Jets continue dominance over Blackhawks with 3-1 victory
The Blackhawks are embracing the "Home for the Holidays" theme, as they started their stand of six of their next seven games at the United Center Friday night against the Winnipeg Jets.
The building was decked out in electronic red and green lights, Christmas music was playing, and apparently, Hawks defenseman Ian Mitchell prefers white lights over multicolored ones.
It's always good to be home for the holidays. No hassle, no worries and no travel equates to no stress.
That is until the Jets come and crash the party.
Winnipeg continued its dominance over the Hawks with a 3-1 win on Friday night. The Hawks have dropped 11 of 12 games.
The Jets came into this game having outscored the Hawks 11-2 in just two games this season. They won 4-0 in Winnipeg at the start of November, 7-2 at the start of December, and 3-1 Friday night a week into December.
As per the season pattern so far, the Blackhawks started down and were just never quite able to fully come back, although midway through the second period, it looked like they might have had the momentum to do so.
Taylor Raddysh was able to put one past Winnipeg goalie David Rittich to cut into the Jets' lead.
The very next play, Reese Johnson got into it with Jets defenseman Dylan DeMelo after DeMelo put a check to Colin Blackwell's head. The fight was cut short, but the United Center was loving it. It seemed like the perfect mix to get the team going. All was merry and bright.
But alas, after Cole Perfetti scored one for the Jets five minutes into the first period and Blake Wheeler scored a minute into the second, it felt like déjà vu.
The 2-0 hole that the Blackhawks were looking up from early on was too deep.
"I feel like in the second there, we had a good push," Raddysh said, "and (we) just gotta continue to build off that and feel like we had some pretty good chances to tie the game and unfortunately we didn't (score), but sometimes, that's the way it goes. We just gotta keep building off momentum.
The Blackhawks had some good looks in the third period to tie it up including a tip-in chance by Raddysh halfway through, but they just couldn't capitalize.
They were stunted by having to kill a Patrick Kane tripping penalty, and then several minutes later, Adam Lowry scored one for the Jets off a backdoor find by Jansen Harkins, putting the already cold team on ice.
Slap shots:
Jarred Tinordi was activated off the injured reserve before Friday night's game after dealing with a hip injury for about a week ... The Blackhawks continued their dominance at the faceoff dots, winning 64% of puck drops against the Jets ... Goalie Arvid Soderblom finished with 29 saves.