Taylor Raddysh scored two first-period goals for the Chicago Blackhawks, but the Detroit Red Wings rallied twice to win 4-3 Wednesday at Little Caesars Arena.
Ex-Hawk Dominik Kubalik sealed the victory with a goal against his old team with 4 minutes left.
“It was difficult and like the whole game, we just didn’t have the jump,” Hawks forward Taylor Raddysh said. “And we’re kind of soft in all areas. And I feel like that’s not the way we need to play right now.”
Raddysh opened the scoring on the power play, set up by Lukas Riechel’s sauce pass. Two minutes later, Raddysh beat Red Wings goalie Ville Husso off a backhanded pass from Cole Guttman, who notched his first career assist.
But the Red Wings evened the score in the second period.
Jake Walman faked Anders Bjork and sniped it past goalie Alex Stalock from the blue line, and Alex Chiasson backhanded a pass between his own legs to key Dylan Larkin’s power-play goal.
Stalock had been outstanding in net as the Hawks went on a 15-minute drought without a shot on goal, but he gave up Larkin’s marker with a minute and a half left before the second intermission.
Joey Anderson gave the Hawks a 3-2 advantage, but the Red Wings answered with goals by Lucas Raymond and Kubalik. The Blackhawks were outshot 41-20 and 19-3 in the second period.
Stalock made 37 saves, tied for his third-most this season, and one of his stops included a penalty shot by Larkin.
Hawks coach Luke Richardson noticed Stalock “shaking his head like he thinks he should have every shot, which I think that’s a good confidence that a goalie should have, but we’ve got to make sure we play a better solid game in front of him.
“We’ve got to really learn from this game that whatever we did to prepare for this game today, it wasn’t good enough for the NHL and we’ve got to be sharper.”
Meanwhile, the Red Wings lost Robby Fabbri late in the first period off a hard check against the boards by Tyler Johnson. He limped off after Raddysh scored his second goal and didn’t return.
Here are three takeaways.
1. Lukas Reichel and Andreas Athanasiou put a little razzle dazzle on a couple of ex-Hawks.
Athanasiou and Reichel showed another level of smarts on Raddysh’s power play goal. Athanasiou deked Olli Määttä to enter the zone cleanly and handed off to Reichel.
Reichel then crossed Määttä to come up the right wall and dropped it back to Athanasiou. That baited Määttä and Pius Suter to converge on Athanasiou as he passed it to a wide-open Reichel.
Reichel sauced it over Ben Chiarot’s stick to Raddysh, who flushed it backdoor before the Red Wings goalie could slide over.
2. As far as ‘tank’ games go, this is as palatable as it gets.
General manager Kyle Davidson is never going to say he’s trying to set up the Hawks for failure, but he did strip down the roster as much as humanly possible before the trade deadline.
And if you entertained any notion Richardson is cooperating with the “tank hard for Connor Bedard” campaign, let that 5-0 upset win over the Ottawa Senators be your wet blanket.
But eventually a young roster catches up with itself.
The Hawks looked “scrambly,” as coaches like to say, during a lopsided second period when the Hawks couldn’t generate a shot on goal for 15 minutes as the Red Wings had 16 unanswered shots on goal.
Detroit clawed back with two goals in the second to tie it and scored twice more in the third to win it.
Stalock said, “It’s just one of those periods where it snowballs.”
“We took a couple of penalties and you get out there sometimes on long shifts like that and it adds up and a team just gets momentum in their own building,” he said. “Momentum is a big thing in a hockey game and they definitely had it in the second.”
Despite the Red Wings dominating in most areas except special teams, Hawks kept it close on the scoreboard (mostly, Stalock did). A competitive loss is about the best you can hope for if your eye is trained on the bigger picture: draft positioning.
The Hawks dropped 22-37-5, now just two points ahead of the 20-37-7 Columbus Blue Jackets.
But just remember, the NHL draft still a lottery. Last place doesn’t guarantee first place.
3. Joey Anderson notched his first goal as a Hawk.
Anderson grabbed the puck off the faceoff and banked it in off the post 6 minutes into the third.
He nearly had his first Hawk goal two games earlier, hitting the crossbar during the first period against the Nashville Predators.
When the roster looks like a turnstile, a lot of first-timers get their chance — and Anderson is the latest.
Here’s a list of the other Hawks who recorded their first goals with the team or first NHL goal this season.
Max Domi (Oct. 12)
Jason Dickinson (Oct. 15)
Andreas Athanasiou (Oct. 21)
Jarred Tinordi (Nov. 12)
Filip Roos * (Nov. 12)
Colin Blackwell (Jan. 8)
Lukas Reichel * (Jan. 8)
Isaak Phillips * (Jan. 14)
Cole Guttman (Feb. 19)
Brett Seney (Feb. 25)
David Gust (Feb. 25)
(Asterisk also represents their first in the NHL)