Blackhawks experiment with five-forward power play unit
Struggling teams often like to experiment, hoping to find a spark with an unorthodox strategy.
In the Blackhawks' case, they decided to use five forwards on their first-team power-play unit. Coach Luke Richardson went with this formation against the Bruins, Penguins and Stars about a month ago, and he went back to it during the Hawks' 4-1 loss to Vegas at the United Center on Thursday.
The top unit consisted of Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Tyler Johnson, Max Domi and Taylor Raddysh. The second unit had forwards Philipp Kurashev, Andreas Athanasiou and MacKenzie Entwistle, and defensemen Caleb and Seth Jones.
"I've seen it at times," Richardson said. "Sometimes it's injury, and sometimes you just have five exceptional forwards. To start a power play, it's not a real danger, because if you have our best players on the team handling the puck, there's less likelihood of a turnover or opportunities against when you'd like to have a defenseman out there."
In theory, that works.
But in practice? Not always - as we saw in the second period when Reilly Smith scored short-handed to give the Golden Knights a 2-0 lead. The scoring chance started after Kane lost the puck near the blue line. Vegas' William Karlsson raced in on a breakaway, and Smith scored seconds later after firing a shot from the slot.
"We have enough players to take away that play," Raddysh said. "Just a little mishap. (We) got caught on the wall and left the guy open in the slot, which you don't want to do. It's a tough goal to give up."
The Hawks are now 1-for-12 in their last five games on the man advantage.
Seth Jones, who is in the first year of a contract that carries a $9.5 million cap hit, has just 17 power-play goals in 676 career games, and only 4 in the last 283 games.
Above and beyond:
Hawks coach Luke Richardson had a T-shirt on Thursday morning that was given to him by Barrie Robillard, a buddy in town from Ottawa. When asked about it, Richardson launched into a pretty incredible story about Robillard, who is on vacation before returning home to donate a kidney to a high school friend.
"I told the players about it yesterday," Richardson said. "It's one of the most selfless things someone could do to save someone's life. ... It puts it in perspective that we're here doing a job at the highest level and enjoying it, (so) let's do it well today because there are other things that are more important in life."
Robillard, a firefighter in Ottawa, was recently tested to see if he would be a match.
"The guy's on part-time dialysis, but he'll soon go onto full-time dialysis," Richardson said. "He was running out of time, Barry went in and got checked and was a match. Worked out great."
Johnson hurt again:
Forward Tyler Johnson, playing in just his second game since late October, did not play in the third period against Vegas.
"He just got banged up so we're going to have to wait and see (if he can play Saturday at Minnesota)," said coach Luke Richardson.