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How Blackhawks plan to be more aggressive on penalty kill

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When the Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups in six years, they hung their hat on having a stout penalty kill. They finished No. 4, No. 3 and No. 10, respectively, during the regular season in those three runs.

Since 2015, the Blackhawks have finished with a Top 15 penalty kill only once in the last seven seasons. Over the last two, specifically, they've had the fifth-worst penalty kill percentage at 76.5.

Under new head coach Luke Richardson and assistant coach Kevin Dean, the Blackhawks are looking to change things up schematically. Expect a more aggressive mindset, in all facets.

"Last year, we might've sat back a little more with our forwards and then even when they got to dead areas of the ice, we weren't pressuring them enough," Connor Murphy said. "I think right away it was pointed out to us and we hope to have a little more of an aggressive style and not let teams dictate the plays they want to make on us as much as us pushing them in bad areas for them to not have as much success to get scoring chances.

"That's probably the initial thing and I'm sure that will all get sharpened out and we'll work on that throughout the preseason."

Derek King made some tweaks to the system when he took over as the interim head coach last season. The biggest area of focus was becoming more aggressive in the neutral zone by denying entries, and then "not getting seamed" in the defensive zone.

Richardson is pushing his players to not be afraid to jump on any loose pucks and kill plays before their opponents have a chance to set back up.

"That’s going to be up ice and definitely on entries and any trigger point in zone, off shots, loose pucks, we’re going to have three guys going," Richardson said. "Any time there’s a pressure or a bobbled puck, we’re looking to go. Looking at the whites of their eyes and they’re all sitting there set up, we’ve got to be in our structure and wait for that opportunity to go. 

"But I think entries are huge, up ice disruption, a lot of teams fall back into a 1-3 and take their chances at the blue line. I don’t like those odds against the best players in the world. I’d rather disrupt things up ice; they’re not used to it and they don’t like it, and I think it bodes well with our team, especially adding a little more speed this year."

It might take a while for the Blackhawks to break out of their old habits, but it's a change that should benefit both the forwards and the defensemen.

"It's always nice as a D-man to see," Murphy said. "We have a lot of good-skating forwards, so it's nice that they get to use that and work off each other and pressure, as soon as pucks go by them, they can go in and out and cycle around each other to keep pressure on. Key players on the other power play are so good, you've got to force them into tight situations to knock down and turn over pucks."

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