TAMPA, Fla. — The Blackhawks concluded their three-game road trip Saturday with yet another tough-to-swallow loss.
After blowing two-goal leads and losing on late goals against the Red Wings and Panthers, the Hawks skipped the blown-lead step but still lost on a late goal against the Lightning, falling 3-1 after Brayden Point broke a tie with one minute left.
“It’s heartbreaking because I feel like our guys really put it all out there,” coach Luke Richardson said.
“They’re a little bit deflated after giving two nights of great effort against two strong teams. But we’re just going to reassure [them] that they did so many things right [and] that we’re going in the right direction. We’ll learn from this.”
Taylor Raddysh, Cole Guttman and Tyler Johnson — three Hawks forwards with previous Lightning connections — teamed up for the equalizing goal with 14:37 left, and the Hawks controlled momentum for much of the final period.
But a late Lightning push eventually broke down Hawks starter Petr Mrazek, who was stellar overall on both ends of the grueling back-to-back. Ex-Hawk forward Brandon Hagel fittingly added the empty-net goal to seal it.
“It wears on you a little bit, but we have to do a good job turning the page,” Johnson said. “Our starts in all [three] games have been pretty solid. It’s just, we’ve got to continue to keep on pushing. [Saturday] was better than the last couple games as far as keeping the play going, but in the end, we didn’t get the bounce.”
The Hawks’ game plan focused on better defensive coverage off defensive-zone faceoff losses.
In their video review session before the game, they rewatched clips of the Wings and Panthers both scoring critical third-period goals against them off “the exact same faceoff goal, basically,” as Johnson put it.
In both instances, Boris Katchouk was the weak-side winger. In both instances, when the opponent knocked the puck back to a defenseman at the blue line, Katchouk drifted high in the zone to theoretically cover the opponent’s other defenseman. And in both instances, that allowed an opposing forward to slip open in the slot underneath him and score.
“The weak-side forward, for us, does not have to leak out to the defenseman right away,” Richardson explained. “[He needs to] just hold the middle, in between the hash marks ... so we can take any seams [in the defensive coverage] away. And then if [the puck] does go ‘D’-to-‘D’, then that’s [the weak-side forward’s] time to move — not before that.”
As with all of Richardson’s daily video reviews, the objective wasn’t to pile criticism on Katchouk but rather teach the whole team how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
And the Hawks did execute better in those scenarios Saturday. Johnson noticed his former team tried but failed several times to execute the same play the Wings and Panthers had used.
The Lightning still attempted a shot within six seconds on seven of their 10 offensive-zone faceoff wins, but at least they never scored immediately.
“In the first period, we might’ve missed the cue on one,” Richardson said. “But we talked about it in between the first and second periods, and in the second, we did a much better job. If you lose the draw, you’re going to get something off of it. But we gave up the outside, and that’s what we wanted.”
Simply winning more faceoffs could also help. Jonathan Toews’ and Max Domi’s departures have seriously hurt in the circles. The Hawks led the NHL in defensive-zone faceoff win percentage as of Valentine’s Day, but they rank an abysmal 27th in that regard since then.
