Chicago Blackhawks: San Jose Sharks present interesting challenge

The Chicago Blackhawks welcome in the struggling San Jose Sharks for their home opener and there are some things to note about the matchup.

The Chicago Blackhawks have their home opener today against the San Jose Sharks. They lost their opening game in Prague against the Philadelphia Flyers, but it is time to put that behind them and move on to the rest of their schedule. After this game, the schedule is going to hit hard and they are going to have to play good teams early and often.

The San Jose Sharks are by all accounts a Stanley Cup contender. They are the reigning Western Conference runner ups from 2018-19 as they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues in six games. The problem for them is that they have started this season with a 0-4-0 record. They haven’t looked particularly good either in any of those games and they need to figure it out fast if they are going to do anything this season.

The fact that they are winless coming into their game against the Chicago Blackhawks is bad news for Hawks fans. You never want to play a team this angry or this motivated as they are going to bring their best effort to the United Center in this one. On paper, they are as deep as any team in the National Hockey League but they aren’t getting it done so far to start the year.

With two of the five best defensemen in the NHL in Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson, and a really deep group of forwards with guys like Logan Couture, Timo Meier, Tomas Hertl, Kevin Labanc, and Evander Kane amongst others, you would expect them to be much better than they’ve been. This is why the Blackhawks need to be prepared for them on Thursday and not take them lightly.

If the Blackhawks are going to keep this trend going for San Jose, they are going to need to get good quality chances and lots of traffic in front of their goalie Martin Jones. He hasn’t been great to start the season so it is important that they get pucks on net and forecheck hard. The more resistance the Hawks give the Sharks, the greater their chances will be to win.

As mentioned before, the two big defensemen amongst all of their forwards can create matchup problems for any team in the league which is why the defense and goalie need to play well. They are going to need to neutralize those guys and when the chances do get through, Corey Crawford needs to be able to make the big save. The Sharks have an elite roster and that fact cannot be ignored just because they are off to a slow start.

This home opener begins a seven-game homestand for the Blackhawks making October a really important month as they have an opportunity to get some home points. It is not going to be easy but it is certainly a chance to take advantage of a Sharks team that is vulnerable right now and it might not be that way next time these two teams meet.