About that big run the Blackhawks keep saying they need: It’s now or never.
Since steering out of their spiral in mid-December, players have talked openly about the team trying to string together wins and get back in the playoff chase. Patrick Kane’s rough estimate is that it’ll take “a couple 10-game win streaks or something,” which illustrates that they’re still too far away to bother with the actual math.
But if they’re going to do it, this is the time.
The Hawks start the second half of the season Friday at Buffalo, kicking off a month loaded with opportunity. They embark on a 14-game stretch in which nine of the opponents are outside the playoff field, and the other five are seeded sixth or worse.
Not that there’s any easy game for the Hawks, who sit 14th in the Western Conference, but they won’t get a better chance than this to make up the seven-point gap between them and the second wildcard spot.
Once they get past the Sabres on Friday and Wild on Saturday, 10 of their next 12 opponents are in the bottom half of the NHL. That includes two against the Red Wings (28th in the league), plus matchups with the Kings (30th) and Senators (31st).
They’ll also get their shot against the teams they need to pass, including home games against current wildcards the Stars and Avalanche.
Reeling off 10 straight wins sounds overly ambitious, but the Hawks will have to play better than they have at any point this season. Their most productive 14-game stretch was 7-4-3 starting with the Dec. 12 win against the Penguins. That pace probably won’t get the job done in February.
Before beating Pittsburgh, they were a wreck. The Hawks opened 9-18-5 and were the last team to reach 10 wins. That dreadful start included two eight-game losing streaks.
Their play since then has been better, but not good enough to catapult them into the mix.
The Hawks’ defense and goaltending have struggled even during their improved play, and those problems will linger unless coach Jeremy Colliton suddenly discovered a solution over the eight-day break between the win over the Islanders and Thursday’s practice in Buffalo.
The Hawks are banking on offense to carry them. Kane, Jonathan Toews and Alex DeBrincat are on track for the highest-scoring seasons of their careers, and the power play has been the best in the league at 35.7 percent over the last 19 games.
Colliton also went all-in on offense by putting Kane and Toews on the same line, and they were overwhelming together in wins over the Islanders and Capitals to close the first half.
The terrible start to the season and the blow of Joel Quenneville getting fired would make a playoff berth an impressive accomplishment, and the chance to pull off that stunning turnaround is legitimate motivation to the veterans.
It’s an adjustment for players who won Stanley Cups, but getting swept out of the playoffs in 2017 and missing them altogether last year adjusted the Hawks’ expectations.
They also have nine players 25 and under who haven’t tasted the playoffs, so there is plenty of hunger within that group.
The flipside for the Hawks is that this might also be the last chance for their losses to pay off. MoneyPuck gives them a league-best 10.4 percent chance to win the lottery, versus a 2.91 percent likelihood of making the playoffs.
The worst-case scenario would be a strong push that comes up just shy, leaving them with no playoffs and a middling draft selection.
The Hawks are adamant that tanking isn’t an option as long they still have a chance, and if they want to avoid going that route in March, they need to start now by proving they’re better than a bunch of bad teams.
