CHICAGO — Nick Foligno had seen Tuesday’s 6-3 loss to the Vancouver Canucks play out multiple times for the Chicago Blackhawks the last two seasons. Here’s how the story goes: the Blackhawks come out slow, they fall behind, they push back but they still lose.
It was how a number of games played out last season and a few have already this season. Tuesday’s was especially frustrating for Foligno because he played a part in the Blackhawks’ tough start. On the game’s opening shift, Foligno had a chance to clear the puck from the defensive zone, but was unable to. Seconds later, the puck was in the back of the Blackhawks’ net with the Canucks scoring 21 seconds into the game.
“Especially our line, we pride ourselves on starting on time, and we didn’t get the job done on the first shift,” Foligno said. “It’s disappointing on my end and just as a team, because it sets the tone for a lot of the game. I didn’t think we had any emotion after that. They got to their game faster because of that goal, so that’s disappointing because it’s an area that we need to fix.
“It seems like any game we’ve started slow, we’ve had trouble in and we can’t seem to come back from it. It’s a bit of a mentality of understanding, if it does happen, we have to have the mental fortitude to come back into it and do the things necessary. We battled back and there’s some fluky ones that go in, but that’s what happens when you’re mentally into it more than the other team, and they just wanted it and battled it more than we were able to.”
A season ago, the Blackhawks’ early struggles could be largely chalked up to their inexperienced and inferior roster. It’s different this season with much more experience and talent.
“It’s just understanding that we cannot fall into old habits,” Foligno said. “Especially the newer guys, they’re still trying to find their way, and not letting that creep into our game because they’re still trying to find their game. That’s the big thing — understanding how good we can be when we play together and play a simple game, and a really competitive and hard game, and then it seems like everybody jumps in and buys in and is able to play that style. We haven’t gotten to it as much as we’d like.”
If the Blackhawks are going to compete with teams like the Canucks, they’ll need more depth scoring. They’ll especially need more from their second line.
Taylor Hall has been consistently dangerous on that line — the analytics point to that too — and he scored his second goal of the season on Tuesday. But outside of him, everyone else on that line has been unnoticeable this season.
Tyler Bertuzzi has been playing on that second line throughout the season and has yet to produce a single point in five-on-five play. Philipp Kurashev had been centering the second line but was a healthy scratch on Tuesday, replaced by Andreas Athanasiou. But Athanasiou didn’t fare well either. The Canucks had a 10-2 advantage in shot attempts with Hall, Athanasiou and Bertuzzi on the ice.
Athanasiou didn’t make it the whole game on that line either. He was replaced by Lukas Reichel in the third period. The line didn’t look a ton more dangerous with Reichel on it, but it was better. With Reichel, the Blackhawks had a 2-1 advantage in shot attempts in 3:03 of ice time.
Blackahwks coach Luke Richardson liked Reichel more in his last game, but there were still positives to take.
“I thought obviously last game he had a couple of quality opportunities,” Richardson said. “Tonight he had some good bursts through the neutral zone. He unfortunately didn’t get a lot of shots through to the net but still trying to use his speed, which is one of his top qualities. We’re happy with what we’re seeing in that. I hope it leads to more like last game, on the opportunities around the net. So we’re just going to continue to push and help him do that.”
The officials team of Ghislain Herbert, Andrew Smith, Carter Sandlak and Mitch Hunt had a big miss in the first period. Leading up to the Canucks’ fourth goal, they had seven players on the ice at the same time. It’s hard to tell how long they had seven on the ice for, but they definitely had six skaters actively involved in their breakout.
As the Canucks carried the puck up the ice, the Blackhawks’ bench was yelling and slamming their sticks to bring attention to too many men, but it was to no avail. Seconds later, the Canucks scored and went ahead 4-2.
“They screwed up,” Foligno said. “They know that. I just don’t understand why they all were seeing it and they didn’t want to call it at the time. That was the only thing, and I just didn’t like his response at the time. But he owned it after. It’s breaks in games and there’s not much you can do, but that’s not why we lost the game. It’s disappointing because it definitely changes the game, but the score was 6-3, so it’s something we need to make sure we rectify.”
That call was wasn’t the only debatable decision in the period. Prior to the Canucks’ third goal, Kiefer Sherwood looked as if he may have been offside. The puck left his stick, traveled over the blue line and he gathered it again. The debate was whether Sherwood tagged up before regaining possession in the offensive zone.
The Blackhawks challenged the play. After a lengthy review, it didn’t go their way.
According to the NHL’s situation room, “It was determined that Vancouver’s Kiefer Sherwood legally tagged up at the blue line before he played the puck in the offensive zone prior to Danton Heinen’s goal.”
Richardson didn’t have a definitive opinion, but he tended to think the Blackhawks were right in challenging it.
“It’s still a little confusing,” Richardson said. “We haven’t looked at it again after the game. We looked at it from our view — we think it’s offside but that’s agree to disagree. I know it happens very fast and sometimes even the technology doesn’t pick it up properly with the angle. We just have to go on their judgment.
“We can’t get upset and be yelling and off our game. I think it took us a little bit to get off a few of those things today and settle back down, but we did. But we have to be professional and make sure we’re ready to go no matter what happens. We can only control our own actions on the ice.”
You decide.
Despite being down 4-2 after the first period, the Blackhawks weren’t terrible in the first period. Beginning in the second period and going forward, the Blackhawks were sloppier with the puck. Some of it was what the Canucks were doing, but there were a lot of unforced errors, too.
“I just don’t think we got on the same page in the D-zone for some reason,” Foligno said. “We were just slow in getting to pucks and also moving pucks. It seemed like every time we did break out well, we had an opportunity on the other end, but as soon as we held onto it long — they’re a good forechecking team, they have good sticks, but we just held onto it a second too late and didn’t quite have the sharpness we needed to have, and it cost us tonight.”
Seth Jones was especially off as the game went along. He had a handful of turnovers over the last two periods.
Here is one of Jones’ turnovers in the third period:
Jones wasn’t the only one, though. Connor Murphy had this turnover just after that Jones turnover and Murphy also took a penalty. The Canucks scored 13 seconds into their power play and went ahead 5-2.
Tuesday’s game marked the sixth regular-season broadcast for CHSN. With nearly 10 percent of the network’s Blackhawks games this season now complete, there’s still no deal with Comcast and other carriers on the horizon. It sounds like a direct-to-consumer app is being tested, but it’s still unclear whether CHSN will go forward with it before either getting a deal done with Comcast or exhausting all negotiations.
(Photo: David Banks / USA Today)
