CHICAGO — The Chicago Blackhawks aren’t a bad team. They just played badly the last few games.
That’s a distinction the Blackhawks weren’t able to make in recent years. They would have games such as Saturday’s 6-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings and Sunday’s 7-1 loss to the Anaheim Ducks, or stretches such as their current two wins in their last 10 games, but with little hope of turning things around. They were what they were.
What the Blackhawks are now isn’t completely defined. They haven’t fully arrived; it’s not as if they’re going to be in the hunt for the Stanley Cup or even necessarily in the mix for a playoff spot come April. But there has been enough of a sample to say they’ve improved, they are consistently competitive, and they can win on any given night. After 29 games, they’re 12-11-6 and have a .517 points percentage. They’re among four Western Conference teams on the playoff bubble. At this point of the season the last three years, they had already sunk to the bottom of the league. They were 9-18-2 last season, 9-19-1 two seasons ago and 7-18-4 three seasons ago.
The Blackhawks are aware there’s no guarantee this season won’t snowball against them. It’s about what they do next. That’s why, after returning to Chicago from a lengthy West Coast trip, they used the last few days to reset.
From a team standpoint, that came through in what was said and asked of them in Tuesday’s practice, their first since Sunday’s game.
“Every time you come off of bad play or bad losses, it’s a reset with whatever we’re doing,” defenseman Connor Murphy said after practice Tuesday. “But specifically today, it showed what we’re lacking, and it’s just compete and being tenacious and wanting to make the game hard on the opposing team. We didn’t do that at all last two and a bit games, and I think it shows that’s why we had a good practice like today.”
Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill’s practice Tuesday was designed to force the Blackhawks not only to compete but also to get back to the fundamentals. The Blackhawks went at it in one-on-one, two-on-two and three-on-three drills. Some of the drills were in confined space, and others were more wide open.
Blashill said the purpose of the drills was “fundamental defending.”
“When you don’t have your legs, like we clearly didn’t in Anaheim, one of the things you can do well is defend, but you have to be fundamentally good at defending,” Blashill said. “That’s still something we can get better at. We were in a lot of angle situations, one-on-one low, three-on-three low, where you want to make sure from a defensive standpoint, you know how to position your body, how to use your stick, those types of things that then build into a bigger thing. Offensively, how to hold on to pucks. You can spend more time in the O-zone when you have those situations and build that into the D-zone.”
Defenseman Alex Vlasic described the practice as “pretty tough,” especially after just returning from California early Monday morning. But like Murphy, Vlasic welcomed it. He thought it was what the situation called for.
“I think we needed to kinda get back to just battling and competing,” Vlasic said. “I feel like that’s what we had discussed as a team afterwards. It just seemed like the last two games we kinda got out-battled, outcompeted, and try to get back to the basics. I don’t necessarily know why (that happened the last few games), but I think from our standpoint, it was something that needed to be kind of addressed and isn’t acceptable moving forward. If you look at all the good teams in the league, they’re always battling, competing for each other, and we just need a little bit more of that.”
Organizationally, the Blackhawks did a sort of reset, too. It was apparent the last few weeks that Sam Rinzel wasn’t playing at the same level as he had last season or even earlier this season. He wasn’t as dynamic with the puck and was becoming more noticeable in a negative way without it. The Blackhawks were hoping his recent healthy scratch would spark him, but his positive momentum was short-lived. With Blashill going with seven defensemen most games, Rinzel found himself seeing limited ice time and struggling in those minutes. He sat the third period against the Vegas Golden Knights on the recent trip. So when the Blackhawks assigned Rinzel to the Rockford IceHogs on Monday, it wasn’t surprising.
“Message was, one, this is a really hard league if you start to struggle to gain traction,” Blashill said. “So, go down, get your swagger with the puck back, get put in situations, hopefully get time on the power play, more than he was getting here, and get that swagger with the puck. Then continue to improve defensively, making sure some of the technique of how to defend low with the size of his body. He’s not the strongest guy, so he’s got to learn how to defend really smart with his stick, kind of one hand, two hands, knocking guys off balance but not getting into physical confrontations where he’s hugging and making sure he does a good job that way. Improving some of the techniques defensively and getting your swagger back. I think it’s a great opportunity for him.”
The Blackhawks have been able to turn Rockford in recent years to get their young defensemen on track. Vlasic went through it. Wyatt Kaiser and Artyom Levshunov were with the IceHogs just last season. Though Rinzel and the Blackhawks were likely hoping he’d never have to play in the AHL, it might have been more surprising if he hadn’t. Now he has a chance to take advantage of playing major minutes and prepare himself for his next NHL opportunity. It’s safe to assume he’s returning to Chicago once he’s back on track.
It was interesting the Blackhawks decided not to recall another blueliner in Rinzel’s place. Because of that, Blashill will have to play six defensemen, at least for Wednedsay’s game, which he’s done in only three games this season: the season opener, one game when he made Levshunov a healthy scratch and another when he sat Rinzel.
The return to a classic 12 forwards, six defensemen lineup could be a boost for rookie defenseman Artyom Levshunov’s minutes. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Blashill seemed as if he were ready to give the lineup a more traditional look again.
“We’ve run 11-and-seven for a long time for a multitude of reasons,” he said. “We’ll work back toward 12-and-six. And does that help some other guys get some more minutes? Does it help their own personal development? Maybe. We’ll see. We’re hoping this is a win-win for everybody: Sam can go down and improve his game and get his swagger back, and some guys here, a guy like Arty, can potentially play some more minutes and some different situations and get a little more set partners.”
The change could benefit the forwards, too. Line rotations can be easier to juggle with even numbers. For players such as Ryan Donato and Colton Dach, whose ice time has varied as of late on the fourth line, having 12 forwards should help them get into more of a rhythm. Donato has struggled to produce lately, with one goal and zero assists in his last 10 games.
Overall, Blashill has stuck to his message that the Blackhawks are involved in a process and the record isn’t the focus now.
“I couldn’t even have told you we were 2-8, to be honest with you,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s 2-something-1 in there, but that’s the NHL math. But I wouldn’t even know. I’m more worried about us getting better on a day-to-day basis. We took a step back against Anaheim. We need to take a step forward today.
“I thought we did today, and we need to do it again tomorrow.”
Come Wednesday against the New York Rangers, the Blackhawks will expect to win again.
“It’s good for the psyche, knowing that you put together wins, to know that’s the team you can be and that you should be,” Murphy said. “So that’s easier to not let things slide and easier to kind of convince yourself that the team that we should be is the standard and not folding and realizing that losses are OK. So I think that’s the biggest thing with building the culture back up here is realizing that this needs to be a winning team, and that when we lose, it’s unacceptable. And we need to look at ourselves in the mirror when they go wrong for a while and know that we want to be those teams that don’t let it slide so far.”