Blackhawks are having an uncharacteristic season in an important category

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There are a combination of reasons why the Blackhawks are on their way to missing the playoffs for the first time since 2007-08.

You can point to Corey Crawford's injury as the most obvious, a power play unit that has hovered near the basement all year or an inexperienced defense that has given up the sixth-most high-danger scoring chances.

There's also another one that has been well-documented over the last month and a half particularly, but really sticks out like a sore thumb when you look at the numbers on a larger scale.

The Blackhawks have scored the first goal in 40 of 68 games this season, yet they rank 25th in win percentage (.550) with a 22-13-5 record and are tied for the most regulation losses (13) in those contests when doing so. 

And that's incredibly uncharacteristic for a Joel Quenneville-led team.

Since he took over as head coach in 2008, no team has had more wins when scoring first than the Blackhawks (326). Going into this year, they had ranked third with an overall win percentage of .754 in that category across nine seasons.

Just last year, they were 37-8-5 for a win percentage of .740, which ranked sixth.

What happened?

Well, all those reasons we mentioned above have probably contributed to the lack of success when it comes to shutting the door.

It's not like they're taking their foot off the pedal; they have the second-best 5-on-5 shot differential when they're playing with a lead.

It's that they haven't been able to capitalize on their scoring chances, have allowed way too many quality scoring chances of their own and, obviously, haven't had one of the best goaltenders in the world to bail them out like he often has done in the past.

Still, it's bizarre to see the Blackhawks among the worst teams in the league in that department because they used to be as close to unbeatable as you can get when they jumped out in front first.

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