Win vs. Canucks comes with some mettle — and a little iron
Brandon Hagel didn’t outright say it, but the Chicago Blackhawks probably deserved to win a game like Sunday’s 1-0 victory over the Vancouver Canucks even though they did enough to lose it.
“That’s the game of hockey,” he said. “That’s happened to us early in the season a little bit where we may have deserved to win, and I think that was tonight.”
It’s true. The Hawks have had games in which they competed well enough to pull out a close one, but the goaltending failed. And of course there have been games in which both the skating and the netminding were miserable.
But Sunday’s 1-0 win was a game in which they turned the puck over and allowed sustained pressure in the zone, but goalie Marc-André Fleury bailed the Hawks out with 40 saves.
“We had our spurts,” coach Derek King said. “First period, I thought we were decent. I did not like our second period at all. But our goalie kept us in it.”
The Hawks collected themselves in the third period, controlled the puck and got a score from Hagel, who was rewarded for harassing the Canucks.
“Third period was our best third period we’ve played since I’ve been
here,” King said.
He couldn’t answer why it took two periods to figure it out, but he joked that “maybe we were saving our energy.”
Here are a few takeaways from the win in Vancouver.
1 . The question for Fleury is, what do goal posts like to eat?
Fleury had a magnificent night for sure, but a couple of shots hit the post and one hit the crossbar.
“Definitely some help from my posts. Will buy them dinner. Maybe a fresh (coat of ) paint on it. … Maybe just treat them a bit for doing good
to me.” Fleury joked after the game, deflecting some of the praise of his performance to the red iron behind him. “It’s a challenge, right? If I can keep the game close, always believe we can get some goals and we take a huge one there in the third.”
Fleury notched his first shutout of the season and 68th of his career, and it was his fourth straight start with at least a .939 save percentage.
That’s quite a recovery from the first eight games of the season, in which he had three that qualified as “really bad starts” (below 85%).
“I just take it one shot at a time, try to keep the game close,” Fleury said.
He added that Hawks skaters in front of him have “been trying their best every night to defend better, maybe not give up as many breakaways, 2-on-1s and odd-man rushes. ... I think that shows in the amount of goals we give up.”
Still, when a team gives up 40 shots on goal, it’s an issue.
“It’s a game of mistakes,” Seth Jones said. “We didn’t do a lot of things good at all. We were on our heels. We didn’t manage the puck in the neutral zone very well.
“We gave them free opportunities, free chances at our net . ... But Fleury stood tall.”
King added: “We’ve got to clean up some areas to help him out a little better so he doesn’t have to play lights out every night. But it’s always nice when he’s on.”
2 . Are the Blackhawks over their ‘fragile’ period?
Let’s play devil’s advocate. While the Hawks have won five of their last six games, the Arizona Coyotes, Seattle Kraken and Canucks are below .400 in points percentage — and wins against the Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins came immediately after Jeremy Colliton’s departure “lit a fire.”
Saturday’s 5-2 loss to the Edmonton Oilers exposed the Hawks’ troubling tendency to compound mistakes and press after adversity, and King admitted things “snowballed.”
However, it wasn’t the kind of dismantling they suffered against the Winnipeg Jets or on their first road trip of the season. And they eventually self-corrected against the Oilers.
Some regression — a push and pull — is to be expected, and the Hawks aren’t going to fix their issues overnight.
Regardless of whether the Hawks can match up with the better teams, King thinks the team is developing the mental makeup to compete against the elites.
3 . Cookson spells out how he can help the coaching staff.
Rob Cookson, who was hired as an assistant coach Wednesday, said it will take him a few weeks to get fully acclimated, but he laid out his immediate role on King’s staff.
“I’ll work with the forwards ... and work with power play a little bit, along with Matt Meacham,” Cookson said.
Cookson said he helped King with pre-scouts “and also on the player accountability issues in terms of our systems.”
Cookson said some of the greatest value he brings is his 11 seasons as an NHL assistant coach — three with the Ottawa Senators (2016-19) and eight with the Calgary Flames (200111), whom the Hawks play Tuesday.