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PREVIEW: Blackhawks at Panthers - Jan. 19, 2021
PREVIEW: Blackhawks at Panthers - Jan. 19, 2021
Chicago closes four-game road trip with second meeting against Florida
by Carter Baum @CarterBaum
TIME: 6 p.m. CT
TV: NBCSCH | RADIO: WGN 720AM / TUDN 1200AM | STREAM: NHL.TV & MyTeamsApp
The Blackhawks wrap up their season-opening road swing to Florida on Tuesday night, looking to pick up their first win of the season before heading home as they meet the Panthers for the second time.
TEAM RECORDS
CHI: 0-3-0, 0 PTS
FLA: 1-0-0, 2 PTS
LAST TIME OUT
Chicago fell 5-2 in the first meeting of the season on Sunday night, with Alex DeBrincat and Connor Murphy scoring goals in the loss. Collin Delia made his second straight start in goal, making 24 saves on the night.
Jonathan Huberdeau led the way for Florida with a goal and two assists in the Panthers' first game of the season. Chris Driedger made 25 saves in the victory.
SIMPLIFY THE GAME
With 15 goals against in three games and just five goals for the opposite way, the Blackhawks are working to simplify their game on Tuesday in Florida.
"Offensively, I don't think we've gotten going yet," newcomer Mattias Janmark explained on Monday. "When I looked at this team last year, they were a tremendous team offensively. When they get in the offensive zone, they start rolling and they're a hard team to play against. You can't really defend it because you don't know where the offense is going to come from. I don't think we've gotten that game going yet and we haven't been good enough. Defensively, I just think sometimes we've been out of sync in their transitions. Against Tampa, we got scored on a lot of times on odd-man rushes. Just out of sync in some areas there."
"Small margins in games, but we haven't been good enough to earn our win yet," Janmark continued. "I would say it's a little bit of both. We haven't been good enough offensively and then defensively we've had a few breakdowns and we've gotten scored on those. We're going to have to tighten that up. The identity of this team, we're going to have to score more goals and be better offensively, hungrier."
The transition might not take place over night, but the head coach Jeremy Colliton is only looking forward for his still-developing, still-progressing group.
"There's lots of improvement points for our team, no question. We've got to be better every day. That's got to be the focus. We're not going to dwell on any one mistake, but we want to be relentless in trying to get better all the time. Right back at practice (Monday), we went for 45-50 minutes and I thought the energy was good, attention to detail was good. That's what we're going to need day in and day out, week after week after week."
POWER CAT
DeBrincat scored from the left faceoff dot on the power play in the second period for the second straight game on Sunday, notching his second goal of the young season. It marked the fourth time in his career that he has had a PPG in consecutive games. Since entering the league in 2017-18, Debrincat's 31 power-play goals are the most among Blackhawks players and shares 13th among NHL skaters during that span.
With an assist to his name in Friday night's loss to Tampa, the winger has three points over his last two outings and has factored in three of Chicago's last four goals on the year. DeBrincat's three points (2G, 1A) lead Chicago's scoring.
SWISS BLISS
Pius Suter recorded his first career NHL point with an assist on Sunday night. He is the second Swiss-born player (Reto Von Arx) in Blackhawks history to record an NHL point. Von Arx totaled four points (3G, 1A) in 19 games with Chicago during the 2000-01 campaign.
Philipp Kurashev made his NHL debut on Friday night, joining Von Arx and Suter as the only Swiss-born players in franchise history.
I'm predicting Kubs and Kurashev pot one tonight.