![\"Chicago's](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/USATSI_28674190-scaled-e1775544989799.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSAN JOSE, Calif. \u2014 It\u2019s not as if the Blackhawks have some sort of deep-seated hatred for the Seattle Kraken and San Jose Sharks, of all teams. There\u2019s no history of cheap shots, no unforgettable recent playoff series. The Kraken might be the most nondescript team in the NHL, and the Sharks are early in their own rebuild.<\/p>\n
But hey, sometimes you have to create your own narratives, your own motivations.<\/p>\n
When the Kraken desperately needed to beat the Blackhawks on Saturday at Climate Pledge Arena in order to keep their fading playoff hopes alive, Chicago went out and effectively ended their season. The Sharks desperately needed to beat the Blackhawks on Monday at SAP Center to keep pace in a cutthroat race for the second Western Conference wild card. This time, the Blackhawks put up a spirited fight, but couldn\u2019t deliver the body blow to San Jose\u2019s chances, falling 3-2 in a free-flowing and fun showdown between two of the league\u2019s youngest teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou come out and try to give them your best,\u201d defenseman Wyatt Kaiser said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to get there and we\u2019re trying to not let them get there. (In 2023), we ended Pittsburgh\u2019s season. It makes it fun, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey\u2019s a zero-sum game. By playing spoiler for one team, the Blackhawks are simply helping another get in. It\u2019s all just head games, a way to find motivation at the end of a long, grueling and disappointing season.<\/p>\n
But San Jose is different than Seattle. The Blackhawks are well aware that the Sharks are in a similar position to them \u2014 loading up on young talent amid a long-term rebuild. Someday in the not-too-distant future, there very well might be a blood feud between these two teams.<\/p>\n
So, these early salvos matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear all the direct comparisons between us and the Sharks,\u201d Kaiser said before the game. \u201cSo you definitely want to kind of ruin it for them, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no reason to hate this team,\u201d Ryan Donato said, before loudly emphasizing the next word. \u201cBut, it\u2019s about finding meaning in the games. Obviously, this is a team we\u2019ve been compared to a bunch, and there are a lot of different things you can consider when you talk about Chicago vs. San Jose, so it\u2019s easy to get excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Connor Bedard vs. Macklin Celebrini, both of whom are on their way to being the new faces of the league. Like Frank Nazar vs. Will Smith, seriously skilled sidekicks. Like Anton Frondell vs. Michael Misa, the third and second picks in last year\u2019s NHL draft, both just starting out highly promising careers. Like Artyom Levshunov vs. Sam Dickinson, two promising young blue-liners. Like Spencer Knight vs. Yaroslav Askarov, two young goalies projected to become league leaders. The youngsters led the way on both sides on Monday.<\/p>\n
Bedard had an assist and engineered maybe the best power-play night of the season for the Blackhawks, feeding Frondell and Nazar for one-timer after one-timer from up top on the new-look, five-forward top unit, which played just about every second of the team\u2019s three power plays. The Blackhawks got a Donato goal one second after the first power-play expired, Frondell had five one-timers on the second, and Nazar scored on the third.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said the five-forward look is here to stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d have to be crazy not to,\u201d he said. \u201cI have no issue with five forwards. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s a forward or D back there, that doesn\u2019t dictate whether or not you give up shorthanded chances. To me it\u2019s about the responsibility of the group. What it does is get the puck a lot in Bedsy\u2019s hands and he\u2019s the guy you want with the puck in his hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The Blackhawks\u2019 Frank Nazar and the Sharks\u2019 Michael Misa are two of the budding, young stars featured on both up-and-coming teams. (David Gonzales \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Like Bedard, Celebrini only had a secondary assist. But also like Bedard, he was a menace all night, as always. The Sharks also got goals from young guns William Eklund and Smith, both top-10 picks. The hyper-aggressive Sharks seemingly turned every minor mistake the Blackhawks made into an odd-man rush the other way. That opportunistic style has them right on the edge of the playoff picture.<\/p>\n
The West has a crowded field, for sure, and progress is never linear. But it\u2019s not difficult to envision future conference finals between these two teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially with the plethora of young guys that we have and they have, the way the teams are drafting and developing and all this stuff, it shows the competitiveness of the organizations,\u201d Donato said. \u201cWe want to be one of those teams that said we made the right moves, we drafted the right guys, we made the right decisions, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re getting paid off for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sharks seemed to skip a step in the rebuild this year, moving straight into playoff contention as Celebrini rocketed to megastardom in his second season. San Jose is now two points out of the wild card while Chicago is two points out of 30th place. But the teams are closer than the standings suggest. San Jose has been an overtime juggernaut, going 12-7 in overtime and shootouts, while the Blackhawks are 7-14. Even those out, and the teams would be neck and neck. There\u2019s no three-on-three overtime or shootouts in the playoffs, so the regular-season standings can inflate a team\u2019s worth. The Sharks only have two more regulation wins than the Blackhawks do. And San Jose\u2019s goal differential of minus-36 would be dead last in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The Sharks also play in the worst division in hockey, while the Blackhawks have to face the Avalanche, Stars and Wild on a regular basis. It\u2019s a fine line between excuse and fact.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go through a lot of the teams in the West, you compare overtime records and shootout records, ours haven\u2019t been good enough, and some of these teams have gained a lot of ground that way, and that makes a huge difference in points,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cI know where we\u2019ve been at. We obviously suffered a couple critical injuries in the middle of the year (Bedard and Nazar) when I thought we were in a really good spot. We weren\u2019t able to keep our head above water in those moments. Whatever, you go through it. We\u2019ve been involved in tons of games that we had opportunities to win, and we haven\u2019t won enough of them. But that is also for me part of the growth process of an extraordinarily young team.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Blashill seemed a little more frustrated with Chicago\u2019s play on Monday night than the eye test would suggest. It was another near-miss, another not-good-enough. To keep pace with the Sharks next year and beyond, Chicago needs to find the finishing kick that San Jose seems to have found.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, every game between these two teams \u2014 including the season finale next week at the United Center \u2014 will carry a little more juice than the standings might suggest.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time we get to play these guys is a look at what it is in the future,\u201d Nazar said. \u201cIt\u2019s the team that we\u2019re going to be battling against for the next 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE, Calif. \u2014 It\u2019s not as if the Blackhawks have some sort of deep-seated hatred for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[96,5,168],"class_list":{"0":"post-545328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-san-jose-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116363039608858367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545328","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=545328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}