Blackhawks: Three takeaways from Chicago’s game against the Panthers

While the Blackhawks came away with the victory, they were heavily outshot the entire game.

This is a trend that can’t continue if the team wants to keep winning hockey games. The ‘Hawks were outshot 41-21, including being outshot 28-14 through the final two periods of the contest.

Obviously, there were a lot of aspects that went into this Blackhawks win. Patrick Kane scored on the powerplay, and when the ‘Hawks did have the puck in the offensive zone tonight, they knew what to do with it.

Overall, though, Chicago needs to do a much better job in minimizing the other team’s chances to score. The barrage of shots didn’t only come from the Panthers’ marquis players, either. Right-winger Owen Tippett would fire the puck on net nine times during this game. Besides coming from their bottom six, Florida defenseman Aaron Ekblad would add another seven shots from the blue line.

The Blackhawks simply can’t expect to win hockey games by being outshot so heavily, and especially not with the other team doubling their shot totals. That isn’t even factoring in the 22 blocked shots that Chicago had which could’ve been additional scoring chances. So with all of this combined, the team needs to make sure that they are doing a better job of spending less time in their own zone.