Looking a step behind in finale of 6-game road trip
The Blackhawks’ two-game road series against the Tampa Bay Lightning ended in much the same fashion as the Hawks’ home series against them: disaster.
During the Hawks’ 4-1 loss Saturday — their fourth straight to cap a six-game trip and sixth in seven games — the Lightning beat up the Hawks during another chippy affair.
Yanni Gourde scored his fifth goal against the Hawks this season in the second period, and Victor Hedman had three assists.
“Going in there you’re going to have a lot of battles that people don’t forget,” Hawks forward Alex DeBrincat said. “That’s just the way it is.”
The Lightning made it difficult for the Hawks to get clean passes through the neutral zone but they gave them fits on defense. The Hawks defense failed to slow the Lightning in transition and were hammered on second and third chances at the net.
The Hawks couldn’t stay out of their zone in the first period before Brayden Point knocked in his own rebound to put the Lightning up 1-0 at 6 minutes, 21 seconds of the first period. Duncan Keith couldn’t control a centering pass that went off his stick and lost a puck battle by the back wall as the Lightning kept it in the zone.
Keith was involved in the Lightning’s next goal as well, and it came after another example of bad blood between the teams.
Before a second-period faceoff, DeBrincat and Gourde started jawing and shoving each other with their sticks and drew offsetting cross-checking penalties. During the four-on-four, Anthony Cirelli caught Keith flat-footed in the high slot and got by him as he received a pass from Mikhail Sergachev. Cirelli went forehand-backhand with no one between himself and Hawks goalie Malcolm Subban.
With less than six minutes left in the second, the Lightning zigzagged out of their zone with some precise passing, and as Hawks defenders closed on Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman in the neutral zone, Coleman found Gourde racing up the right side unchecked.
Gourde snapped a shot and put in his own rebound with Calvin de Haan riding his back.
In another defensive snafu, de Haan tried to clear up the middle of the ice, but Hedman one-timed it from the high slot. Subban blocked and stuffed Alex Killorn’s tap-in attempt, but the puck bounced to Steven Stamkos for a sharp-angled wrister.
The Hawks couldn’t capitalize on some prime opportunities against Andrei Vasilevskiy, including an 82-second stretch in which the Hawks had a five-on-three advantage and a clean Patrick Kane breakaway that he couldn’t lift over the Lightning goalie’s leg pad.
“Yeah, I mean, five-on-threes got to convert,” DeBrincat said. “They do a good job of blocking shots and getting into the lanes.”
The Hawks outshot the Lightning 26-17 through two periods.
“They’re a team that punishes you when you make mistakes,” Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton said. “We made a few and they scored. They made us suffer. I thought we created more than enough, especially the second period.”