NEWSLETTER
After four days off to think about getting their butts kicked by the Coyotes on Monday night, the Blackhawks came out with the type of aggressive period the coaches have been begging for — and, I submit, their best complete period of the season. They scored a power play goal and two more at even strength and took a 3-0 lead to the room without Connor Bedard contributing a point. Chicago held a 14-6 shot advantage after 20 minutes.
Nevermind that whole pointless Bedard thing because he scored for the third straight game on a breakaway that took the roof off the United Center. He grabbed a loose puck and the entire 300 level stood up to see what was going to happen. And his celly was absolutely on point. He went to the Byfuglien “Are you not entertained?” victory lap and I. AM. HERE. FOR. IT.
The Panthers kept pouring on the pressure and cranking up the physicality and were able to break through with two goals to make things interesting for the final seven minutes of regulation. When offsetting penalties made it 4-on-4 in the final three minutes, Florida quickly pulled their goalie.
Star 1: Connor Bedard
The celly was getting him into the three stars NO. MATTER. WHAT. But this breakaway rip city was worth the price of admission and almost blew the roof off an excited United Center. Our collective hearts skipped a beat when he got in the way of a rocket of a shot with three minutes left in the second period (see second tweet below) and struggled to get off the ice. But you know what badass warrior 18-year-old studs do? They take their next shift on the power play and look totally fine, and that’s exactly what Bedard did.
Star 2: Lukas Reichel
We’ve been waiting all year for a confident Reichel to confidently kick the thing intro overdrive and show his ability. Well… this may have finally been that night kids. Reichel’s doughnut in the point category is officially off the board now after he picked up an assist in Nikita Zaitsev‘s goal. And then late in the first period he danced Dmitry Kulikov (see below). I guess all they needed to do was put him at wing to get a totally different player? Who knew?!?
Star 3: Petr Mrazek
It took a while for the Panthers to start generating anything in the first period because the Blackhawks came out and absolutely dominated the first period, but he had to make a few really good saves to keep the zero on the board. In the second period, Mrazek was under siege for most of the period; Florida out-shot the Hawks 19-7 in the frame. But Mrazek was outstanding and kept the visitors without a tally. His shutout bid ended with a Panthers power play goal five minutes into the third. He had stopped the previous 29 shots on net. With just under eight minutes left in regulation, Matthew Tkachuk found a loose puck under Mrazek and tapped it home to cut the lead to just two and things were interesting.
Key Takeaways
