CHICAGO – There was hope that a few offseason moves to bolster their roster with veterans might help to push the Blackhawks a little closer to the top of the Western Conference.
Getting to that spot has been made tougher by a terrible start to the Blackhawks season that continued on a gloomy Sunday night in Chicago against the Red Wings. The main reason concerns two streaks that represent what’s going on with the franchise at the moment.
First is on the ice, where the team’s bad start to the season became historic against Detroit at the United Center. The 6-3 loss to the Red Wings keeps the team winless through six games, which is their longest since 1997 when they lost seven straight games.
On top of that, the team has yet to hold a lead during their six games as they’ve either trailed or been tied during those contests, and that’s helped them set a dubious mark.
According to Jay Cohen of the Associated Press and research from Sportradar, the team’s failure to score is the longest in the NHL since the 1979-1980 season. It bests the 2000 Washington Capitals, who went 350 minutes and 25 seconds without holding a lead over their opponents.
That mark now belongs to the Blackhawks as they’ve gone 360 minutes and 57 seconds withholding a lead, with the extra time coming from the overtime loss to the Devils on October 15th.
“We’re just trying to dig ourselves out of the hole that we’ve kinda gotten ourselves in for six games here. It’s not a good feeling. At the end of the day, the solution is in our locker room, it’s everybody, so I think everyone’s trying to take responsibility on how they can be better and help our team and get in the win column.”
On top of that, the team lost their sellout streak at the United Center, which was one of the things which the franchise took a lot of pride in during their run to three Stanley Cup titles in the 2010s. It ends at 535 games after starting on March 8, 2008, which was the first year of the Patrick Kane-Jonathan Toews era when the team built itself back to prominence.
Now the Blackhawks are seeing that era continue to fade in a historically bad start to the 2021-2022 season.