Winless streak continues, sellout streak ends for Hawks
Lucas Raymond had three goals and an assist, and the Detroit Red Wings beat the winless Chicago Blackhawks 6-3 on Sunday night.
Tyler Bertuzzi added a goal and two assists as Detroit bounced back nicely after a 6-1 loss at Montreal on Saturday night. Carter Rowney and Vladislav Namestnikov also scored, and Alex Nedeljkovic made 32 saves.
The 19-year-old Raymond, the No. 4 overall pick in last year's draft, recorded his first career hat trick in his sixth NHL game.
Short-handed Chicago dropped to 0-5-1 in a nightmarish start for a team with playoff aspirations. It has yet to lead this season; at 360 minutes, 57 seconds, it's the NHL's longest such streak to open a campaign since at least the 1979-80 season, according to Sportradar.
“It's a horrible feeling,” Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews said after the loss. “I don't think there's many guys that have been through anything like this before, especially to start of a season. ... We haven't found a way to generate any offense and get on the scoresheet, and when things go bad for us it just seems to snowball. But again, we only have ourselves to blame for that. It's up to us to find solutions and find a way out of it, just one shift at a time.”
The crowd of 19,042 stopped the Blackhawks' sellout streak at 535 games. There were periodic boos the whole night, broken up by an occasional “Let's go Red Wings!” coming from a vocal group of fans in the upper deck.
Coach Jeremy Colliton wasn't surprised by the sellout streak's end.
“When you're not playing well, that's not a surprise,” Colliton said. “It's up to us to play better. I believe we have the makings of a good group. We haven't put it together yet. We need to. We can play a brand of hockey and be a team Chicago can be proud of. But we have to deliver.”
Dominik Kubalik, Tyler Johnson and Henrik Borgstrom scored for Chicago. Toews had 2 assists for his first points since missing all of last season with what he described as chronic immune response syndrome.
The Blackhawks had a third-period goal waved off because of goaltender interference, and Alex DeBrincat was robbed on an outstanding stick save by a diving Nedeljkovic.
Rowney put Detroit ahead to stay when he banked the puck in off the left skate of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury 4:22 into the second — the first of four goals in the period for the Red Wings.
The Blackhawks played without Patrick Kane, Riley Stillman and Jujhar Khaira because of the league's COVID-19 protocol. Assistant coach Marc Crawford also was absent because of the protocol.
Said Colliton: “Patty's a great player, no question. I don't want to discount the hole he that leaves, but ultimately that's not why we lost. We've got to play more similar to how we did the two games previous, and obviously there's areas even in those games we could play better. But tonight was a step back and that's what it comes down to and that's what we'll focus on. We have to go forward, not backwards.”