A powerhouse in the NHL for several seasons, the Chicago Blackhawks entered this season with high hopes of success and good start to their march towards the Stanley Cup. However, their journey has turned out to be a little more difficult this time around.
They haven’t started their season with the usual flair their fans have grown accustomed to seeing on the ice. The team’s core is still in place: Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Marian Hossa, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook. However, the Blackhawks found themselves playing just above .500 hockey through 10 games, entering last night. Aside from a dominant performance on both sides of the ice against the Philadelphia Flyers where they blanked them 4-0, the team has been having a bad case of a power outage from their star players. Their performance offensively has only yielded them 2.22 goals per game.
Da Windy City
So what do you do? Take your most offensive weapons and put them together. That’s exactly what head coach Joel Quenneville did last night. And it paid off. In a article posted on espn.com/Chicago, Kelsey Patterson wrote that Quenneville was “…trying to jumpstart the Chicago Blackhawks’ offense…” by pairing the two all stars together on the same line. Here is a quote taken from the article about the head coach’s reasoning behind the move:
"“These guys should be leading our offence…Usually we like them spread out to give us a little bit more of a balanced attack, but putting them back together… They like playing with one another, and right now we are looking for a little more scoring.”"
And scoring they did against the Montreal Canadiens last night. By the time the horn sounded signaling the end of the game, the Blackhawks were up to their old tricks and masterminded a 5-0 blanking of the Habs in the Bell Centre. Both Toews and Kane got on the scorecoard for the Blackhawks. Toews scored two points, one of those being a goal. Kane notched a goal of his own with help from…yes, you guessed it, Toews. The shutout was sealed as Corey Crawford stopped all 28 shots on goal from the Canadiens.
Looks as if Quenneville’s play paid off tonight. The two stars clicked. The team appeared to be energized, as was his intention. And the offensive energy seemed to have trickle down the lineup. Just ask Kris Versteeg. It helps when you have three other lines that can hold their own and contribute to the team. Time will only tell if the head coach will change things back things again to avoid their top stars from getting hurt on the same line. However, it looks as though the Toews and Kane combination is here to stay for a little bit.
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In other Blackhawks news, a little bit of controversy popped its head yesterday. The incident involved a local Chicago establishment and the official Blackhawks twitter. According to a report on thescore.com, the local establishment tweeted out an opportunity to win a Blackhawks Winter Classic Jersey and showcased a supposed design of the jersey. As you know, Chicago will be participating in the Winter Classic against the Washington Capitals this season.
The thing is, the team had not officially announced what the team’s jersey will look like. Once the Blackhawks got wind of this, they immediately took to the Twitter-sphere. In so many words, the team’s official twitter dismissed the jersey rumors and told fans to keep an eye on their twitter feed for hints of what the “actual” jersey will look like.
Lastly, they put out one more tweet as an exclamation to the previous rumors:
@NHLBlackhawks Note use of *actual* in tweet. :)
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) November 4, 2014
Well, if the local establishment is wrong, looks like drinks will be on the house!