BUFFALO, N.Y. — The cliche of “not being ready to play” gets used in hockey too often without much meaning.
This isn’t the early 1900s, when some NHL players actually did have second jobs. Realistically, every team is ready to play every night. They’ve practiced, stretched, done extensive video prep and hashed out a game plan. It’s just the execution, the work ethic or the attention to detail that is sometimes missing.
But the Blackhawks on Friday looked as unready to play as any 21st-century NHL team ever will. They conceded four goals in the first period of a 6-2 blowout loss to the lowly Sabres, who had dropped 13 of 14 coming in. It was “ugly,” forward Taylor Hall said — twice.
The NHL’s holiday travel rules did the Hawks no favors, but the fact they seemingly forgot how to play hockey for 20 minutes cannot be blamed on outside factors. Their defensive-zone coverage and rush sorting was laughably discombobulated, and their neutral-zone turnovers were laughably frequent.
“We didn’t come ready to play today, and it obviously showed right from the start,” defenseman Seth Jones said predictably.
Said Hall: “With the day that we had, it was imperative for us to be simple and play hard and at least get our legs under us. You blink and it’s 4-0. It’s unacceptable. We put Petr [Mrazek] in a really tough spot. … It’s just really disappointing after a break. Everyone should be mentally fresh.”
Dec. 27 tends to be a wacky day every year since the NHL doesn’t allow travel on Dec. 26, the final day of the holiday break. Some teams come out of the break rejuvenated, others rusty. The Hawks — and the other seven teams who played on the road Friday — all had to fly out around 6 a.m. and bus directly to morning skate upon landing in their destinations.
That’s hardly an all-encompassing excuse, though. The Maple Leafs, who were actually fined $100,000 by the NHL in 2022 for bending the holiday travel rules, flew into Detroit on Friday and bashed the fresh-off-a-coaching-change Red Wings 5-2. Most other traveling teams struggled, but not as egregiously as the Hawks, who were outshot 11-2 in the first period and 35-17 overall.
Switching goalies to Arvid Soderblom and shuffling the defensive pairings at the first intermission halted the onslaught, and the Hawks even clawed back a sliver of hope when Seth Jones trimmed the deficit to 4-2 early in the third period. But then Soderblom allowed a backbreaking and extremely soft goal to Sabres forward Alex Tuch, who later completed a hat trick.
Young defenseman Alex Vlasic, a stalwart most nights, delivered arguably his worst performance of the season, but he was far from the only victim. T.J. Brodie’s problems also noticeably continued.
“There were so many things that we did wrong and so many things to clean up, but overall it was our compete [level that was lacking],” Hall added. “We had so many stick checks and fly-bys. They could do whatever they want. I don’t know how many hits we even had.”
The Hawks’ absurd road woes from last season — during which they endured a 22-game road losing streak that stretched nearly four months and finished 7-32-2 outside of Chicago — seemed potentially resolved early this season when they started 4-4-1 on the road.
Since then, however, they’re a miserable 1-10-1 on the road, beating only the Rangers on Dec. 9. They’ve lost five straight road games in regulation, including three in the past week to cancel out the good done by their three-game home winning streak.
They’ll head into Detroit on Jan. 10 with just one road win in more than two months — a statistic suddenly reminiscent of last season.