Blackhawks’ youth shows in season-opening loss to champion Panthers: Observations

SUNRISE, Fla. — None of the young Chicago Blackhawks were playing in their first NHL game on Tuesday. From Frank Nazar to Artyom Levshunov to Ryan Greene to Colton Dach to Sam Rinzel, they all had gotten their NHL debuts out of the way last season.

But none of them had ever played in an NHL season opener, and that is a different experience.

Going up against an experienced team like the Florida Panthers, who had just raised another Stanley Cup banner, what transpired for the Blackhawks shouldn’t have been completely surprising. Over the first 20 minutes, the Blackhawks compiled turnovers and penalties and the Panthers added up shots and goals. With the Panthers having a 35-10 advantage in shot attempts and 17-3 in shots on goal, the Blackhawks were fortunate to be down just 2-1 after the first period.

“We’ve got guys who, you come up at the end of the year, you play the last 9-10 games,” Jeff Blashill said after his first game as Blackhawks coach, which ended in a 3-2 loss. “This is a different animal, and it’s only going to continue to ramp up. Understanding what the level’s like, how good you’ve got to be every night.

“It is such an every-night league, it is such an unforgiving league, that you have to be on top of your game every night. You’re not going to be perfect, I get that, but you can’t (have) the low be so low. Certainly there’s some guys that need to take that lesson. That’s their takeaway.”

Levshunov and Rinzel especially took some time to adjust to the game’s pace in the first period. Levshunov had an early turnover that led to a quality scoring chance against and committed two penalties in the first period, with the second leading to a Panthers power-play goal. As for Rinzel, he looked more rushed and lacked the swagger he had late last season. He finished with a game-high five giveaways. Levshunov had four.

As bad as the Blackhawks were in the first period, they did hang in the game. There were a few reasons for that.

One, the Blackhawks’ second line was very opportunistic. Tyler Bertuzzi chipped a puck in the neutral zone ahead to Frank Nazar for a breakaway in the first period and Nazar continued his hot streak with a goal. In the second period, Nazar and Teuvo Teräväinen worked a two-on-one to perfection with Nazar feeding Teräväinen for a one-timer to tie the score at 2-2.

Going back to last season, Nazar has produced six goals and five assists in his last nine games.

“My game throughout the years has always been really well off the rush,” Nazar said. “I think that there’s ways to add on to that and there’s things we could start doing a lot more of. The end zone stuff was great in the end, just being able to set up more and be able to work the O-zone line.”

Two, Spencer Knight came up big in net in his return to Florida, making 34 saves. There were a lot of quality chances in there too, with the Panthers finishing with 38 scoring chances and 18 high-danger chances in all situations.

“His strength is lateral and he was outstanding with that,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “And we had some really high-end looks, and some pretty good shooters in there. So those are legit saves that he made and that’s the value to a young team in Chicago. Chances for and against tonight, it wasn’t particularly close, but he did what he needed to do to give his team a chance to win.

“The growing pains of a team at that age, all they’ve got to do now is get one goal better, right? Just a little tighter, one goal better, because they’ve got a goaltender that can stop the puck.”

Third, the Blackhawks did get better after a woeful first period. They had more shot attempts than the Panthers in the second period and were competitive in the third.

“First off, I would say Spencer Knight was a positive, for sure,” Blashill said. “The fact we responded in the second and played the type of hockey you have to play to be successful. And we had chances to tie it late. We don’t want to be a team that’s close. We want to find a way to win that game. But that’s part of the growth process.”

Blashill began shaking up the lines late in the second period. He promoted Ilya Mikheyev to the top line to play with Connor Bedard and André Burakovsky and moved Ryan Donato to the third line to play with Jason Dickinson and Colton Dach.

“Ilya, the thing he can do is go win pucks, and that’s an important piece to that line,” Blashill said. “Dono can score on his own — he’s a guy I think can self-generate a little bit — so we just thought it would give us, I don’t know if spark is the right word, but finding ways to win pucks and have the puck a little bit more on that line.”

The Donato-Bedard-Burakovsky line had some chances, but it struggled to hit the net. The Panthers had a 9-1 advantage in shots on goal with that line on the ice in five-on-five play. Burakovsky finished with one shot attempt, which missed the net. Donato had six shot attempts, but just one shot on goal. Bedard finished with six shot attempts and two on net.

It’s just one game, but Blashill will be keeping an eye on the Blackhawks’ faceoff numbers. The Panthers won 63% of them Tuesday, taking 44 of the 70 draws. Bedard was 3 of 17 at the dot.

“It’s a huge thing, to be honest with you,” Blashill said of faceoffs. “I wouldn’t say it’s everything, but it’s hard to chase it all night. It’s something that’s going to be continually important — when you win them, and winning them on special teams, all those things are really important.”

On special teams, the Blackhawks won 3 of 9 faceoffs on the power play and 1 of 4 on the penalty kill.

The Panthers’ goals were of different varieties. The first by A.J. Greer came after the Blackhawks failed to get the puck out of the defensive zone, then didn’t sort perfectly as the Panthers pushed the puck to the net and Greer had a chance around the net.

Carter Verhaeghe scored the second on a power play.

The final goal, at 9:40 of the third period, came when Mackie Samoskevich hit the puck in the air to Jesper Boqvist, who batted it into the net.

“The goal is a little bit of an unlucky break, and from there, we gave up chances in the last 10 that we don’t need to give up,” Blashill said. “You can’t tie the game by giving up another goal. I know you’ve got to press to score, but you can’t give up easy chances. Just lessons for us.”

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