Lack of production from Toews, Kane killing Hawks as they lose again

When training camp opened for the Blackhawks, there was a fair amount of optimism among the players and the coaching staff.

That's hardly unusual as every new season brings fresh hope - even if it looks like a general manager has set his team up to fail.

"I'm coming in here just fully excited to play hockey and not have any expectation," Jonathan Toews said as camp began. "If we simplify and just focus on our game and focus on our systems and really learn from some of the things that went on last year, I think we'll be able to surprise some people and surprise ourselves."

In the early going, that's exactly what happened as the Hawks got off to a 4-2-0 start by rattling off wins over San Jose, Detroit, Seattle and Florida from Oct. 15 to 25.

"Whoa," we thought. "Just who do these guys think they are?"

Very quickly, however, reality set in and the Hawks dropped six of seven, 14 of 16 and 20 of 23 heading into their game at Minnesota on Friday.

"I don't know," Patrick Kane said after practice Wednesday when asked what's gone wrong. "It's a lot of different things. Giving up too many goals. Not having the puck enough. We had some injuries along the way."

He left out poor defensive play, mediocre - at best - goaltending, and a complete lack of top-end talent.

It's difficult to win consistently with so much going wrong - and we saw that again Friday as the Minnesota prevailed 4-1 to send coach Luke Richardson's squad to its sixth straight loss.

Toews scored the Hawks' lone goal, making it 3-1 with a power-play tally with 11:33 remaining.

The Hawks (7-18-4) have been outscored 24-6 over this stretch and haven't led the entire time. Their goals have come from Taylor Raddysh (2), Jonathan Toews (2), Tyler Johnson and Max Domi.

Kane hasn't scored since the Hawks beat the Rangers 5-2 on Dec. 3. Toews has 3 goals in the last 17 games.

Yes, they're not getting much help. And, yes, this stretch has to be demoralizing.

But still. They're carrying $10.5 million cap hits and need to prove to themselves, their teammates and the rest of the league that they've still got what it takes to be premier players in this league.

Kane has 4 goals all season. Four. That means he's on pace for 11. Superstars - no matter what their supporting cast looks like - just can't do that. What's odd is that he's certainly shooting enough (56 shots on goal in last 12 games), but the puck's just not finding the back of the net very often.

Despite the lack of production, Richardson said Kane is doing his best to lead.

"He's competitive," Richardson said. "He wants to win every game, every shift. He's vocal on the bench. I know he's not the most vocal guy, but he's been vocal this year. He's trying to get the guys going and say, 'We have to have a shift here next shift.' ... He's made some good plays."

The star of Friday's game for the Hawks was Petr Mrazek. The goaltender made several highlight reel stops in the first two period and finished with 18 saves.

Minnesota (17-11-2) got a hat trick from Mats Zuccarello and a goal from Kirill Kaprizov. Marc-Andre Fleury made 29 saves for the Wild.

The Hawks' next game comes Sunday against Artemi Panarin and the New York Rangers.