The Chicago Blackhawks rallied with three goals in the third period but couldn’t overcome earlier mistakes in a 6-4 loss to the host Calgary Flames on Saturday at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
Tyler Bertuzzi sparked the rally with two goals in the third, and he assisted on the Hawks’ first goal, by Connor Bedard in the second. But five Flames goals in the first two periods made for a tough hill to climb, snapping the Hawks’ three-game winning streak.
The Hawks got off on the wrong foot, allowing a short-handed goal by Jonathan Huberdeau, assisted by Blake Coleman. Nazem Kadri followed up in the first with a score off Kevin Korchinski’s turnover.
Huberdeau, Coleman, Matt Coronato and Connor Zary each had a goal and an assist.
Zary’s goal in the second came 28 seconds after Bedard’s, taking some steam out of the Hawks after they had pulled within 2-1.
The game was underscored by a bit of controversy.
Martin Pospisil hit Bedard in the head during the first period, and Bedard looked around for the referees to make a call that never came.
Perhaps Bedard’s teammates didn’t see the play at the time, but Pospisil’s infraction in the second period didn’t escape them.
Pospisil roughed Frank Nazar with a forearm that made Nazar’s head whiplash back. Ryan Donato raced over, flung off his gloves, pulled Pospisil’s head down and started raining uppercuts.
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“That’s just how he plays,” Bertuzzi said of Pospisil. “A couple good hits. Obviously we reacted the way we should. But, no, he’s playing hard.”
The Hawks admitted they should’ve played harder from the start of the game.
“I think we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror,” Bedard said. “Obviously we can’t come out like that. I think we just made too many mistakes that shouldn’t be made and those are going to end up in your net.
“It’s stuff we can easily clean up, but it’s frustrating to have a game like that.”
Bedard reached a milestone: His 30th career goal passed Patrick Kane for the second most by a Hawks teenager, now trailing only Eddie Olczyk (49).
Meanwhile, Seth Jones was activated from a right foot injury Saturday and returned to action for the first time in five weeks.
Petr Mrázek (left groin) made his first start in two weeks and saved 24 of 29 shots. He made a sweet paddle save on Jake Bean and stopped a Huberdeau penalty shot.
The Hawks penalty kill’s shutout streak finally came to an end at 33 opportunities through 11 games and just over 1½ periods. Matt Coronato’s power-play goal was preceded by Donato’s roughing penalty for defending Nazar.
Ultimately it was a costly penalty, but the Hawks rightfully would accept such a setback every time if it’s a player responding to a really hard or questionable hit on a teammate.
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. The Hawks regressed to bad habits.
Before the game, Hawks interim coach Anders Sorensen said the challenge with the Flames is that their forecheck feasts off turnovers.
For the first two periods, the Hawks played into the hosts’ hands, committing 12 of their 16 giveaways. But it was the timing of certain turnovers as well as lost possessions that don’t show up on the stat sheet.
During a first-period power play, Jones tried to pinch on Coleman but couldn’t control the puck.
Coleman corralled it and handed off to a streaking Huberdeau, who blew by Nazar and backhanded a short-handed goal past Mrázek, making his first start since injuring his right groin Dec. 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Later in the first, Korchinski tried a stretch pass through the middle of the neutral zone, and Kadri easily picked it off on his way to a mini-breakaway score on Mrázek.
On Coleman’s second-period goal, Taylor Hall’s stick deflected Bean’s shot and it ricocheted in off Coleman.
That made it 5-1 with 2 minutes, 9 seconds left in the second, a difficult deficit to overcome.
“We had a hard time with their forecheck, like we talked about before the game,” Sorensen said. “And give them credit, they were coming at us with numbers, and we had a hard to hard time exiting our zone with any numbers or any speed.
“I think that hurt us, especially those first two periods.”
2. They got their act together in the third.
Bertuzzi sparked the rally with a goal 57 seconds into the final period, when Bedard whipped a pass to him backdoor.
Bertuzzi struck again with a power-play goal, again off a slick, sharp-angle Bedard pass in the same spot.
The referees disallowed a net-front goal by Donato, otherwise Ilya Mikheyev’s goal with 1:08 left in the third would’ve been the tying goal.
“It shows that we still care and we’re making a push to win,” Bertuzzi said. “We came close, but it’s not good enough. We needed to play way better hockey in the first and the second.”
The third used to be the period in which opponents took the gloves off and started stuffing pucks down their throats, but under Sorensen it has been the Hawks who’ve turned it on in the final frame.
Consider these recent third periods:
- at Islanders: 3 goals
- vs. Islanders: 2
- vs. Capitals: 3
- vs. Kraken: 2
- at Flames: 3
Still, the scoring flurry against the Flames came too late.
“We were in this position earlier, too, against the Islanders,” Sorensen said of another rally that fell short. “So we can’t put ourselves in those spots. We’ve got to have that type of compete and urgency from the get-go and not wait for the score to be out of hand.”
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3. Bertuzzi and company continue their hot streaks.
Granted, most of their production came in the third period, but Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teräväinen and Mikheyev padded their recent runs.
- Teräväinen has a four-game point streak with a goal and nine assists in that span, including two assists Saturday.
- Mikheyev extended his goal streak to four games. He has five goals in that span, including three in the last two.
- Bedard’s goal and two assists gave him 12 points in December (four goals and eight assists), his best month of the season.
- Bertuzzi had two goals and an assist against the Flames a game after an assist against the Seattle Kraken. During the recent New York trip, he followed up a goal against the Rangers with two against the Islanders.
Bedard and Bertuzzi showed a particular connection Saturday.
“He’s always finding good ice and battling in front there,” Bedard said of Bertuzzi. “I’m just trying to put it in an area where he can get a stick on it, and he’s doing the hard work.
“So it’s fun when you know a guy is going to be there and battle his ass off to put one in.”
Added Bertuzzi of Bedard: “Just try to get open, find soft areas. And his head’s always up, so if he thinks you’re open, he’ll find you.”