ST. LOUIS — Blackhawks forward Taylor Raddysh had been caught “too low and too wide” on the play, and he didn’t have to wait long to hear about it.
“Even when it’s a little thing like that, it’s something you need to see to be able to fix,” Raddysh said. “[Coach Luke Richardson] let us know right after the first period.”
The play occurred less than four minutes into the Hawks’ game Tuesday and led to the Hurricanes’ first goal.
The Hawks’ defensive pairing of Connor Murphy and Isaak Phillips failed to pin the Hurricanes’ forwards in a puck battle along the boards below the goal line. That stranded Jonathan Toews, who was correctly hovering and “waiting to try to scoop the puck,” Richardson said. That pin-and-scoop technique to kill plays defensively has been emphasized often lately.
But the breakdown compounded when Raddysh, who should’ve been inside the faceoff circle, instead skated over to the boards and down toward the battle. At that moment, Hurricanes forward Paul Statsny dug the puck out and passed it up the boards — past Raddysh — to defenseman Brent Burns.
Burns saw an open lane to slingshot the puck to the net, and Martin Necas eventually battled it in. Had Raddysh not been too impatient, he would’ve been blocking Burns’ shooting lane.
Richardson broke down the Blackhawks defensive errors that led to Carolina's first goal last night in great detail after practice today.
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) December 28, 2022
First off, here's the goal in slo-mo: pic.twitter.com/k1uTv6KfRr
“We don’t like cutting the wall off,” Richardson animatedly explained. “If [the puck] goes up the wall to the ‘D,’ then you’re in a good spot if you’re off the wall, inside the top of the circle.
“Raddysh is too low and too wide on the boards. We’d rather play more on the inside and let it go up the wall to the ‘D.’ And we can respond to that a lot better, [getting] in shot lanes so they have to make another play to get it to the net.”
Raddysh accepted full ownership of the error.
“It’s a little misread by me,” he said. “I’m coming a little too low on that winger, whereas I’ve got to let him come a little higher. I need to be a little patient on the wall instead of trying to force it and give them an opportunity.”
That play was obviously analyzed during the Hawks’ video session Wednesday. But as Raddysh mentioned, it was also briefly discussed during the first intermission Tuesday, almost immediately after it happened.
That’s because Raddysh actually wasn’t the only Hawks winger in that first period who drifted too wide and low at some point. And the Hawks knew that because video coaches Matt Meacham and Adam Gill review all scoring chances (for and against) with the full staff at every intermission.
Intermissions are only 18 minutes long, and considering the futility of trying to win most nights with this desperately outmatched Hawks roster, it’d be easy to write them off as mere rest breaks. But Richardson and Co. are still trying to make the most of them.
“It takes a minute or two, by the time we get in there, for Matt and ‘Gilly’ to get the scoring chances [video pulled up],” Richardson said. “And there might be one game specifically where we just kibosh that and [look] right through the neutral zone.
“We just try to go on what we see. Sometimes the video coaches have suggestions and they’ll show us little things on video that we can’t really see from the bench. They have a better view sometimes on the TV.”
Despite the team’s awful record, the aptitude this coaching staff is demonstrating for accurately, clearly and straightforwardly identifying issues and instructing players about them remains an encouraging bright spot. How they handled this particular situation, small as it was, offered further proof.
“They teach it really well for us,” Raddysh said. “It makes it easier when we get...hemmed in there.”
