Joel Quenneville’s team looks to keep the Chicago Blackhawks down

The Chicago Blackhawks are set to play their old coach, Joel Quenneville.

The Chicago Blackhawks did not look good at all in their first two games of the season. They gave up ten goals and only scored three. The thing they have to keep their heads up right now is the fact that both of those awful games came against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Bolts are the defending Stanley Cup Champions and have a roster poised to try and repeat this year. The Hawks knocked two of their games out of eight against the Lightning early and no other team they will play is as good as them.

They are going to stay in the Sunshine State, however, as they will face the Florida Panthers in two straight games. Florida hasn’t played yet because their originally scheduled opener against the Dallas Stars was postponed because of COVID-19. An old friend named Joel Quenneville is their coach and will have his guys ready to go.

You know that deep down inside, Coach Q has to be thrilled with how things have gone with the Chicago Blackhawks since he was wrongly fired a couple of seasons ago. It was never his fault that Stan Bowman doesn’t know how to manage a hockey team so he is probably better off elsewhere anyway. Things haven’t gone all that great for the Florida Panthers in a while either but they are building a nice foundation down in Sunrise.

One thing Florida will have to worry about is that their two top goal scorers from a year ago are gone. Evgenii Dadonov is with the Ottawa Senators and Mike Hoffman is with the St. Louis Blues. Hoffman had 29 goals and Dadonov had 25 so that is a whole lot of goals missing from their lineup. Their two top point producers were Jonathan Huberdeau who had 78 points and Aleksander Barkov who had 62 points. Those are their two best players and they are hoping to have them make others better.

The Blackhawks should have an easier time with Florida than Tampa Bay but it still won’t be easy. You know that Coach Q will have his team ready to go. One thing that is a big story going into this game is the Keith Yandle decision. Yandle is a defenseman that has had significant offensive numbers over the past few years but he is not good defensively at all.

Yandle makes a lot of money but it seems like his time with Florida may be up. The cool thing about him is that he is the NHL’s longest-running “iron man” as he has played in 866 consecutive games. There are rumors that the Panthers are going to keep him out which is sort of sad and annoying. Even though he is an opponent to the Blackhawks, it is always a shame to see a cool streak like this end, especially when it is not the way you want to see it end. Hopefully, he is able to get settled with a new team that will play him to his strengths.

Normally, you would expect Sergei Bobrovsky to get the start, but the Blackhawks are going to see Chris Driedger in this first game. They will most likely see Bobrovsky in the second game in Florida on Tuesday as they are holding him off for a few extra days just to be extremely cautious.

We don’t, however, know who is going to start in net for the Blackhawks. Collin Delia and Malcolm Subban each gave up five to the Lightning so it will be interesting to see who Jeremy Colliton rolls with to start this one. Whoever is tapped on the shoulder certainly needs to be better going forward. This is not going to be an easy game by any means but it would surely be nice to see them get something positive going.