For a brief moment Sunday night against the Sharks, it looked like the Blackhawks would start 2023 on a positive note.
That didn’t last too long.
Despite taking a two-goal second-period lead, the Hawks lost 5-2 to the Sharks. The Hawks, who began a seven-game homestand, have lost four consecutive games and dropped to 8-24-4.
The way things ended Sunday, the Hawks won’t be improving anytime soon.
“Obviously we were in [a] good position there, 2-0,” winger Patrick Kane said. “I don’t know if we thought it was going to be an easy game after that for us, but a couple breakdowns, a couple bad breaks, too. All of a sudden, you’re down 3-2 going into the third.”
After a first period when the Hawks were outshot 13-6 but managed to get to intermission scoreless thanks to goalie Petr Mrazek and San Jose’s inability to finish, they connected the first two goals of the second. The goals woke up a crowd of 19,047, which briefly resorted to doing the wave early in the middle period, even while the puck was in play.
The Hawks made it 1-0 at the 6:40 mark of the period after Ian Mitchell kept the puck in the zone and found Kane, whose shot from the slot beat San Jose goalie Kaapo Kahkonen, who was without a stick on the play. Then 13:30 into the second, Andreas Athanasiou streaked down the left wing and fired the puck near the crease, where a crashing Sam Lafferty tapped it past Kahkonen.
The game turned after that, and the Hawks couldn’t regain control.
The Sharks scored three goals over the next 3:22 of the second to take the lead. Tallies from Jonah Gadjovich, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Alexander Barabanov put San Jose in front.
Each play had its own quirks — San Jose’s first goal was because of a bad bounce near the net, the second was originally waved off for a kick, and the third was a short-side shot that eluded Mrazek — but the Hawks’ response wasn’t enough to pull anything back in their direction.
“You get a little bit of that feel-sorry-for-yourselves and I think you end up retreating,” coach Luke Richardson said. “I thought in the third period, because of the second period when we were giving up a lead, we didn’t play as aggressive as we did when we got the lead.”
During the first two periods, the Hawks played aggressively in all zones. They were moving the puck and looked competitive. But once San Jose scored those three second-period goals, the Hawks weren’t really able to answer.
“I think we got to be better in those situations, just finding a way to get to the next period,” Kane said. “You know, obviously have the intermission to regroup and settle down. It’s a whole different game when you’re going into the third and it’s tied, instead of chasing it.”
The Sharks scored two more in the third, with Timo Meier and Evgeny Svechnikov goals ending another challenging night for the Hawks. It didn’t help that the Hawks’ power play couldn’t convert, going 0-for-3 overall, including 0-for-2 in the final 20 minutes.
Those power-play woes, however, fit in with Sunday’s narrative. There were a couple minutes where the night felt promising for the Hawks, but once things went against them, they couldn’t recover.
“A lot of good looks for the power play,” Lafferty said. “It almost feels like when it rains it pours. Just need a bounce to get the momentum back and just the way things are going right now.”
