One of the biggest complaints about this Hawks team from their veteran leaders this season has been the lack of drive and finish from the young team. These are growing pains that all young teams will go through, and you just hope that they learn from the hard lessons they learn and apply them to future games. Tuesday night, against the Edmonton Oilers, they seemed to do just that. A game that many people, including myself, had marked as a potential blowout saw this team step up and take a team that, coming into this season, was seen as cup favorites to the final seconds. The Hawks outshot the Oilers 26-15, which is a victory in itself when you consider the offensive threats the Oilers have. The Hawks as a team registered 15 blocked shots, which would be a big help for Petr Mrazek, who once again played a fantastic game. Jason Dickinson continued to increase his career-best goal total by firing home his 14th goal of the season on an absolute rocket of a wrist shot. These are one of those games when you're rebuilding a team that feels like a victory, and hopefully they can keep this effort going forward.
The Hawks will be back at it tonight against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets. This will be the third time these two teams will face off, and after the Hawks picked up the victory last time thanks to a stellar performance from Bedard, expect the Jets to come out flying. No pun intended. The Jets come into this one with a 9-0-1 record in their last 10 games, and since losing to the Hawks, they have gone on a 7-game winning streak. They have outscored their opponents 27-10 during their current streak, with Namestnikov and Perfetti leading the way in scoring with 8 and 7 points, respectively. They will be turning to Laurent Brossoit in net, who is 6-3-1 with a 92SV% this year.
As for what to expect from the Hawks, Coach Richardson told the media that there will be no line-up changes from what we saw on Tuesday, including Mrazek back between the pipes. This makes sense after the performance the team put together on Tuesday. The real question is: how long of a leash does this line-up have before the blender comes out?
Injury Updates
Bedard underwent surgery on Monday that will see him out 6–8 weeks, which means the rookie will in fact miss his first all-star game, which is a bummer. Right now, he could miss up to 16 games while recovering, and if he does miss this much time, he will have a battle for the Calder Trophy. In the last 40+ years, no rookie has missed that many games and still won the award. If anyone could snap that streak, I think it would be Bedard.
Prior to Wednesday's practice, Nick Foligno, Sam Savoie, and Seth Jones skated on their own. This doesn’t mean they will be back anytime soon, but it is always a good sign to see these guys back on the ice.
That’s going to be it from me; puck drop is set for 7 p.m. central time, as always. Let's Go Hawks!
Chicago Blackhawks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»