During the first two periods of Tuesday’s loss to the Sharks, the Blackhawks dumped the puck into their offensive zone 31 times.
They eventually gained offensive possession on just seven of those dump-and-chase attempts.
Not coincidentally, those two periods were about as hapless and hopeless as an NHL team can possibly play, especially an NHL team with as many talented, proven forwards as the Hawks boast.
“I don’t think we were doing anything of that really well,” Jonathan Toews said. “Our rush game was pretty much non-existent. If we chipped the puck in, it was always to the goaltender, and they just seemed to get the puck and get above our forwards and off they go.”
“We’re backchecking and it ends up in our zone, and we can’t get it out. It’s pretty straightforward.”
Tuesday’s shot production was abysmal: at the second intermission, the Hawks had mustered just 17 shot attempts and eight on goal.
In the third period, the Sharks dialed back their neutral zone press to protect their lead, and the Hawks found more urgency and generated more chances. But that “score effects” dynamic occurs pretty universally, even for teams like the Senators.
And the Hawks have too much invested in this 2019-20 season to accept playing like the Senators — even if they are only two points ahead of them right now.
Offensive zone entry attempts are typically classified into two categories: dump-ins and carry-ins, the latter type also including passes across the blue line. Carry-ins have a higher success rate league-wide.
Last year, the Hawks were at the forefront of a movement towards transition offense, leading the NHL in the percentage of their entry attempts that were carry-ins. But this year, with Jeremy Colliton’s emphasis of a conservative, defense-first system, the Hawks have shifted more towards dump-ins, because they limit opponent counter-attacks.
But there’s one problem: they don’t work very well. And they especially don’t work well the way the Hawks did them Tuesday.
The Hawks, through the first two periods, attempted the aforementioned 31 dump-ins with a 23 percent success rate. They had a 70 percent success rate on carry-ins, but attempted only 10.
The Sharks, meanwhile, operated with very comparable success rates on their methods of entry — 84 percent on carry-ins, 28 percent on dump-ins — but attempted 25 carry-ins vs. only 18 dump-ins.
So naturally, the Sharks dominated the game.
Colliton noted postgame that the Hawks weren’t crossing their defensive blue line cleanly, either, making it difficult to pursue the dump-ins at the other end of the rink as a collective, organized unit. Many of the Hawks’ dump-ins were also straight ahead instead of cross-corner or rimmed around the boards, a small modification that gives the weak-side winger a head start on his forecheck.
“Getting back to the forecheck, I thought we were late a lot early on, so they were making a lot of plays, because we were kind of halfway,” Colliton said.
The reality remains that if the Hawks want to improve their 29th-ranked offense, they simply must begin carrying or passing the puck into the zone more often. This current conservatism clearly isn’t working, as four wins in 14 games suggests.
Entering Thursday’s home matchup against the Canucks, the Hawks must learn a lesson from that.
“We could hang on to the puck and, if we are going to dump it in, make some better decisions on where we’re putting it,” Patrick Kane said. “Not just giving it to their goalie or giving it to them where they have easy chances to break out. … There’s a lot of different things we can do.”
