Identity Crisis: Who Are These Blackhawks?

Jim Neveau, Blackhawks Correspondent

Coming into the 2009-10 season, pundits from across the NHL universe were touting what a tremendous offense the Blackhawks were going to have.

The Hockey News’ Fantasy Preview called the Blackhawks an “offensive juggernaut”, and the NHL Yearbook discussed the balancing act that the Hawks needed to perform, saying “Chicago’s defense must keep pace with its high-powered scoring”.

On the defensive side of the puck, many of those same proponents of the Hawks’ powerful offensive attack were saying that they would likely have issues keeping the puck out of the net. After a season in which they allowed 2.51 goals a game, good for fifth in the league, they came into the current year with a big question mark in net (Cristobal Huet) and the loss of a good physical defenseman in Matt Walker.

Plenty of folks thought that these two developments would hinder the Hawks, and that they would have to win 6-5 slugfests if they had any hope of competing for a Cup.

15 games into this season, these pre-season thoughts have not come to pass.

The Blackhawks are scoring 2.8 goals per game, after a season in which they averaged 3.22 per contest. That ranks them 16th in the league.

They are also converting on only 16.4% of their power play opportunities, which ranks them 22nd. They are even behind the Minnesota Wild in this category, a team that is only scoring 2.19 goals per game total. Ouch.

The one area on offense that they are excelling in is getting shots on net, with a 33.2 shots per game average, 4th in the league.

With those offensive numbers, the Hawks should be doomed if you look at it from the “gotta out-score the other guy” viewpoint, but their defense has really stepped up to the plate.

The Blackhawks are allowing 2.4 goals per game, which ranks 6th in the league. They are also killing off 85.7% of their penalties, ranking them 2nd in the NHL.

Most surprisingly, they are only allowing 22.7 shots per game, which leads the league and is a whole 3.4 shots ahead of Los Angeles, who is in 2nd.

With these kind of numbers on both sides of the puck, it is hard to know what to make of this team. Granted, they have been without sniper Marian Hossa, who scored 40 goals last year with Detroit. They also are missing 34 goal scorer Jonathan Toews, who hasn’t played in six games but will be coming back tonight against the Kings.

The defense has seen its fair share of significant injuries. Brent Seabrook missed time after getting a concussion, and winger Ben Eager, whose physical play has been sorely missed on a team lacking a true enforcer.

Now, with Toews and Eager coming back tonight, and Hossa gunning for a late November return, the Blackhawks are close to having their complete team on the ice for the first time all season. What will the returns of these important pieces mean?

For starters, the defense should remain largely as its constructed now. Their goals-against average is about the same as last season, and the only piece that they lost was Walker. If Huet can keep playing with the degree of consistency that he has shown in recent weeks (and that is a big if), then the Hawks should be able to keep the shots against and goals against numbers down.

On the offensive side of the puck, questions of the team’s scoring ability will likely begin to be answered. Patrick Sharp has been firing shots at the net with regularity, but he has been unable to beat goaltenders. Quantity does not always translate as quality in this league, and the Hawks need to get better scoring opportunities.

Teams like Phoenix and Vancouver have demonstrated that the way to beat these Blackhawks is to collapse the defense around the net, and not allow the Hawks to crash the goal. The Quenneville style of offense is to constantly put pucks on the net, and wait for rebounds, and with guys like Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien, that is largely a successful method.

When you come up against teams like the aforementioned Coyotes and Canucks, as well as veteran teams like Detroit, you have to establish some perimeter offense as well, instead of just throwing bodies and pucks at the net with reckless abandon. The Hawks need to be able to demonstrate that ability, or they could continue to have issues scoring.

The offense does need to turn it on a little bit, especially looking at two other key statistics. The Hawks are 17th in the league in win percentage when they are trailing first, with a 25% rate of coming back and winning those games. That number isn’t terrible, but it could certainly use improvement.

The other interesting factoid is what the Hawks have been the only team in the NHL not to do this season: win a game when they have been out-shot. Granted, part of this is due to the limited number of times they have been outshot (when you’re averaging 10 more shots taken than given up, it’s not easy to be outshot), but it also illustrates that the team needs to take more high-quality shots, instead of just the crash-and-shoot style of offense.

Numbers don’t tell the whole story, and it’s tough to determine how good a team’s offense is when it’s missing a couple of its key components, but if you had told observers before the season that the Hawks would have one of the league’s stingier defenses, and an average offense to boot, you would have been laughed out of the room.

That, as they say, is why games aren’t won and lost on paper, but on the ice.

Jim Neveau is a sports blogger and aspiring journalist who has had work featured on various sites, including foxsports.com. He also writes for a Blackhawks blog entitled paintitblackhawks.com. You can email him questions or comments at jamesneveau@hotmail.com.

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