The Chicago Blackhawks’ symbol shouldn’t be a tomahawk, it should be a boomerang.
Or maybe a yo-yo.
The Hawks’ back-to-back games this weekend reflected a season-long pattern: they followed up Saturday’s impressive 5-2 over the Florida Panthers with Sunday’s flustering 4-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils — the fourth time a win has followed a loss.
At least this time they scored more than one goal in one of those losses. So that’s … progress?
After Sunday’s game in front of 18,388 at the United Center, the Hawks were in no mood for jokes or moral victories. Instead, there was a players-only meeting.
“We have a few words that we live by on this team that we came up with before the season started, so we want to live by some of those and hold each other accountable at the end of the day,” defenseman Seth Jones said.
“It’s not ‘mother-effing’ guys and things like that, but if you make a mistake, your teammate should be able to tell you when you’re wrong and vice versa.”
Winger Corey Perry said the meeting was about “just being accountable and playing with the system that we’ve installed through training camp and through the first few games of the season.
“We do it in spurts,” he said, “but we’ve got to do it for a full game.”
Coach Luke Richardson thought the Hawks started off well — taking a 1-0 lead on Taylor Hall’s goal — but “ fatigue really showed in our team today and the decision-making and just overall sloppy play.”
Ryan Donato, who scored the Hawks’ second goal, said teams have setbacks after wins all the time in the NHL. But the Hawks should and do expect more.
“There’s times where we show up and we feel like we’re a great team,” the forward said. “For us finding that consistency and balance and showing up every night and playing the right way and knowing that even if we have our A-game some nights we might not win, and if we have our A-game or try to bring our A-game every night, usually good things are going to happen.”
Here are five takeaways from the loss.
Perry said the Hawks had “a good heart-to-heart” in the dressing room. They called out several problems.
“Just being connected,” Jones said. “Being simple when we need to be. Time and clock management. The little things of the game. It’s the little details that we’re off.”
Donato said the players need to rely on each other more.
“The more than we can rely on each other, the more you can grow as a team,” he said. “A lot of the things that we preach, we didn’t do and it came back to bite us.”
One thing everyone agreed about: short shifts have been getting short shrift.
“Our shift lengths are too long,” Jones said. “It’s just small things like that that can really kill you in games.”
It was something Richardson mentioned during his pregame news conference. Clearly, the Hawks didn’t get the message.
“We see it on the paper in between periods on the stats, but we kind of see it feel and it,” he said. “We know when there’s someone who extends out there too long for one more offensive chance.”
Richardson added: “As a professional athlete, you have to understand your gas tank is only … a short period.
“Sometimes you get caught up in the moment, you think you’ve got one extra chance, you’re going to do something special. And if it works, sometimes it’s great. But you’re rolling the dice, because if it doesn’t it can hurt not just you but your teammates.”
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You can pull some impressive numbers from the Hawks in the first periods.
Five times this season they’ve scored an opening goal, including Taylor Hall’s marker 1:51 into the game.
Three have been by Connor Bedard, the fastest being 28 seconds against the Arizona Coyotes.
The Hawks have averaged 3.2 seconds among those first-period opening goals. Last season, they came in an average of nine minutes among 28 such occurrences, according to NHL Stats and Information.
If only the stats could stop there.
The Hawks stalemated a scoreless second Sunday and were outshot 16-8. They were fairly listless in the second period of Saturday’s game, too.
“Sometimes doing your job is not giving the other team opportunities,” Richardson said. “That’s what we’ve given — the last two games — when we didn’t play great in the second period, we gave Florida opportunities.
“I think it gave them life. They came to life in the third period,” he said. “Tonight, it’s the same thing. I think after they got that power play (goal to make it 1-1), we got a little sloppy at the end of the first.”
He added that the Hawks’ careless puck play “fuels the other team.”
The Hawks toughened up in the third and tried to rally behind Donato’s goal and a 6-on-5 attack, but Michael McLeod’s empty-netter sealed it for the Devils.
Perry said, “It’s definitely disappointing when you play like we did last night (against Florida) and then come out here tonight” and fall short.
“We played well for parts, but we didn’t put a full 60 minutes together.”
The Hawks desperately want to string at least two wins together to free themselves of this high-low cycle.
Jones said, “We don’t want to be a team that (has a) great moral win, great victory, and then dips the next game and gets lackadaisical with our play.
“We want to be a team that can string two, three, four, five wins together, especially at home in front of our fans, and play well. Sometimes it’s not about the result; it’s about playing well, playing hard, the effort, and then wins will come.”
He scored in the first period of both weekend games, his first two goals as a Hawk. It’s an encouraging sign, given he’s missed three games with a shoulder injury.
The Hawks are counting on the veteran for more than just what’s in the box score.
“He’s an MVP in this league,” Richardson said pregame. “It’s not by coincidence he’s going to give us a boost in our pace and our offense. And, you know what, he’s playing two ways as well.
“Like I mentioned with (Philipp) Kurashev, I notice him in the video tracking back a lot. He doesn’t stand around on that ice.”
Saturday, he played his 10th game (as did Bedard), burning a potential slide year of his contract.
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Not only did the Hawks not seem to care, they signaled he’s too valuable to let him play in the World Juniors this winter.
“No,” Richardson said flatly Saturday. “Him staying here, he’s a really important piece to our team right now and there’s been no discussion of him going anywhere.”
Sunday, Korchinski went from young GOAT to scapegoat.
Late in the first period, Korchinski fumbled the puck at the blue line, and Max Willman turned that turnover into a 2-1 lead.
Like Richardson has mentioned before, Korchinski’s fluid motion can get him in or out of trouble, and in this case, it was trouble.
“Your eyes are watching the play, don’t let your body float out — even one or two steps out of position in this league is a lot,” Richardson said. “Usually he’s the type of guy that can skate people down, but after a back-to-back, and when you have to step forward and go from a dead stop and chase the guy back, it was unlikely that he was going to catch him.”