The Chicago Blackhawks had one of their most frustrating third periods of the season on Thursday night. However, they also played one of their best third periods of the season.
The struggling Blackhawks will try to build on the positive moments when they wrap up a three-game road trip by facing the New Jersey Devils in Newark, N.J., on Saturday afternoon.
Both teams had Friday off after playing the previous night in the New York area. The Blackhawks mounted a strong comeback, but it wasn’t enough in a 5-4 loss to the New York Islanders in Elmont, N.Y., while the Devils won 3-1 over the Los Angeles Kings at home.
The Blackhawks experienced some familiar problems in the third period when the Islanders scored three goals in just 2:19 to increase their lead to 5-1. However, Chicago responded with a strong effort, outshooting New York 11-2 for the rest of the game and scoring three times. Tyler Bertuzzi scored two of those goals in the final 70 seconds to bring the Blackhawks within one goal.
The three goals scored and allowed in the third period matched a season high for the Blackhawks, who have been outscored 39-21 in the final period this season.
“I thought we did some good things,” said Blackhawks interim head coach Anders Sorensen. “The mental lapses that we had there in the second and third, that’s something we have to clean up.”
The Blackhawks have lost six of their last seven games, even though they scored first in all but one of them. This season, Chicago has lost 11 times when scoring first.
“We’re all aware of what we need to do here,” Sorensen said. “It’s just a matter of working through it.”
The Devils also worked through their issues on Thursday, finishing strong with three unanswered goals in the last 21:04. This victory ended a two-game losing streak for New Jersey and snapped the Kings’ six-game winning streak.
Despite a strong effort, the Devils lost 6-1 to the Colorado Avalanche and 6-1 to the Toronto Maple Leafs, even though they outshot their opponents 64-41 in those games. They also outshot Toronto 39-17 in a 2-1 overtime loss on Tuesday.
“The more you do good things and good habits, things fall your way,” said Devils coach Sheldon Keefe. “It’s just one of those things. I think if you stay with it, eventually it’s going to fall. How our team’s defending and playing that way and not getting discouraged with not scoring — that to me, that’s winning hockey and I’ve been really impressed with our guys’ buy-in in that regard.”
New Jersey outshot the Kings 26-14 on Thursday, with top players Ondrej Palat and Jack Hughes combining for five points (two goals, three assists) to reward the team’s defensive effort.
“We funneled a lot of pucks to the net against the Leafs, too,” Hughes said. “Two good efforts for us and we’d like to finish off the homestand with another good win on Saturday.”
