The Chicago Blackhawks came into Thursday night’s game hoping to build on the momentum that they established in their most recent game. Their Sunday night win over the red-hot Minnesota Wild was a great display of resiliency against an elite team.
Unfortunately, the Seattle Kraken were able to cancel out any momentum the Hawks had pretty quickly. Seattle outshot Chicago in the first period 10-3 but Petr Mrazek stood tall which allowed the road team to escape the period in a tie.
They weren’t as fortunate in the second period as Matty Beniers made it 1-0 Seattle at 4:18. Again, the Hawks were still pretty fortunate as they were only down one at the end of the period despite being outshot 20-9 in the game.
At 1:34 of the third period, Jayden Schwartz scored his 200th career NHL goal to make it 2-0 Kraken. This power-play goal made it feel impossible for the Hawks to come back.
To Chicago’s credit, they started to come together from there. They even got one from Ryan Donato just a couple of minutes after Schwartz scored which made the end of the game very interesting.
Unable to find the equalizer before the Kraken found the empty net, the Hawks fell 3-1. They are now 6-10-1 which ties them with the Nashville Predators for last in the Central Division.
It is fair to say that the Hawks are an okay defensive team right now and get good goaltending regularly. However, their offense is brutal. Three shots after the first period and nine total after the second is not good enough.
There is plenty of people to blame for this but the truth of the matter is that all of their offensive players need to be better. Scoring one goal a game won’t get it done in this league.
Next up for the Hawks is a Saturday night matchup with an old rival. They are headed up to British Columbia to take on the Vancouver Canucks.
Vancouver is an elite team that has had an interesting start to the season so the Hawks will need to be on their A-game even to have a chance in that one. They’ll certainly need more than one goal.
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