Another half-game performance from the tanking Blackhawks led to their seventh-consecutive home loss and 8th consecutive loss Thursday evening inside 1901 W Madison.
These recaps are getting increasingly frustrating to write for us bloggers, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that the recurring issues on this team can only be covered so many ways. With that said, let’s break down some of the good and ugly from this one.
First and foremost, I thought Patrick Kane was visibly agitated in this one. Kind of a more hot-takeish point to raise, but I think it’s worth mentioning. He was seen on more than one occasion palms-up after some tough offside calls, and looked to me a little more vocal on the bench. I like this from Kaner, because frankly, he is the only player on that team who has the authority to get on his teammates and back it up with his performances on-ice.
I wonder then, if Ryan Hartman’s enthusiastic second period performance might’ve been jump started by a little more renewed sense of urgency on the bench. In the second he laid a great open-ice, clean hit on Jakob Silfverberg and was immediately jumped by a plethora of Ducks players. Hartman had the awareness to resist getting into a scrap with either of them, and drew the Hawks a power play (that should’ve been longer). The building felt refreshed when the camera panned to Hartman during a brief stoppage in play immediately after. It almost (almost) felt like a page may have been turned.
But it hadn’t.
The Hawks’ defensive play once again doomed them here. Some absolutely pathetic performances from Murphy, Seabrook, and even Keith to an extent were difficult to watch at times. Perhaps the most disheartening part of watching the Hawks drop another one last night was the fact that they were beaten by a play style they once dominated the league with. They were caught time and time again in sloppy transitions that led to breakaways or odd-man rushes. D-men were getting sucked into the play and simply don’t have the wheels to get back in time to prevent a scoring opportunity.
Duncan Keith finally scored. That’s all I’ll write on that. Aside from it he was sloppy in my opinion.
Anton Forsberg really wasn’t awful in this game. He bailed the Hawks out of a few of those breakaways and odd-man rushes. I thought he played well enough to win.
I’m going to emphasize one more time how ridiculously horrible of a professional hockey player Brent Seabrook has become. He is slow, lazy, and completely unaware of the players around him. Pucks are passed straight through him on a regular basis these days. It’s agonizing to watch.
Aside from that, I don’t know what else to analyze at this point. I’ll leave it to Jaeckel to inform you all that this season is a confirmed DOA.