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Chicago Blackhawks suffer fifth straight loss

Corey Crawford was outstanding.

Brent Seabrook played his best game of the season.

Nick Schmaltz and Jan Rutta redeemed themselves after being healthy scratches.

And Brandon Saad continued his strong play of late with an impressive second-period goal.

Add it all up and you'd expect to be reading about a Blackhawks victory in Calgary on Saturday, but it was not to be as the Flames overpowered coach Joel Quenneville's squad in the third period and stormed back to claim a 5-3 victory.

The Hawks now limp home losers of five straight and 6-6-3 overall.

Calgary (9-5-1) won its fourth straight thanks to third-period goals by Sean Monahan at 13:59, Michael Frolik at 15:05 and Mikael Backlund at 19:02. The Hawks didn't have a shot on goal in the third period until a Jonathan Toews attempt with 9:28 remaining and finished with just 15 overall.

“We've got to play right from start to finish,” Quenneville said. “And we've got to want the puck and want to be out there.”

Things got off to an ugly start as Duncan Keith received a game misconduct penalty for boarding Dillon Dube 2:14 into the first period.

The Hawks, though, stood tall, allowed just 1 goal during Calgary's five-minute power play and grabbed a 3-1 lead on goals by Toews, Rutta and Saad.

Toews' goal came on a two-man advantage and was the 300th of his career. Rutta scored for the first time this season with 27 seconds remaining in the first period, and Saad notched his fourth of the season at 12:41 of the second.

The Flames trimmed the lead to 3-2 on a Matthew Tkachuk score with 1:34 left in the second period, then were absolutely relentless in the third period, outshooting the Hawks 19-4.

Crawford turned away 36 shots — many of which were extremely high quality — and Seabrook blocked 4 shots in just less than 27 minutes of ice time.

“He was good,” Quenneville said. “Seabs made some great plays. Some good slides, good plays around the net at critical moments.”

Quenneville made significant changes to his forward lines. The most significant were to put Saad with Toews and Alex DeBrincat, and moving Schmaltz up to play with Patrick Kane and Artem Anisimov. Dominik Kahun was on the third line with David Kampf and Chris Kunitz.

“(Saad) has more pace to his game,” Quenneville told John Wiedeman on the WLS 890-AM pregame show. “Now we're looking for some closure … because he's getting some great looks. We need some production.”

They got that. Now what they really need is to stop the bleeding with a victory against Carolina on Thursday at the United Center.

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