Blackhawks surpass 2025 point total after another overtime loss to Wild

The Blackhawks earned their 62nd point of the season Tuesday, surpassing last season’s total with 15 games left. It’s a definitive indication the team is improving.

The Hawks surely would’ve liked to reach that milestone in a more satisfying way than in yet another 4-3 overtime loss to the Wild, though.

In three meetings this season against their northern rivals — Nov. 26, Jan. 27 and Tuesday — that has been the exact score every time.

“We were talking about it and thinking about it after [the game], how high up in the rankings that team is and how well we played that second half of the game,” Frank Nazar said. “We can be right up there, too. It’s just a matter of how we play the whole game.”

Nazar was referencing the Hawks’ awful first period, in which they were outscored 3-1 and high-danger scoring chances favored the Wild 13-1 margin.

The Hawks battled back, generating a 10-6 advantage in high-danger chances the rest of the way, and a savvy transition play from Artyom Levshunov to Connor Bedard to Nazar tied the game with 1:40 left. They’ve finally come up with a few clutch late goals in recent weeks, reversing a poor season-long trend on that front.

The Wild dominated overtime, however, and Mats Zuccarello’s winner 3:09 in felt inevitable. The gap between the playoff-bound Wild and the Hawks seems encouragingly slim, but a gap still exists.

“Once we got going, we were real good,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “We’ve just have to find a way to try to get that stretched out more to 60 minutes. The lows can’t be as low as it was in the first.”

Boisvert watch

Sacha Boisvert sat in street clothes on the Hawks’ bench Tuesday morning, watching morning skate while waiting for his U.S. work visa to get approved.

Once it is, the 20-year-old forward will be “slowly” eased into the Hawks’ lineup, Blashill said.

“[Boisvert] will need to have a physical impact on the game on a night-to-night basis,” Blashill added. “If he can do that, he becomes a real commodity. … He can add something to our team I don’t know we have enough of, and that’s that kind of hard skill.”

Notes

Matt Grzelcyk was a healthy scratch Tuesday, his first game missed this season. Ryan Donato is now the only Hawk to appear in all 67 games.

Louis Crevier’s first-period goal, a bomb from just inside the blue line, measured a blistering 102.54 mph — the hardest shot resulting in a goal this season. Crevier now leads all NHL players with five shots measured faster than 100 mph.