MONTREAL \u2014 Life without Connor Bedard is proving to be as grueling for the Blackhawks in 2025-26 as it was in 2023-24.<\/p>\n
The Hawks produced little offense Thursday against the Canadiens in a 4-1 loss, recording only 15 shots on goal \u2014 their second-fewest in a game this season. \u201cYou can\u2019t pass up a shot in a scoring area,\u201d coach Jeff Blashill said. \u201cWe literally passed it out of a scoring area into a non-scoring area. That\u2019s nonsensical. We\u2019re going to have to…make sure we have much more of a shooting mentality and create chaos off the shots.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defeat dropped the Hawks to 0-3-0 since Bedard\u2019s shoulder injury last week in St. Louis and 3-13-1 all-time in games Bedard has missed. The Hawks are also 3-10-2 this season since their third-period meltdown Nov. 20 against the Kraken. That felt like a potential turning point \u2014 in the wrong direction \u2014 at the time, and it very much resembles one in retrospect.<\/p>\n
Their more recent third-period meltdown Tuesday against the Maple Leafs also felt like a potential turning point from bad to worse. That night, the team executed the stingy, defense-first game plan they believe gives them a chance to succeed without Bedard, yet they were denied any positive reinforcement from the steadfast effort. Can they really replicate that type of performance consistently moving forward? Thursday provided an answer: Probably not.<\/p>\n
The Hawks failed to generate any more of the electricity from their stirring comeback win inside Bell Centre in April late last season, which generated enough optimism to last the entire summer. This return to Montreal was as forgettable as that game was unforgettable. \u201cI just thought too many guys had their \u2018C\u2019 game,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to have your \u2018A-plus\u2019 game every night. But you\u2019ve got to find a way to make sure when you don\u2019t have that, you have a \u2018B-plus\u2019 game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two successful offside challenges \u2014 taking two Canadiens\u2019 goals off the board \u2014 kept the Hawks in the game for a while. Their excellent video coaches, Matt Meacham and Adam Gill, deserve kudos. The Hawks\u2019 five successful challenges this season are now the second-most in the NHL. Canadiens forward Zachary Bolduc\u2019s go-ahead goal 20 seconds into the third period, though, created some apparently unbreakable momentum that allowed the hosts to pull away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just completely outplayed us in the third,\u201d defenseman Matt Grzelcyk said.\u201d I think they had a level of desperation that we couldn\u2019t match. That\u2019s unacceptable on our end.\u201d Frank Nazar was one Hawk who seemed to have his \u2018A\u2019 game, just like he did in his first visit to Montreal. He finally snapped his 21-game goal drought \u2014 during which he had racked up a ton of unfulfilled scoring chances \u2014 by tipping in a Grzelcyk pass in the first period, and he was active throughout the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just talked about it today…that if you just keep it up, you\u2019re going to get rewarded,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cIt was good for him to get rewarded. It\u2019s unfortunate it wasn\u2019t in a win, but we\u2019re going to need him \u2014 [during] these next few games here \u2014 to get hot and really feel it offensively. And that\u2019s a confidence thing, so certainly scoring helps that.\u201d On the other hand, the all-rookie third line of Ryan Greene, Nick Lardis and Oliver Moore \u201cstruggled tonight, to be dead honest,\u201d Blashill added. That trio seems unlikely to remain intact Saturday against the Senators.<\/p>\n
Still, there may be only so much Blashill and his players can do, no matter the lineup construction. Their lack of offensive firepower and dynamism without their best-by-a-mile player is impossible to overlook and difficult to overcome. The Blackhawks will need to find a way to overcome these challenges if they hope to turn their season around.<\/p>\n
Q: How many shots on goal did the Blackhawks record in their loss to the Canadiens?
\nA: The Blackhawks recorded only 15 shots on goal, their second-fewest in a game this season.
\nQ: What is the Blackhawks’ record since Connor Bedard’s injury?
\nA: The Blackhawks are 0-3-0 since Bedard\u2019s shoulder injury last week in St. Louis.
\nQ: Who scored the go-ahead goal for the Canadiens in the third period?
\nA: Zachary Bolduc scored the go-ahead goal 20 seconds into the third period.
\nQ: Which player ended their goal drought in the game?
\nA: Frank Nazar snapped his 21-game goal drought by tipping in a Grzelcyk pass in the first period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to the Blackhawks’ Struggles MONTREAL \u2014 Life without Connor Bedard is proving to be as grueling for the Blackhawks in 2025-26 as it was in 2023-24. The Lack of Offense The Hawks produced little offense Thursday against the Canadiens in a 4-1 loss, recording only 15 shots on goal \u2014 their second-fewest in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/a8ac631\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4143x2365+0+0\/resize\/1461x834!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F8e%2F05%2Fad5319a743de9244994451707ec7%2Fblackhawks-canadiens-hockey.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34074,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34072\/revisions\/34074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}