Connor Bedard and Blackhawks still searching for consistency since injury return – The Athletic

CHICAGO — There have been moments where Connor Bedard has looked exactly like he did before his shoulder injury.

He had a handful of them on Sunday against the Florida Panthers in a 5-1 loss. There was a play in the first period where he stole the puck in the neutral zone and created a chance for Connor Murphy off his entry. He had a blazing wrist shot in the second period that Panthers goalie Daniel Tarasov just got a piece of with his glove. Later in the period, Bedard accelerated quickly to chase a puck off the side wall, gained a step on his defender as he entered the offensive zone and was denied as he attempted to go five-hole.

Bedard had a number of others in his eight games back from injury. It’s not that he’s looked completely off since coming back. It’s just that he hasn’t looked as completely on as he did before.

Bedard was playing as well as anyone in the league before he got hurt on Dec. 12. He was building a strong Olympic case and even generating a conversation around being a Hart Trophy candidate, considering how much he meant to the Blackhawks. If he was on the ice, the Blackhawks often had a chance to score. In his seven games prior to the injury, he had produced five goals and six assists.

Bedard hasn’t often been at that level since his injury. He likely looked his best in a two-assist performance in a 3-0 win over the Nashville Predators on Jan. 10. Aside from that, he’s had one goal and one assist in the seven other games. The one goal was an empty-netter, too. In the eight games, he’s had zero goals and two assists in five-on-five play.

Bedard was better Sunday against the Panthers than he had been against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday. He had three shots on goal, which were all chances he could have scored on. Against the Lightning, he had zero shots on net and one shot attempt. It was just the second time all season he was held without a shot on goal.

So, what’s the deal?

Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill thought some of it was Bedard and some of it was the team.

“I think he’d be the first to tell you, since he’s been back, I think there have been moments when he’s going good and moments where he hasn’t,” Blashill said. “That’s the ebb and flow of reality at times of the year. That’s what happens with guys sometimes. You’re out a long time and it’s hard to get your mojo back sometimes. He’s just working his mojo back.”

Blashill has shuffled his lines the last few games more than he normally does. Bedard started Friday’s game with Tyler Bertuzzi and Ilya Mikheyev. He began Sunday’s game with Oliver Moore and André Burakovsky. Throughout both games, he saw plenty of other combinations, too. Nothing has exactly worked.

“We’ve got to play with the lines,” Blashill said. “Maybe that’s hurt him, not having consistency there. Sometimes you’re trying to help spark guys and you end up hurting them by making too many changes. But again, you can’t fault the work ethic, can’t fault the care. It just hasn’t gone the way that it had prior to him getting hurt.”

Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno thought Bedard’s offensive struggles were aligned with the team’s.

“We need to be a little bit more predictable,” Foligno said. “When he was out, that’s what our bread and butter was. We were a little more lunchpail. He’s going to find his way throughout that, but I think we haven’t been as predictable. It makes it tough. He’s a guy that’s keyed on in a lot of games, so he’s trying to find his way through it, but we can help as a team by being a little more predictable. It just gets a flow of the game going, and more lines are running, now we’re confident, we’re having momentum and then Connor gets to do his thing.”

The reality is the Blackhawks likely need Bedard to get going again if they’re going string together some more wins. Their margin for error is so low without the hope of much offense. They’ve scored two goals or less in seven of their last nine games. They’ve gone 3-5-1 in that stretch.

• The Blackhawks had the Panthers where they wanted them after two periods. The Blackhawks hadn’t created a ton, but they also hadn’t given up a ton. The game was pretty even in all facets through two periods, including the 1-1 score.

From there, the Blackhawks didn’t score again and they made too many mistakes, allowing the Panthers to score. The Panthers scored four times, including an empty-netter, in the third period to walk out of the United Center with a 5-1 victory.

“Our thirds have actually been our better periods,” Foligno said. “Especially against a team that just played a tough schedule, they get in real late and all the excuses, we’ve just got to find a way to get that job done. That’s the hard part: tonight was one of those games where you feel like you beat yourself. Just the goals that we gave up were breakdowns in the way we normally know how to play. That really hasn’t been the case for a while here, so it’s disappointing. Because this time of the year, the reality of trying to win is you have to grind it out, you have to be a little more detailed than the other team, you have to be willing to do the hard things, and we just weren’t able to do that tonight.”

The Panthers’ second goal came after a pair of breakdowns by the Blackhawks. (Kamil Krzaczynski / Imagn Images)

• The sequence that led up to the Panthers’ second goal began when Blackhawks defenseman Artyom Levshunov missed Burakovsky with a short defensive-zone exit pass. It was a simple play, but those sometimes prove to be difficult for Levshunov. And yet at times, he makes the difficult look easy. Earlier in the game, he went end-to-end, weaving through defenders to create a scoring chance.

Levshunov didn’t have the error on the goal, but it was preventable and costly.

“Certainly there are moments where he passes it great and moments where we miss,” Blashill said. “Sometimes I think when he has a lot of time he has to keep that focus. It’s almost like, when you’re under pressure, you’re forced to be lasered in, and sometimes when he has time, maybe we have to make sure that focus is lasered in.

“Ultimately, the puck still came in and we lost the battle on the wall. We had an opportunity, it’s not like it went bang-bang, but yes, that’s what I’m talking about, self-inflicted. You make the one mistake, you have the puck on your stick, it’s a pass, we can’t go tape to tape, then you have a second mistake and you lose the battle on the wall. So those are two big mistakes.”

• Bertuzzi produced the lone goal, scoring his 25th of the season. On the play, Wyatt Kaiser kept a puck in at the blue line by grabbing it out of the air, putting it down and quickly stick-handling around a player. He found Ilya Mikheyev across the ice and Mikheyev connected with Bertuzzi at the front of the net.

• Fans gave Blackhawks radio analyst Troy Murray a standing ovation as he and his fight with cancer were acknowledged during the Blackhawks’ Hockey Fights Cancer night. Murray hasn’t been able to call a game all season.