This team is going to be scary good soon. The Chicago Blackhawks already look 1000X better than they have over the last few rebuilding years with their early season performances, and they’re going to be a lethal team in the upcoming years.
What a team this is going to be a few years from now.
Despite spending the last few years as one of the worst teams in all of the NHL, the Chicago Blackhawks already look like they’re back to their early 2010’s competing ways as they’ve been really good to start off the NHL season. And, to be honest with you, I don’t see this team missing the playoffs too many times beyond this season.
Well, I really didn’t expect the Blackhawks to look this good this early on in the Connor Bedard era. Okay, sure, I’m not saying the Blackhawks have been an unconquerable, all-powerful super team that has no weaknesses or issues as that wouldn’t be true given their 4-2 comeback win over the Pens and their 3-1 loss last night to the Bruins.
But did you notice the important distinctions in these scorelines? They were all REALLY CLOSE games against teams everyone expected to BLOW AWAY the Blackhawks.
In their first game against the Penguins, which was the season opener for both teams and had all eyes on the game given it was Bedard’s debut, the Blackhawks started in almost the worst possible fashion as they gave up two early goals to Bryan Rust (1 G, 1 PT) in the 1st and Sidney Crosby’s (1 G, 1 PT) open-net snip in the 2nd to go down 2-0.
And, with the Pittsburgh crowd roaring and echoing down their joy in the Blackhawks misery, I really thought this young team was going to fold and get beaten around by the elder Penguins statemen of Crosby, Evgeni Malkin (0 PTS), Kris Letang (1 A, 1 PT), and Erik Karlsson (0 PTS). But that didn’t happen at all as the Blackhawks were kept in the game by Petr Mrázek’s (38 saves, 40 SOG, .950%) heroics in net, and then went on a 4-goal straight comeback tear through Ryan Donato (1 G, 1 PT) Cole Guttman (1 G, 1 PT), Jason Dickenson (1 G, 1 A, 2 PTS), and Nick Foligno (1 G, 1 A, 2 PTS) all chipping in.
Oh, and I should also add that they scored 3 goals in under 10 minutes in the 3rd period. Yes, Tristan Jarry (32 saves, 35 SOG, .914%) is a suspect starting goalie, and the Penguins defense isn’t the best apart from Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang (who are both edging ever closer to 40), but the Blackhawks wouldn’t have won that game in a million years last season (although, they did beat the Pens late in the season to keep Pittsburgh out of the playoffs, so many they would LOL).
And with Bedard registering his 1st point in that game and the other rookies, such as Kevin Korchinski (o PTS), Wyatt Kaiser (0 PTS), etc., all playing well, it just shows how improved this team is from last year. And that improvement was shown twofold against the Bruins.
You’d think that the Blackhawks would get overwhelmed and swarmed by a Bruins team that not only is coming off the greatest regular season in NHL history (and also the greatest postseason blunder in NHL history), but also just wrapped up celebrating the team’s 100th anniversary with dozens of its Hall of Fame and superstar ex-players showing up and cheering on the new Bruins roster.
Yet, that wasn’t the case at all as despite it being the second leg of a back-to-back, the Blackhawks actually played far better in the first two periods with them generating a lot of grade “A” scoring chances against the B’s.
Linus Ullmark (20 saves, 21 SOG, .952%) had to make a lot of really good saves and the Bruins defense blocked another three or four high danger chances just to keep the B’s in the game as Connor Bedard (1 G, 1 PT), who was unable to score against the Penguins, managed to fire home his first ever NHL goal on a wrap-around play to make it 1-0 Blackhawks early on in the 1st period.
Now, unlike the Penguins, the Bruins were actually able to show why they were the President’s Trophy winner last season as they quickly tied the game up through Trent Fredrick’s (1 G, 1 PT) tip (Matthew Poitras assist on this goal was his first ever NHL point), then they hammered Arvid Soderblom’s (30 saves, 32 SOG, .938%) net for the remaining 45 minutes or so.
And, despite having a good resistance for most of the game, Soderblom and the Blackhawks defense couldn’t withstand the Bruins and David Pastrňák (2 G, 2 PTS) as he fired home a one-timer and an empty-net goal to wrap up the game 3-1 for the Bruins. Honestly, both games were really fun to watch if you were a fan of anyone of these teams, and most definitely if you were a Blackhawks fan.
Yes, they didn’t win out and looked like they were on the ropes at moments in each of the games, but there’s definitely a fight and spirit in this new Blackhawks team. And that has to be exciting for all Blackhawks fans.
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