No one on the Blackhawks has been that great offensively, well maybe outside of Brandon Hagel and Alex DeBrincat. This team needs to get more players involved on the offense.
Brandon Hagel is second on the team with seven goals, Alex DeBrincat has continued to show that he is the real deal with 12 goals on the year. One name is missing from the top two and that is Patrick Kane. Kane has just six goals on the year and hasn’t scored since November 17th, in fact during the team’s last five games he has just one point.
Kane and the Blackhawks have not been getting involved offensively. Last year’s strength has become this year’s weakness. Now we need to talk about three different guys that need to step up offensively in order to get the Hawks’ offense on another level.
Patrick Kane is not going to be on this list, while he might not be scoring goals as much as he has in the past, he still is Kane and he still finds a way to get involved for the team. As long as he gets back on track in the next week or so he should be good. Some other players still need to show up offensively to start the season, which brings us to the first name on the list.
Jonathan Toews
Jonathan Toews has no goals in the first 21 games of the season. While he has done a lot of stuff great, like getting back after missing an entire season due to an illness and being a force for the team across the entire ice, he hasn’t been able to produce offensively. The Hawks need their captain to score at least 15 goals this season, yet through 21 games he doesn’t have a single tally.
Dominik Kubalik
Dominik Kubalik needs to be better. His shooting percentage is at a career-low right now at just 6.7 percent and his ice time is at an all-time high averaging over 16 minutes a night. Reunited with his former linemate Jonathan Toews was supposed to be a good thing yet the former 30 goal scorer has just three in the first 21 games of the season.
The Hawks lineup is not that deep, and they really need a player like Kubalik to be a good asset right now in the top six. Otherwise, they are going to struggle to make up any type of ground in the standings. Getting Kubalik scoring is good for another reason too considering the team might be able to use him as trade bait at the deadline.
Seth Jones
It is a little weird to have a defenseman on this list but here we are. Jones has just two goals despite registering 59 shots on goal which is third on the team. The Hawks are definitely over-relying on Seth Jones in the defensive zone right now, and that is why he is having a hard time finding the back of the net sometimes, but they still need a competitive offensive defenseman to win games.
In the past two games, Jones has played over 28 minutes in both matchups against the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues. The offense was not really swinging during that time as they only created two goals during those two games. With someone being on the ice for that long we need to see Jones produce a little more for the team to win.
Winning games starts with these three players getting involved offensively, otherwise, we might see some trades sooner rather than later as the franchise tries to readdress the direction of the team.
Chicago is 30th in the entire league with 45 goals for at this point in the season. Last year the team was 16th offensively, a stark drop after a relatively strong offseason with the additions they made.