Hours before the Colorado Avalanche were set to play at the United Center, Avs coach Jared Bednar called the Chicago Blackhawks a “dangerous team.”
“There’s a lot of good growth in their young guys, (they) have impressed me,” he said before Wednesday’s game. “Guys on the back end, (it) seems like they’re playing some better hockey here recently. So we’re going to have to be up to the task.”
Sure, in coachspeak, “dangerous” and “up to the task” translates to “trap game,” but there is some underlying truth.
As Bednar pointed out, the Hawks actually can be a dangerous team at times — but more often to themselves. As captain of the last-place Hawks, Nick Foligno knows it as well as anyone.
“The big thing in this room is we’re fighting against understanding how hard it is when you’re in the situation we’re in,” he said. “That’s what we were talking about last year. It doesn’t just flip a switch.
“We know we want to put a great product on the ice and it’s not going to be this perfect climb. It’s going to have these peaks and valleys, and right now we’re obviously in a bit of a valley.”
He added that to the Stanley Cup contenders they eventually want to be, “it takes time, it takes work, it takes a lot of effort and discipline and that’s what we’re lacking.”
Wednesday night’s matchup represented the last game of the first half of the Hawks’ season. And let’s just say they’ve had a toxic, on-again-off-again relationship with the season so far.
- They’ve had agonizingly close losses supplanted by depressingly big blowout defeats.
- The penalty kill allowed a goal in seven straight games, but later shut out power plays in 11 straight games.
- Connor Bedard suffered a 12-game goal drought but now is riding an eight-game point streak.
- The Hawks spun the roster through a dizzying carousel of forward lineups.
- They fired Luke Richardson after an 8-16-2 start and named Anders Sorensen interim coach.
- Sorensen had a three-game winning streak followed by a five-game skid.
- They’ve been outscored 35-18 in their last seven games.
- The 6-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues in the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field will forever leave a mark (or at least for a very long time).
But dismal numbers — including a 14-25-2 record with an NHL-worst 30 points after their 3-1 victory Wednesday — only begin to tell the story of the Hawks’ first half.
Sorensen wants to see the Hawks be more aggressive, less passive than they’ve been, especially lately.
“We want to try to be on the hunt a little bit more in the D-zone,” he said.
Forward Lukas Reichel’s take: “Just playing consistent hockey. We say it every time, but you’ve got to actually do it on the ice and just play to win, and figure out somehow to win those games.”
Added Foligno: “The biggest thing is walking the walk now in what we’re asking for as a team: being a hard-forechecking, tenacious style of hockey. … That you know every night you’re going to have to play a hard game against us, and we haven’t done that enough.”
So why aren’t the Hawks doing that?
They ended last season saying they needed “identity pieces,” and months later the Hawks still are wrestling over their identity. They even tried the “rebuild” label, and that hasn’t worked out.
So what can a nontanking, last-place team possibly accomplish in the second half?
“You’re going to get different answers from different people in the organization,” Foligno said. “My focus is to win hockey games. That’s what I’m here to do.
“(But) the biggest thing is we haven’t really nailed down an identity. That’s probably the biggest issue facing our team. That’s why our record is the way it is. We’ve played some spurts where we’ve had an identity but haven’t sustained it. … We’ve talked a lot, we’ve said a lot of things, and haven’t really followed through on doing them consistently enough.”
Several Hawks players also pinpointed identity as a key issue to resolve in the second half — they’ve talked about it in recent meetings. Consistency is another, and it’s related.
What does “identity” mean? It differs in nuance depending on whom you ask.
“It’s in the mind,” Foligno said. “The hardest thing is when you’re in the position we’re probably in, every team comes in here thinking they have a chance to beat you. … The mindset over a team is sometimes the biggest hurdle.”
Alex Vlasic, normally a cheery disposition, turned serious when asked whether a team with no realistic hope of reaching the playoffs was in danger of checking out.
“That’s a loser’s mindset,” he said. “We don’t want to build that type of culture here, and I don’t think we have anybody on this team that has that type of mindset.”
But he is a realist.
He echoed others on the team when he said the Hawks have to understand what their identity needs to be on offense. Heading into Wednesday, the Hawks were tied for 30th in the NHL with 2.53 goals per game.
“I don’t think we’re made up of a team that’s going to be able to put up four or five goals every single night,” he said. “We’re going to be a team that needs to play detailed and physical and playing the game in a simple way.”
Connor Bedard said it can be as simple as “beating the guy across from you.”
“We’re probably not the highest-powered offense in the league,” he said. “We’ve got to possess pucks and be really smart in our own end and just make it a harder game to play. We sometimes get away from that, so I just try to stick to that.”
Those are good practices that a lot of teams try to do, but the Hawks have to focus on “what’s going to make a difference” and “what’s going to be (our) brand of hockey,” Foligno said.
“We talked about being a relentless team, a forechecking team, a heavy team, and we need guys to understand that,” he continued. “It’s not about running around fighting or hitting; it’s about when you’re in a one-on-one battle, it’s about being over the puck, not letting the other team win it and if you have a chance to get it in, it’s getting it in. …
“There’s so many components that go into it, but that’s really where we have to hammer down and hold each other accountable to that. It’s not earth-shattering stuff.
When asked about the season’s second half, Sorensen didn’t focus on any lofty, long-term goals, just what’s in front of him.
“We have to focus on the day-to-day, first of all, to get better every day,” he said. “And then establish a certain culture and habits here as far as how we’re practicing every day and how we prepare.
“The results aren’t going to come right away, but if you do it over an extended period of time, then hopefully there should be some results coming down the road.”
Results came as quickly as Wednesday with the 3-1 upset of the Avs in front of 17,667.
Yep. Trap game.
Bedard had a goal and an assist — his 13th multipoint game — to extend his point streak to eight games, and Frank Nazar scored his first goal of the season — with an assist by Colton Dach for his first NHL point.
“Colorado is a great team, and they’ve got a lot of studs, and being able to go out there and play hard against them and stay in it and get that win, I think that shows a lot of optimism,” Nazar said after the game. “And I think that’s … uplifting in the locker room after getting that win.
“The teams that we beat are good teams, if you look back at our record and who we played. So I think just staying at it, we know what we can do, and just having that confidence in every game, they’ll continue to play that way.”
Added Bedard: “That’s what we’re trying to do — kind of stack them up and get a few wins in a row.
“We had a win against Montreal, who’s a team that was really hot and playing really well, and we had a tough one the next game (against the New York Rangers). Obviously we’ve got to be happy with the win tonight, but see areas where we can improve and try to get (on) a roll.”
The Hawks brought in some veterans in the offseason, and some — such as Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teräväinen and Ilya Mikheyev (who scored the Hawks’ first goal Wednesday) — have rediscovered their games.
They also have seen signs of development from the team’s prospects, particularly defensemen Nolan Allan and Wyatt Kaiser. And the future at forward has arrived with Nazar and Dach.
Inside the locker room, players can see things starting to gel.
“You know it’s in the group,” Foligno said. “But it just takes a little bit more from every guy.”
Bednar can see it too.
“I think the Blackhawks are in a really good spot now, because they’ve got a lot of these really good, nice young prospects and they’re learning how to win together,” he said. “Obviously there’s still some steps to take.
“It doesn’t come easy, it doesn’t come quickly, but I think the right decisions can help move them along.”
