The Blackhawks have won eight of their past 10 games, and have played themselves into a wildcard race after their playoff hopes appeared to be all but dead just a month ago. But they’re not satisfied with where their game is at.
The Blackhawks have put together this solid run without playing a full 60-minute game they’re comfortable with, and have gotten off track a little bit.
On Saturday night against Columbus, the Blackhawks had a slow start, a dominant second period and relapsed in the third period. On Thursday against Vancouver, they had another slow start, a good second period and survived the third. And on Tuesday against Boston, they weren’t very good all around.
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While picking up a chunk of points is crucial at this time of year, the Blackhawks are more focused on the process and the way they’re playing. And right now they don’t like where it’s trending.
“We played the way we played the last few games,” Jonathan Toews said following Saturday’s 5-2 loss. “Obviously we didn’t have the 60, the full 60 that we wanted. There’s still some good spurts in there that allowed us to stay in the game. ... Just need to get back to having that 60-minute effort.
“When we do that, all four lines get engaged and we get contributions from all over. I think we need to be a little bit more consistent, play a complete game and things will go our way.”
The encouraging part of their successful stretch is that they’ve been finding ways to win despite not playing their best. That’s an internal belief.
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Now the Blackhawks actually want to start playing their best, and not just getting away with it when they don’t. There have still been some positive developments, but putting it all together has been a challenge.
“A lot of the things are still there,” coach Jeremy Colliton said. “I’m not sure it’s so different. I think the results are different. We have a need to improve. ... I’m not going to get too high or too low. The result’s bad, so what? Let’s move on to the next one.
“Like I said to the players after the game, the negative is we lost two points and we missed an opportunity to close the gap in the race that we’re in. But the positive is also we were in a bad spot and turned the game. And we were right there. Let’s find a way to do it for more of the 60 minutes and we’re good enough.”
In Saturday’s case, the Blackhawks played a very good Blue Jackets team in the thick of a playoff race of their own in the Eastern Conference and that's a team that gives a lot of clubs problems with the way they possess the puck and generate scoring chances. Surviving those pushes and capitalizing when the Blackhawks have control is something they've harped ever since Colliton took over as head coach, and for the most part they've done that recently.
They just have to get back to doing it on a more consistent basis.
“Sometimes you’re going to play some teams that are coming at you with everything they got,” Toews said. “So you got to kind of expect that even if you’re playing well, there’s times you just have to manage the situation in your own end and weather the storm, as they say.
"The fact that we’re still in games, we’re giving ourselves a chance to win every single night even if we’re not playing our best hockey I think is showing how far we’ve come as a team. We know that there’s that next step that we need to take in these next 20 or so games. Points like tonight are so valuable, you can’t let them slip.”
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