Game Recap: Blackhawks 4 - Islanders 5
Blackhawks lose 5-4 to the Islanders. Somewhere, a dog barks.
Well, that went great, didn't it?
We've seen this movie before. The Hawks look good in the 1st period, the other team scores and Arvid Soderblom turns into Swiss cheese. It was a game that started off with high hopes, and then it became what it was...
To be honest, the numbers are not horrible. The Hawks owned puck possession in the 1st period and did the same in the third, although that is attributed to scoring effects. More importantly, our golden boy notched 3 points and scored a beautiful goal. Let's start with that.
Scoring:
Connor Bedard's goal was sexy. He showed off his puck-handling skills before shooting past Ilya Sorokin. The toe drag release was from another planet. And the distance he shot that from? Damn good.
The first goal by the Islanders was a softy that Soderblom should have stopped.
The Islander's second goal was another softy. Arvid was screened but come on... a shot from the high slot? You can save that one.
For that third goal, Wyatt Kaiser pressured the puck carrier in the NZ, which is fine. The problem is that he had no support. There is no F3 to cover the space left by Kaiser. Another option, he could have retreated sooner. This let Noah Dobson receive a pass and take on TJ Brodie for the goal.
Bo Horvat took advantage of Brodie not really doing anything to him. A wave here, a wiggle of the stick there. Brodie lets Horvat get nice and close to score the Islanders' 4th goal.
When the Islanders made the game 5-1 it sealed Soderblom's night and gave Drew Commesso his NHL debut.
Brodie would make it 5-2 with a point shot. If the Hawks tied this game later on, I would have forgiven Bordie for his earlier wiggles.
Tyler Bertuzzi scored 2 goals under the 2-minute mark. Now we have an interesting game. His first goal was initiated by some solid forechecking on his part. Taylor Hall would feed him the pass to score. Tyler's second goal was redirected off a nice point shot from Alex Vlasic. Great stuff Vlasic.
Thoughts:
Bedard looked confident tonight. He did create a turnover on a zone entry attempt, but that comes with the territory. Focus on this ridiculous zone entry. Or this amazing pass. Let the kid have fun.
Connor's 3-point night is enough to make me happy. Bedard had 1 shot on goal and 4 shot attempts at 5v5. Bedard needs to shoot more (horse beaten dead) but that takes linemates who can play Bedard's game.Ilya Mikheyev has some fancy fancy-stats (64.29 Corsi and a 64.39 xG% at 5v5). He's fast and he can get the puck. That's it. Are we done with him on the 1st line?
The Kurashev-Bedard-Mikheyev line had a 64.29 Corsi (9 shot attempts for, 5 against), but a 39.77 xG%. The shot attempts look good, but the quality of those shots was not good.Kevin Korchinski would finish with a 51.61 Corsi but with a 26.20 xG%. He had the lowest xGA with .63. Keep in mind, his partner was the "stud" in TJ Brodie. Korchinski had a couple of good defensive plays, like when his stick broke and he pinned the Islander forward to the wall. He also had a couple of great scoring chances towards the end (I can't find the clip) that excite me for the future.
The Hawks take on the Devils tomorrow at 12PM CT.
Let's Go Hawks.