It didn\u2019t take long to kickstart things at the United Center in Wednesday\u2019s Chicago Blackhawks matchup vs. the St. Louis Blues. A goaltender saw the puck fly behind him just 27 seconds in.<\/p>\n
If you blinked, you missed Blues defenseman Tyler Tucker\u2019s shot get past goalie Spencer Knight (27 saves). The hefty amount of light blue sweaters in the crowd were feeling good as their team gained an early 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Those fans left the arena in the sad mood that matched their jersey colors, though, after the Hawks shot the puck without hesitation.<\/p>\n
Nick Lardis scored his second NHL goal at 9:26 in the first period on the power play to tie the game at one. And in the next 20 minutes, the Hawks shut the door for good.<\/p>\n
Captain Nick Foligno thinks the Chicago Blackhawks are mostly where they want to be halfway through the season<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Four goals in second period ended any hopes for a Blues road win over the Hawks, who have been a nightmare for Blues goaltending \u2014 Joel Hofer didn\u2019t even want to replace Jordan Binnington.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n The Hawks (18-18-7) cruised to a 7-3 win for their fourth straight victory. They are 5-1-1 since the Christmas break \u2014 and undefeated in 2026 \u2014 and on their longest win streak of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cI would be lying if I said it\u2019s not a ton of fun in here with the group we have,\u201d center Oliver Moore said. \u201cComing into the rink, it\u2019s my favorite part of the day.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to win, but I think our process right now is what\u2019s allowing us to be free out there. We\u2019re all on the same page and we\u2019ve got to look to keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n Seven Hawks scored goals against the Blues. Connor Murphy, Oliver Moore, Landon Slaggert, Jason Dickinson, Andr\u00e9 Burakovsky, Louis Crevier and Lardis all sounded the horn Wednesday.<\/p>\n They Hawks found their offensive touch without Connor Bedard<\/a> and Frank Nazar in the lineup. That parity can go a long way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s big, especially with Connor (Bedard) out,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cTo be able to win, you\u2019ve got to get three or four goals, at least.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us to take off that way tonight was great. We hope that gives confidence to our group (to) keep our sound defensive game but (also) get some momentum going offensively.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hawks have scored 17 total goals in three games vs. the Blues this season. They have their rival\u2019s number, but are going for the heads of anyone that they face.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like going team specific, we\u2019re playing hard at the right moments and maybe the matchups against them are hitting those moments that we were bringing ourselves to another level,\u201d Dickinson said. \u201cIt just happens to be against St. Louis. (but) it could have been any team tonight and (I) felt like we were playing the right way throughout the whole lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n Hawks defensemen showed their shooting flair against the Blues. They had nine shots on goal, including Murphy\u2019s unassisted goal in the second period (8:57) and Crevier\u2019s snipe that Dickinson tipped in (17:24).<\/p>\n Hawks coach Jeff Blashill said pregame he wanted to push his defenseman to have a \u201cfirst-shot mentality.\u201d Safe to say they heard his request.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Murphy goal and Louis (being) a shoot-first guy, overall we\u2019ve done a pretty good job,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have the lane you don\u2019t have the lane, but if we have the lane, we want that to be the No. 1 option.\u201d<\/p>\n The penalty bug bit the Hawks \u2014 they had six on Wednesday after only having three total in their previous trio of games \u2014 but their penalty kill continued to shine. They killed all five of their penalties, which lead them to be able to run up the scoreboard.<\/p>\n Do the Hawks always want to be on the PK? No, but having the third-best penalty kill in the NHL helps.<\/p>\n \u201cYou give up a goal early and then you have those kills and I thought that kill was great, it\u2019s a huge part of the game,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cThose moments in games are big, so great job for our special teams.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to the puck drop, the Hawks held a moment of silence for former Hawks general manager\/executive Bob Pulford<\/a> and Hall of Famer Glenn Hall<\/a>. The pair passed away on Monday and Wednesday, respectively.<\/p>\n Pulford ran the front office as GM or senior vice president from 1977-2007. He coached the Hawks four separate times in that stint. \u201cMr. Goalie\u201d Hall\u00a0started in a record 502 consecutive games from 1955-56 to 1962-63, all without wearing a mask. He earned all the wins in the Hawks\u2019 1961 Stanley Cup run and has his No. 1 in the rafters of the United Center.<\/p>\n The Hawks are 4-0-0 since the start of the new year. Might as well keep things going.<\/p>\n \u201cTreat (these) like playoffs games, there\u2019s no room for us to take our foot off the gas,\u201d Dickinson said. \u201cTop team, bottom team, middle-of-the-pack, it doesn\u2019t matter, we have to show up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It didn\u2019t take long to kickstart things at the United Center in Wednesday\u2019s Chicago Blackhawks matchup vs. the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,37,96,50462,5263,508,1563,5,4446,4,488],"class_list":{"0":"post-397615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-blackhawks","8":"tag-blackhawks","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-chicago-blackhawks-record","12":"tag-chicagoblackhawks","13":"tag-connor-bedard","14":"tag-connor-murphy","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-jason-dickinson","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-spencer-knight"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115859891519132193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}