COLUMBUS, Ohio — After 962 games in the NHL, Blackhawks veteran Craig Smith has learned some things. One of those is that games aren’t merely three-hour events but rather 48-hour windows, starting with preparation the day before.
In the Hawks’ 5-1 blowout loss to the Blue Jackets on Saturday — a clunker coming out of the international break — their sloppiness indeed began 48 hours ago, during a less-than-sharp practice Friday in Chicago, and then carried over.
“It’s frustrating, it’s unacceptable [and] it’s embarrassing to a certain point,” Smith said. “We have to dig deep, personally, before every game. That preparation starts the day before the game [with] what we’re doing, how we practice, things that are said, how you eat, how you get up. You can’t just turn it on when you get to the rink.”
After everyone got accustomed to extremely high-quality hockey during the 4 Nations Face-off, having to watch the overmatched Hawks again felt like a splash of cold water to the face.
Analytically, it was far from the Hawks’ worst performance. They actually outshot the Jackets 28-21, ending a 17-game streak of losing the shots battle. But it certainly wasn’t a pretty performance, either.
Smith mustered their lone goal with a power-play tip in, cutting the deficit to 2-1 in the second period, but goalie Petr Mrazek struggled and the game unraveled in the third period. The Jackets have now torched the Hawks for five-plus goals in each of their last four meetings.
“It’s a tough league,” interim coach Anders Sorensen said. “You’ve got to be ready to play. You’ve got to know what your assignments are, and know the little things that you talk about. At times, especially in the first [period], we didn’t do that.”
Smith frustrated
Smith is thankful to be playing again after missing nearly two months with a back injury, but he’s annoyed he was sidelined for that long.
“[It was a] very frustrating process,” he said earlier this week. “[I was] frustrated with the whole thing. … But you find the silver lining of it. I was at home a lot with my kid and my wife, and I got to spend a lot of time doing some things with them, too.”
The 35-year-old forward initially missed nine out of 10 Hawks games between Dec. 9 and Dec. 29 due to the injury. He returned for the Winter Classic and also played the next three games, but then he was sidelined for another 11 games before returning for good on Feb. 5.
He didn’t want to get into the details of the process, but it sounds like someone gave him bad advice the first time around.
“I tried to do what’s best for me to get me in a position where I could get back on the ice,” Smith said, choosing his words carefully. “I would hope it would’ve been corrected a little earlier. I’ll leave it at that.”