Hawks, Colliton still searching
PHILADELPHIA — A coaching change already has been executed, the players can’t be fired, and it’s been made crystal clear that the general manager isn’t going anywhere.
With 65 games left in the season, these are your Blackhawks. Like it or not.
There wasn’t much to like once again Saturday afternoon. The Hawks dropped their seventh straight game, a 4-0 loss to the Flyers at Wells Fargo Center.
The Hawks are 0-2 since firing Joel Quenneville as coach and have lost 15 straight regular-season games in Philadelphia. Their last win there came Nov. 9, 1996, before current Hawks Henri Jokiharju, Alex DeBrincat and Alexandre Fortin were born.
“Right now, obviously, it’s a heck of a slide,” captain Jonathan Toews said. “The pucks didn’t go in. We’ll take the positives and keep moving forward, keep digging, step in the right direction.”
There have been positives in every game of the losing streak but not nearly enough, and they always seem to be followed by costly mistakes and long stretches of getting outplayed.
The Hawks outshot the Flyers 12-3 to open the game only to fall behind 1-0 when a Duncan Keith turnover ended up on the stick of Claude Giroux in front of the Hawks’ net. His backhander beat Corey Crawford with 5 minutes, 4 seconds left in the first period.
“The other team scores, let’s not get down,” Keith said. “Or we make one mistake and let’s not compound that mistake into three or four other ones. We did a lot of good things in the first and later on in the third, but it’s those (other) stretches of time where we can be better.”
Crawford has lost five straight starts, but this one wasn’t on him. He made several big saves during the second period despite the Flyers adding to their lead on Sean Couturier’s first goal of the game. Couturier’s second, in the third period, bounced off the skate of ex-Flyer Brandon Manning, who was playing his first game in Philadelphia since signing with the Hawks during the offseason.
The Hawks had only one shot on goal over the next 11 minutes of play after initially falling behind.
“Shouldn’t matter what happens in the game,” Crawford said. “Shouldn’t change the way you play.”
It hasn’t been that way for the Hawks much of the season, and new coach Jeremy Colliton needs to figure out why. He also has to make sure the team remains positive.
“Yeah, that is a challenge right now,” Colliton said. “I just got here, so this is only Game 2 for me. But they’ve been going through this now for a while, so that’s one thing I have to manage and that was kind of the message after the game: ‘Guys, we’re not that far away.’
“I know it feels like we are because of the score, but I don’t think that was a 4-0 game. We just have to do a better job of surviving when we’re not in control of the game. And we didn’t do that.“