Slow starts not necessarily bad omen for Chicago Blackhawks
Well, here we are again - 10 games into a season and Chicago Blackhawks fans everywhere panicking that the sky is falling.
While it's true that the Hawks have looked old, slow and disinterested lately, this would be a good time to take a quick look at recent history in an attempt to calm the nerves about this 5-3-2 team.
• Believe it or not, the 2014-15 title team started 6-3-1 and was just 7-6-1 after 14 games. Yet by mid-January, guess what? The Hawks were 30-15-2.
• The next season, they were 6-4-0 after 10 games, 8-7-1 after 16 and still just 13-9-4 on Dec. 3. Then - whamo! - they went 7-4-0 in their next 11, then won their next 12 and were 32-13-4 on Jan. 19.
• Last season the Hawks were 6-3-1 after 10 games but went 24-11-4 in their next 39 and were sitting pretty at 30-14-5 on Jan. 22.
Feeling better now?
If the answer is still no, that's understandable. After all, the Hawks have just 12 regulation goals in their last six games and are playing a brand of hockey that looks completely unfamiliar.
The Hawks are treating the puck like a hot potato. Fancy passes are going nowhere. Turnovers are leading to odd-man rushes the other way. And nobody outside of Lance Bouma, Tommy Wingels or John Hayden seems willing or able to win a board battle.
Still, you have to believe this team will snap out of it.
A good start might be to mix up the lines, something coach Joel Quenneville did late in the Hawks' 4-2 loss to Vegas on Tuesday.
"That's something we can look at, knowing that we're constantly changing over the course of the season. Might be (time)," Quenneville told reporters in Vegas.
After the Hawks were swept by Nashville last April, I wrote a long piece looking ahead to this season. My last point was this: It's time for Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to play an entire season together. Enough with splitting them up.
Late in that Vegas loss, that's exactly what Quenneville did, and Kane scored with 65 seconds remaining on a perfect feed from Brandon Saad from behind the net.
We'll see if Quenneville gives a Saad-Toews-Kane line a trial run at practice Thursday, and if he sticks with it against Nashville on Friday and at Colorado on Saturday.
To me, it just makes sense. Throw your most talented players out there and put the onus on them to produce - something Toews and Saad (1 goal each in the last six games) have not done nearly enough of lately.
And you're not losing a lot further down the lineup as you can mix and match Patrick Sharp, Artem Anisimov, Richard Panik, Ryan Hartman, Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat and still feel confident that those six can produce on a nightly basis.
No matter what Quenneville decides, though, it's time for everyone to start playing smarter hockey.
"We've got to manage the puck better," Quenneville said. "Teams that hang on to the puck against us are able to get more zone time and off of that they gets shots and momentum in the game."
• The NHL fined Ryan Hartman $2,320.79 for his slash Tuesday on Vegas' Brayden McNabb.