Blackhawks vs Kings: Horrible game yet again for Chicago

The Chicago Blackhawks needed to have a good game really bad, but instead, they had yet another terrible showing and were lucky to even get a point.

It was somewhat understandable when the Chicago Blackhawks were severely outplayed by the Nashville Predators last week. Nashville is one of the best teams in the Western Conference and a true Stanley Cup contender. It is not good, however, to have a very similar performance against the lowly Los Angeles Kings. The Kings were below the Blackhawks in the standings with more games played but the Blackhawks let them walk all over them and beat them in overtime. To be honest, the Blackhawks were lucky to even get one standing point out of the game.

The Kings have the second-worst goal differential in the Western Conference and they still found a way to dominate the Blackhawks. They outshot them 49-27 which is just unacceptable. They also dominated them in the faceoff dot, winning 56.9 percent of faceoffs. The Blackhawks also had 16 giveaways opposed to only five takeaways. That giveaways number is unacceptable. All areas of their game need to change and fast.

Adam Boqvist did make his NHL debut in this one for Chicago. He didn’t get on the score sheet in his 15:38 of ice time. That isn’t a bad ice time number for the rookie in his first career game. Boqvist also has the coaching staff’s trust enough in order to get some ice time in overtime. That is big as he is an offensive-minded player who might be able to help out in the 3 on 3 sessions going forward. This kid is a big part of the future and he now has the first game out of the way.

The Hawks did manage to muster up a point in the game and you can say that they should thank the special team’s units for that. They killed four penalties to keep the Kings from scoring a power-play goal and capitalized on their only power-play opportunity themselves. Dominik Kubalik scored from Kirby Dach and Alexander Nylander on the power play to cut the Kings lead in half. All of the good special teams play led to them seeing the score tied at the end of regulation.

They also found a big play from their two best players in order to get to the end of regulation tied as well. Patrick Kane had all the time in the world and the Los Angeles defenders gave him a little too much respect as he got a slick pass off to Jonathan Toews who absolutely sniped one home to tie the game with the extra attacker. There was no shortage of excitement at the end of regulation and overtime.

Drew Doughty scored a strange overtime winner and the Kings sealed off their much-deserved win. The Blackhawks had no business winning that game and were lucky to be even close to winning. They need to be better in all three zones if they want to get out of this funk. It starts tonight when they play the Anaheim Ducks at the Honda Center. The Ducks aren’t much better on paper, but they have been well-coached and have good goaltending. The Blackhawks need to bring a much better game in order to have a chance to win this one.