Blackhawks lose for 4th time in 5 games
With their playoff chances on life support, the Blackhawks came up with one of their most inspired efforts of the season at San Jose on Sunday.
For two periods, anyway.
After that, the Sharks outmuscled and outplayed the Hawks in the third period en route to a 5-2 victory.
The Hawks (27-30-9) come back home basically dead on arrival after losing two in a row to fall 8 points behind wild-card leaders Minnesota and Dallas.
Coach Jeremy Colliton told reporters "it's tough to swallow a loss when we played hard and we need the points" but overall he was happy the team's effort compared to the dreadful performance in a 6-3 loss at Los Angeles on Saturday.
"We looked like a hockey team tonight, which was a difference from the night before," Colliton said. "That's a very good team and they weren't going to give us anything for free. We had a couple breakdowns (and) they end up in the back of our net.
"But over 60 minutes I can't really fault the effort and the compete level, and the attention to detail was much better. Made a lot of team decisions and that's why we were in the game."
Dylan Strome and Erik Gustafsson scored to erase 1-0 and 2-1 deficits, and the Hawks entered the third period tied with San Jose (39-19-8) after two periods.
The tide turned, though, when 39-year-old Joe Thornton - playing in his 1,550th game - outworked Artem Anisimov for a puck in the offensive zone and slid a pass to the charging Marcus Sorensen. Sorensen's shot found its mark at 4:27 of the third, giving San Jose a 3-2 lead.
A few minutes later, Chris Kunitz - skating on the top line with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews - had a chance at a close-range shot, but instead passed to Toews. It resulted in a delayed penalty and a goal by Melker Karlsson at 8:16.
Karlsson completed the scoring with an empty-netter at 17:38.
Cam Ward made 29 saves in net for the Hawks.
"They know how to score goals," Colliton said. "They're around the net all the time and they find ways to get pucks through. There's always traffic. There's deflections. There's rebounds. So it's difficult for the goalie."
The Hawks had just 3 shots on goal through the first 16 minutes, but managed to tie it when Strome's wrister beat Martin Jones with 28 seconds remaining in the first period. Strome had taken a pass from Alex DeBrincat and could have passed back to his high-scoring teammate on a 2-on-1, but he knew better than to try and thread the puck through Sharks D-man Brent Burns.
"I knew it was Burns there - he's got maybe the best stick in the whole league," Strome told Steve Konroyd on NBC SportsChicago at the first intermission. "I figured I wasn't going to get it through. Just tried to shoot it."
Strome now has 17 goals, 14 of which have come in 42 games with the Hawks.
The Sharks regained the lead early in the second period, but Gustafsson scored at 6:40 of the middle stanza to make it 2-2. Gustafsson (13 goals) needs to score just two more times to become the first pure Hawks defenseman to register 15 goals since Phil Housley in 2001-02. (Dustin Byfuglien had three 15-goal seasons from 2007-10, but he also played plenty of forward).
The Hawks have three days off before hosting Buffalo on Thursday and playing at Dallas on Saturday.