Thursday night, the Blackhawks took the ice in Vancouver, BC to face the Canucks in their first game post-Christmas—and post Corey Crawford-injury. Goalie Anton Forsberg took over the starting position for the foreseeable future, with additional lineup changes: newly recalled David Kampf was thrown right into the lineup centering the third line for Patrick Sharp and Alex Debrincat, while Jan Rutta was back in the lineup for his second game since returning from a concussion injury.
The Hawks came in riding a two game losing streak, after winning five in a row, while the Canucks were coming in on a bit of a cold streak as well, losing four of their last five.
These were the starting lines:
Brandon Saad – Jonathan Toews – Ryan Hartman
Nick Schmaltz – Artem Anisimov – Patrick Kane
Patrick Sharp – David Kampf – Alex DeBrincat
Lance Bouma – Tommy Wingels – John Hayden
Duncan Keith – Jordan Oesterle
Gustav Forsling – Jan Rutta
Connor Murphy – Brent Seabrook
It only took a few minutes for the Canucks to threaten, as Thomas Vanek found himself staring at a wide open net but somehow failed to give the Canucks that 1-0 lead. After a closer look, Hawks goalie Anton Forsberg was able to get the paddle of his stick on the shot, making a wonderful desperation save. This was not the last that Forsberg would see of Vanek, however.
The Blackhawks rewarded their goaltender’s fine work by taking a penalty very shortly thereafter. Luckily for the Hawks, the Canucks had a pretty awful showing on the actual power play. The bad news was that just as the power play ended, with the Hawks running around in their own end, the Canucks’ Sam Gagner redirected a long Nikolay Goldobin shot past Forsberg, to give them the lead.
The Blackhawks found themselves on their first power play of the night shortly thereafter and actually had some decent pressure, but it expired without incident. Overall, Chicago was 1-5 on power play chances, because their second power play of the night, just a few minutes later, resulted in their first goal on the man advantage in six games.
Patrick Kane followed up a prime scoring chance that Alex Edler saved by feeding Nick Schmaltz for a bang-bang one time play in the slot, tying the game.
This goal would close out the scoring in the opening period, with the teams heading into the intermission knotted up at one goal a piece, with shots favoring the Blackhawks just slightly, 14-13.
The middle period had a slower pace and less action than the first. The teams only managed to produce 16 total shots on net (9-7 in favor of the Hawks), and the only goal was scored by the aforementioned Vanek, with seven minutes remaining. Of course, this goal came after yet another failed Blackhawks power play.
Vanek took a really nice, no-look pass from Sam Gagner behind the net, and quickly one-timed the puck past a surprised Forsberg to give the Canucks a lead they would never relinquish. The Nucks caught the Blackhawks fourth line on the ice and baited both Hawks defenders below the goal line, leaving Vanek wide open in the slot, and Forsberg with absolutely no chance.
In the third period, the Blackhawks simply fell apart. They gave up a goal to Gagner just moments into the period and then later goals to Vanek and Brock Boeser, which put the game far out of their reach.
Vanek’s goal was almost a carbon copy of his second period goal, except he received the pass from Boeser instead of Gagner. The Hawks simply made the Vanek/Boeser/Gagner line look like Tikkanen/Gretzky/Kurri as they had 5/4/3 points respectively. Gagner continued his virtually career-long dominance of Chicago.
The Blackhawks saved very little face, as Ryan Hartman scored a meaningless goal with nine seconds remaining to cut the lead to three goals, but that made no difference. The banged up Hawks have no time to nurse their wounds or sulk as they hopped a plane to face the Oilers in Edmonton, tonight.
Pluses
- All of the Blackhawks regular centers were over 50% at the faceoff dots.
- Kampf had a decent first NHL game but also didn’t really stand out, either. I’ll give him a pass because the injury to Artem Anisimov really hosed the lines up.
- The possession numbers favored the Blackhawks pretty convincingly, with the Kane line being the only line that was under water. The Jonathan Toews line actually led the team in 5v5 Corsi, but failed to produce any goals.
- Ryan Hartman had a really nice game, and was rewarded with a goal late in the game. He drove hard to the net all night and drew a couple penalties as a result. It was nice to see someone with a white sweater actually play like they had some cojones, because Connor Murphy was the only other Hawks to show some.
- Jordan Oesterle can be a bit of an adventure in his own end, but I like what I see from him, especially moving the puck up the ice. He’s not Erik Karlsson, but can be a very useful offensive depth defenseman for the foreseeable future of this team. Especially since, excluding this year, the Blackhawks have been abjectly terrible at drafting defensemen.
- I’m going to keep harping on the fact that the Hawks could have used a power play specialist like Sam Gagner when he was available, and failed. Now they get to continuously be clowned by him. What do I know, though?
Minuses
- Anisimov left the game after playing just three minutes and never returned. The only report post game was that he had an upper body injury and could miss “some time“. If injuries start to pile up for this team, they could fall off the table quickly.
- Speaking of injuries, Connor Murphy took a rough and dangerous hit from behind from Alex Biega in the second period. It initially looked like Murphy might have had his bell rung and headed to the locker room, but returned and laid a big hit on Brendan Gaunce later in the second period.
- Make all the excuses you want, but the Canucks are a team the Blackhawks needed to beat. This team is trending downward once again, and this is just not a very good team right now.
- The Blackhawks are clearly a one line team. This team goes as Patrick Kane goes. When he is not scoring, the Blackhawks are truly awful. They had more than enough opportunity on the power play, to keep this game within reach and failed miserably. This is unacceptable from a team with so much natural goal scoring talent. Even the clueless Steve Konroyd joined Pat Foley in roasting the miserable power play towards the end of the second period.
- As I mentioned on Twitter, despite getting a late assist on a meaningless goal in this game, Alex Debrincat has once again gone ice cold. He now has only one goal and four assists in 11 December games.