The Blackhawks dropped a 3-1 loss to the Seattle Kraken, making it a three-game losing streak. And that’s alright because they haven’t looked horrible. Last week, the Blackhawks had a league-high 1.050 PDO (read here if you need a primer). Regression was due, and it’s coming during this six-game road trip. What’s encouraging is how the Hawks have looked.
Chicago owned the favorable side of last night’s fancy stats. They had a 57.65% Corsi, owned 58.33% of scoring chances, and had a 63.93% expected goals share. Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord just had himself an excellent night (a .967 SV% and stopped one of 12 high danger scoring chances). Daccord also had an alright defensive squad in front of him.
The Kraken’s zone defense prevented the Hawks from taking high-quality scoring chances. At least for the first half of each period, I noticed the Hawks struggle to break through Seattle’s defense. Eventually, the Hawks did, or they found scoring chances off the rush (like Connor Bedard’s play that set up Andre Burakovsky). You can observe this in Natural Stat Tricks chart below.
Ten of the Blackhawks’ shot attempts were blocked as the Kraken clogged shooting lanes. Usually, these blocked shot attempts came from prolonged offensive zone time in which the Hawks looked dangerous, but couldn’t connect on plays to get into dangerous scoring areas.
The other side of the coin was the Hawks’ neutral zone play. Sam Fels, in his newsletter (which is absolutely worth the price), pointed out recently how the Blackhawks’ 1-1-3 neutral zone forecheck doesn’t have to be passive. At times, we see an aggressive 1-1-3 where a defenseman defends the red line, pinches, and forces a turnover. I observed Wyatt Kaiser do this last night. But the Hawks played a passive 1-1-3 at times against the Kraken, which conceded their blueline, giving the Kraken the opportunity to set up camp in the Hawks’ defensive zone.
With aggressive plays, however, come mistakes. Mistakes we should be fine accepting… for now. The Kraken’s third goal is an example of what happens when being aggressive in the neutral zone goes wrong.
One final note, and that’s on Oliver Moore, who was called up earlier on Monday. Moore’s speed makes him pop out. I observed Moore making an excellent play on the forecheck to set up Ryan Donato for a chance, who whiffed the shot. Moore had a 67.94 xG% at 5-on-5 and played 16:28 in all situations.