Tuesday Night Is Huge For The Blackhawks

Tommie Lee
Oct 29, 2014
2 min read

Yes, it’s early in the season.

Yes, the Blackhawks are looking great after a couple of stumbles.

Yes, any missteps made at this point in the season don’t technically have a catastrophic effect on a team’s season.

Tuesday night is HUGE, however, for the Blackhawks.

Think about it. The Anaheim Ducks are skating into our Madhouse on Madison with the best record in the West at 7-2. They are (and have been for a while now) one of the more dominant forces in the more dominant conference in the NHL.

Anaheim features one of the most powerful top lines in hockey, like Chicago does. The Ducks are deep at every position, much like Chicago is. The Ducks are — if you’ll forgive the throwback — mighty. They’re a dangerous opponent on paper and even more dangerous on the ice. There is so much star power at play when these two teams face off that it looks more like an All-Star Game most of the time.

This game Tuesday night is the first big litmus test. This is where Chicago has the opportunity to make an early statement that shouts out, “We are as good as everyone says we are.”

There have been a couple of bumps in the road for Chicago in the early going this season, and the Hawks are still looking for their 60-minute game. Third period heroics are great and all, but the idea is to not get in any kind of hole. The 2nd period has been a desert in some games in terms of offense. Shots and goals are down so far. Coach Quenneville says over the course of a season trends like those all tend to balance themselves out. Still, the positive adjustments are showing in the last couple of games. The power play, for example, has been better since the rough performance it had in Nashville.

Then there’s the goalie spot. Everyone talks about the depth there. We will NOT have Corey Crawford in his pads Tuesday night, so it’s time for the backups to man up even more than they have already. Antti Raanta has struggled. Scott Darling, the “big guy”, was magnificent between the pipes in his NHL debut. Coach Q says Darling is quick and agile for his size (6’6″, 232 lbs.) and he got everyone’s attention during training camp. Q announced this afternoon that Darling will get the start in goal against Anaheim, so it appears Coach is going with the hot hand in this game.

Chicago is coming off a great win against Ottawa. The Ducks are hungry and a bit irritated coming off a very physical 4-1 loss to the hated Sharks. They would love to bounce back with a big win against a big team. Especially a big team that took two out of three from them last year, one of those games snapping a eight-game winning streak for the Ducks.

The Blackhawks need to make a statement Tuesday night, and not let that happen. The West is going to be quite a race to the finish this year.

It would be nice to get into the heads of one of the biggest birds in the flock right from the start.

Go Hawks.