CHICAGO — Kirby Dach’s homecoming was quiet for most of the afternoon Friday at the United Center.
But the former Chicago Blackhawks center awoke when it mattered, flipping a wrist shot past goaltender Arvid Söderblom to give the Montreal Canadiens a 3-2 shootout win in a matchup between two Original Six teams.
Dach, 21, cupped his hand to his ear to mock Hawks’ fans, who had greeted him with jeers upon his return.
“Nice little touch,” Dach said afterward.
It wasn’t apparent that Dach was booed heavily before the game, but he insisted it was loud enough for him to hear.
“That’s the whole reason I did the celebration,” he said. “I stepped on the ice and I was booed right away. I played the game with emotion and it just kind of came to me in the moment.”
It was just another in a growing number of bad endings for the Hawks.
They lost their sixth straight game despite rallying with a late third-period goal from Taylor Raddish to tie it. After neither team scored in overtime, Jonathan Toews and the Canadiens’ Cole Caufield both converted their chances in the shootout, but Patrick Kane wound up hitting the post after outmaneuvering goalie Sam Montembeault.
After Nick Suzuki and Andreas Athanasiou scored, Dach took the puck with a chance at the storybook finish and sent it past Söderblom to end it.
In truth, Hawks fans had no real reason to boo Dach, the third pick of the 2019 draft who was well-liked in Chicago and touted as one of the team’s future stars. Toews and Kane can’t play forever, and Dach and Alex DeBrincat were supposed to soften the transition to a new era.
It wasn’t Dach’s fault the Hawks gave up on him, trading him to the Canadiens on draft day in July for two picks, the same day DeBrincat was dealt to the Ottawa Senators.
Was he surprised at the reaction?
“It comes with the territory,” he said with a grin.
Dach still maintains his condo in Chicago and told me when he came back home this week that he thought about the shocking turn in his career. He called Chicago “my second home” after his hometown in Alberta.
“I’ve had a chance to take it in, spend some time back at my condo,” he said. “It (Chicago) definitely holds a special place in my heart. This is the place where I bought my first home, my first car. So there are definitely a lot of good memories here. But I’ve moved on and I feel good in Montreal.”
In the long run, Dach is probably fortunate to be removed from the team that decided he wasn’t worth building around despite his talent and personality.
“Obviously he’s a good, creative player,” Hawks coach Luke Richardson said. “Sometimes situations work out good for both teams. We obviously got what we wanted to out of that trade, and he’s got a new chance, and (Canadiens coach) Marty St. Louis is a great guy for a guy that’s creative in offense. So it’s a good situation for both teams.”
After a 4-2 start, the Blackhawks (6-10-4) are back to where we all thought they would be — at the bottom of the Central Division and searching for some positives to get them through the rest of the season. At this pace, the only question left is whether Kane and Toews will want to stick around or give the Hawks permission to deal them at before the trade deadline.
The Hawks returned to the United Center two days after a third-period collapse that would’ve resonated more if the team wasn’t in rebuild mode. They blew a 4-1 lead with 10 minutes left Wednesday in a 6-4 loss to the Dallas Stars, a brutal ending to an otherwise solid performance.
Richardson, a former Canadiens assistant coach, said beforehand there was no time to mope over their worst loss of the young season.
“It’s professional sports,” he said. “The best thing is you don’t have to wait too long. In football you’ve got to wait a whole week on it. Here at least you get a chance to get out and get back and get some redemption and get playing and get the nerves out and stop thinking about the last game. You’re thinking about the next game.”
The Hawks entered the day third from last in the NHL with 2.53 goals per game and gave little indication early they had come out of hibernation. Petr Mrázek, who was in goal for the debacle in Dallas, mercifully was on the bench Friday, putting his chance for redemption on hold.
Söderblom gave a up an early goal but turned in a strong performance that ultimately went unrewarded.
The Canadiens took a quick lead on a Hawks giveaway in the neutral zone, leading to a tip-in by Joel Edmundson on a give-and-go at the 3:21 mark of the first. The Hawks barely mustered enough energy in the period to keep it a one-goal game but finally began asserting themselves in the second.
“I thought we had a little trouble with our energy level,” Richardson said. “I liked the try, but it just didn’t look like we had the legs there. Maybe just a little of the game is catching up to us, and no morning skate, it was a little different. But they battled and willed themselves to overtime.”
After Caleb Jones tied the game at 5:53 of the second with his first goal, the Canadiens regained the lead less than two minutes later on a power-play goal by Suzuki following a slashing call on Toews. The Hawks outshot the Canadiens 15-9 in the second, but Montembeault wasn’t tested as much as Söderblom, who stopped a couple of breakaways to keep the Hawks in the game.
“He made some huge, huge saves for us,” Athanasiou said. “He definitely kept us in the game. There were a lot of rushes where he made some real, real big saves.”
Raddysh’s game-tying goal, his fifth, came at the 16:06 mark of the third and gave Kane his 763rd career assist, tying him with Chris Chelios for fourth all time among U.S.-born players, trailing Phil Housley (894), Mike Modano (813) and Brian Leetch (781).
The Hawks penalty kill survived a too many men on the ice penalty late in overtime, sending them to the shootout.
“Gritty effort to try and get one point,” Richardson said. “It’s at least a half a step. It’s not the full first step, but at least we’re trending upward.”
One half-step at a time is about as good as the Hawks can expect these days.
