Chicago Blackhawks play well, still take loss

The way the Chicago Blackhawks took it to the Edmonton Oilers for large stretches of Saturday night's game at the United Center, there's no way one fluky goal, one softy and a late empty-netter should have been enough to beat them.

The myriad scoring chances coach Joel Quenneville's squad created should have resulted in 2, 3 or even 4 scores, but the Hawks had a tough time beating Cam Talbot - and the pesky posts surrounding the Oilers' goalie, for that matter - and Edmonton escaped with a 3-1 victory.

"I think we worked pretty hard today," captain Jonathan Toews said. "We had a lot of chances. We just couldn't find the back of the net. We feel if we could have had a little bit more puck luck … that game could have had a different outcome."

Talbot made 38 saves but was helped out twice when first-period shots by Marian Hossa and Artemi Panarin drew iron. Panarin's shot, which came in the final minute, looked so good that perhaps half of the 22,075 on hand stood up to celebrate.

The Hawks outshot the Oilers 12-4 in the first period, 16-9 in the second and 11-9 in the third.

"They hadn't played a game in six or seven days and, in my mind, they owned us," Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. "They had the puck the whole night."

Edmonton's first goal came 1:56 after Ryan Hartman was given instigator (two minutes), fighting (five) and misconduct (10) penalties for engaging in an entertaining brawl with the Oilers' Eric Gryba.

Hartman took exception to the 6-foot-4, 228-pound Gryba blasting the 6-foot, 185-pound Tanner Kero into the boards early in the second period.

The Oilers scored at 5:02 when Matt Benning got an unbelievable bounce off Trevor van Riemsdyk's left skate after throwing the puck toward the net from the deep right corner.

As for the fight, Hartman deemed it a "no-brainer" to go after Gryba.

"I tried waiting long enough so it wasn't an instigator, but it's kind of a judgment call, I guess," Hartman said. "Some refs call it different ways. Unfortunate that it ended up in a power play for them, but just something you've got to do."

Hartman said he talked to the ref later and was told he got the instigator because of the distance he traveled to get to Gryba after the hit on Kero.

Quenneville didn't question Hartman's decision to drop the gloves despite the fact it was a scoreless game at the time.

"We like him to have that abrasiveness and unpredictability, so there's nothing wrong with that," the coach said. "We like how he competes and what he brings us."

The Oilers made it 2-0 with 10:10 left in the game on a Milan Lucic blast that got through Corey Crawford's legs.

The Hawks cut the lead in half when Richard Panik scored his 15th of the season with 4:47 remaining, but they could never find the equalizer.

Connor McDavid closed out the scoring with an empty-net goal. It was his 20th score.

The setback snapped the Hawks' five-game winning streak and also dropped them 9 points behind Minnesota, which beat Nashville on Saturday. After playing in Buffalo on Sunday, the Hawks have one of their remaining two head-to-head games with the Wild on Tuesday.

"We (only) have so many games left to narrow that gap," Quenneville said. "They're playing extremely well. We'd like to give them something to think about.

"(After) a great run on the road (by us) let's go back out there and try to get it going again."