NEWSLETTER
The Blackhawks put the worst regular season of more than 70 games in the history of the franchise to bed on Thursday night in a manner that sums up the season fairly well.
Connor Murphy was banged up and Nikita Zaitsev didn’t feel good, so the Hawks had to dress 13 forwards and 5 defensemen in Los Angeles against a Kings team that not only had beaten the Blackhawks soundly twice already this year, but were fighting for their playoff position.
The Blackhawks were overwhelmed in the first period but stole a goal and had a lead after 20 minutes. The Kings scored as many goals (3) as the Hawks put shots on net in the second period to take a 3-1 lead. Chicago battled back and scored three unanswered goals to take a stunning 4-3 lead early in the third period, only to take a bad, fluke penalty late in the game, allow a tying goal on the power play and then lose six seconds into overtime.
Another night where the roster wasn’t necessarily overwhelmed by talent, but they were by effort early and often. And when their “nice effort” arrived finally, it was followed by an implosion and, in the end, a loss.
After the game, de-facto captain Nick Foligno saw the microphones and took the safety off, putting the entire Blackhawks’ roster on blast last night:
Those are the printed words courtesy Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. In this brief video from the Chicago Tribune‘s Phil Thompson, you can see the passion on Foligno’s face and hear it in his voice:
Earlier this week, Foligno was quoted as saying the following by the guys at The Athletic:
“I fully anticipate we are a team that’s pushing for the playoffs next year. That has to be our mindset.”
So… yeah. Here we go (insert fire emoji).
Foligno has been in the NHL his entire life; he’s a second-generation player in the league and has appeared in more than 1,100 regular-season games. He know what it takes to win the league. He also knows broken habits and empty effort when he sees it. And, for the first time — after the season’s last game — he called it because he saw it.
Foligno has also been around the league long enough that he knew before he took his team to task with the media on Thursday night (Friday morning in Chicago) that most more than half of the guys in the room are headed to free agency this summer. From tonight’s lineup, there are eight forwards, three defensemen and two goaltenders on the Blackhawks’ payroll beyond the game in Los Angeles (plus Taylor Hall, who’s on IR).
Those numbers don’t include prospects like Ethan Del Mastro or Wyatt Kaiser, who are in Rockford. But it does include Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Landon Slaggert and Kevin Korchinski — all of whom made their NHL debuts this season. I don’t think anyone is pointing a finger at any of these players for not giving a good effort; the goal this season for them to learn the definition of the required effort to compete in the NHL. And I’m not concerned about the effort I saw from guys like Jason Dickinson and Philipp Kurashev this season; they both had career seasons and fought hard to the end.
Foligno was saying the quiet part out loud: there are some guys who enjoyed cashing checks this season, and that isn’t how you win games in the NHL.
He wants to win.
Bedard expects to win.
The coaches desperately want to win.
This now puts the task on the front office to determine who can go, needs to go and how to best replace those players in a way that continues to build the right culture in the room, but also improves the quality of play on a nightly basis.
The Blackhawks will clean out their lockers and have their exit interviews this weekend. I’m sure the broad comments made by Foligno will be even more pointed when he sits down with his coaches and front office members to discuss the who and what behind his frustration tonight. And I can assure you for Foligno to say this the way he did it wasn’t spontaneous; this has been warming to a boil for a while.
Foligno is effectively the captain of this team. When your captain speaks this way, action is almost required during the offseason that follows. And that offseason starts NOW. We’ll see if this adds a spark to the coming summer in Chicago.
