … Not every play has to be fancy.
“When he figures out that there’s games like tonight where you just take what you are given and then something opens up and comes back to you.”
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2. Hawks’ power play should be renamed ‘Get Shorty.’
The power play gave up a shorthanded goal for the second time in the last three games, and there were a few other times during this trip they were this close to getting burned.
What gives (other than a lot of open ice on these shorthanded breakaways)?
Jones struck a pose like Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” and said he’d have to watch the video.
“I don’t know if we’re moving the puck fast enough, breakouts are a little iffy, maybe we have to work on that a little bit more as well,” he said. “But we have to stick together, we have to do that as a unit. We can’t go off on one man and think you can beat all four guys.”
He added, “Faceoffs are kind of killing us a little bit, too, right now. We’re not starting with the puck very much.”
The Hawks knew going into the season with a lot of young centers in the post-Jonathan Toews era that they might struggle there — and indeed they have.
They entered the game already ranked last in faceoff percentage (33.2%).
3. What should the Hawks make of this trip?
They’re going to lose to beatable teams like the Montreal Canadians and beat some better teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Thursday was the first game where the 2-3-0 Hawks looked like they were steamrolled.
“We weren’t hard enough on pucks,” Foligno said. “We weren’t the team that we expect to be, so that’s disappointing. We’re trying to grow this.
“I know there’s going to be growing pains, so you don’t get too high, too low. But you want to see some progress and it just felt like we left a little bit on the table.”
Jones agreed with that sentiment: Don’t get caught up in the highs and lows.
“Our goal is to put our best foot forward and be competitive every night, play a certain style, have an identity,” he said. “If we lose playing that identity, then we lose, but at least we know we did it together as a team.”