DALLAS — After participating in the playoffs in eight straight years for five different organizations, Pat Maroon has a pretty good idea of what it takes for a team to succeed.
The grizzly 36-year-old forward, now in the twilight of his career, believed the Blackhawks were doing those things during their season-opening road trip. Since then, however, their dedication to winning habits has decreased.
“We played solid road games through that [trip], and then we got away from it again,” Maroon said Saturday after the Hawks’ 4-2 loss to the Stars.
“We’ve got a mature group in here now [with] a lot of veterans. We have to dig down, hold each other accountable, play the right way and pull everyone in the fight. That’s how good teams win: they pull everyone in the fight, and everyone’s pulling on the same rope.”
Even on this ongoing four-game losing streak, the Hawks haven’t been that far away from winning — not nearly as far away as they were most nights last season.
Excluding empty-netters, three of the four losses have been 3-2; they’ve been just one goal away from potentially different results. On Saturday, a well-angled replay showed a Seth Jones point shot with a minute left was actually headed for twine had Nick Foligno not deflected it down and wide. That’s how slim the margins have been.
And Maroon believes those margins could be made up with a few more ugly goals. The Hawks are producing scoring chances effectively enough off the rush — as they expected they would — but they’re not producing many chances from forechecking or offensive-zone cycles.
“We’ve got to find ways to generate offense that’s not off the rush,” Maroon said. “It’s [about] getting pucks in, generating offense below the top of the circles, creating those second and third opportunities and creating that shoot-and-scramble mentality. We’re not doing enough of that.”
Many of their shots are coming from too far out to seriously test NHL goalies. During five-on-five play, they rank 23rd in the league in shot attempts per minute and 17th in shots on goal per minute, but they rank 27th in terms of the percentage of those shots on goal classified as high-danger (20.9%).
The Hurricanes, whose system is predicated on aggressive forechecking, lead the league with a 33.7% high-danger rate. The Avalanche, whom the Hawks will face Monday, rank third at 28.9%.
On Friday, every Hawks offensive play looked pretty, whereas every Predators offensive play involved some traffic or bounces around the slot or crease. It wasn’t surprising to see the latter approach prevail.
Then on Saturday, the Hawks ignited their comeback (although it fell short) with a goal by the fourth line that perfectly exemplified what Maroon is talking about. He and Ryan Donato fought hard to move the puck down low, Donato wrapped it around the net and into the crease and Craig Smith and Donato poked away until it crossed the line.
It was so grungy that it took the NHL’s official scorers a while to determine who scored it — Donato eventually got credit — but it counted just the same as every other goal. If the Hawks could score a goal like that once every two or three games, even, they would be better off.
Neither this improvement nor any others would suddenly make the Hawks a playoff-caliber team; that was never in the cards, even before this disappointing start to the season. Conversely, they will inevitably improve upon their current 46-point pace if they keep playing this competitively; the NHL has too much parity and randomness for their luck not to balance out eventually.
To control their trajectory within that window of possible outcomes, though, the Hawks obviously need to make improvements. Seeking out more ugly goals represents a good place to start.