Chicago Blackhawks: 3 takeaways against the Tampa Bay Lighting

In the first of a back-to-back, the Chicago Blackhawks played the Lightning Thursday night.

Coming into the game, Tampa Bay was the top team in the Central Division. Their performance in the third demonstrated why, but what about Chicago? They weren’t half bad, right?

After a strong game against Detroit, the upstart Chicago Blackhawks came into Thursday night’s game in fourth place. Columbus is five points behind Chicago in fifth place in the division. While the halfway mark for the season is still a few games away, any points that Chicago can earn are vital if they’re going to make the playoffs. Against a team as deep as Tampa Bay that’s a tall order.

The game was a wild one that saw a lot of quality scoring chances for both sides, and there were numerous instances where Chicago could have put the game away, including in overtime. In the end, though, Chicago came away with an important point.

That single point is crucial. Chicago has 14 games in March. Of those games, including the OT loss against Tampa Bay, Chicago will play the first-place Lightning five times, the second-place Hurricanes once, and the third-place Panthers four times. That’s ten out of fourteen games against the best teams in the division. If Chicago is serious about going to the postseason, then they need every point they can get.

The overtime loss was brutal because of how close it was, but Chicago wasn’t a disaster. The team was able to compete from start to finish.  Here are three takeaways from last night’s game against the Lightning.

In a great sign against the defending champions, Chicago’s depth showed up.

Alex DeBrincat scored on redirect, but it was a short-handed goal from Ryan Carpenter that put Chicago in front. Strong play from Brandon Hagel made sure Chicago was able to retrieve the puck, and they were able to capitalize on the opportunity.

Additionally, at the end of regulation, Chicago led the shots on goal 34 to the Lightning’s 29. That’s not something to dismiss off-handedly. If Chicago is going to hang with the best, everyone has to be making contributions up and down the lineup. In this game, they were. There were 6 forwards and two defensemen credited with 3 SOG or more for the game. Kane led the team with five, and Keith was right behind with four. The offense was spread throughout the roster.

Ice time was evenly distributed as well, so no one was stuck to the bench because they weren’t getting the job done. This could have been because Chicago had a few days off in-between games and the time to recuperate is like gold in this shortened season. Everyone appeared focused, and ready to go.

This is especially obvious because there wasn’t one play or any individual player that could be at fault for making an error that tipped the game in Tampa Bay’s favor. Additionally, it wasn’t a game where it felt like Patrick Kane was going to have to do it all to scrape out the win. As a group, they came together and everyone chipped in a little bit. It was one of those nights where you couldn’t help but wonder how things would have gone if Toews and Dach were healthy.

Chicago looked to be another team than the one that opened the season against the Lightning.

The first game these two teams played against each other was an extremely lopsided affair in favor of Tampa Bay. During last night’s match-up, Chicago led 2-0, only to see Tampa Bay come back and get a game-winning goal with .1 seconds remaining.

This game was a solid outing for Chicago, despite having lost. Tampa Bay had to come back to get the win and they did because they’re a great team they were able to do it. The key here is that it took Tampa Bay every possible second

It was a winnable game for Chicago, and that’s the best part of losing this match. Crazy, right? That’s light years away from Chicago’s blowout losses in the first couple of games. If you’re interested in metrics, Natural Stat Trick had the game to be largely in favor of Chicago. This game was just within Chicago’s reach, but it, unfortunately, didn’t go their way. Alex DeBrincat made a couple of comments to that effect that were tweeted out by Mark Lazerus:

And this one:

DeBrincat was right, and this was a game that slipped away from them. The irony is that no one would have believed Chicago’s players would be able to say thing likes this at any point this season after giving up ten goals in two games earlier to start the year.

The game was as fun as any other this year to watch, and the fact that it went the distance says a lot about Chicago. Chicago lost, but took a point. The game even needed a video review just to be sure. It was that close. There’s room for improvement, but as the season progresses Chicago is growing as a team.