Nov. 15--DETROIT -- Three careless turnovers led to three scoring chances and ultimately three Red Wings goals.
The Blackhawks hadn't been as loose with the puck all season as they were during the first two periods of their showdown with the Red Wings on Friday night. Coughing up pucks at inopportune times in their own zone cost the Hawks their two-game winning streak as they fell to the Wings 4-1 at Joe Louis Arena.
"We haven't done that all year," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "We gave them all three."
The first culprit was Kris Versteeg, who early in the opening period inexplicably sent a pass right on the tape of the Wings' Drew Miller in the slot. After goaltender Corey Crawford made the save, he watched as Luke Glendening buried the rebound. That promptly put Versteeg on the bench for the rest of the period as Quenneville attempted to send a message to his team not to be so careless.
"There are mistakes and there are cardinal sins," Quenneville said of the giveaway. "The purists of hockey wouldn't tolerate that kind of play. I don't think anybody would have made that play. I don't think we see that play. It's an unacceptable play."
Versteeg's teammates didn't get the message. A short time later, Patrick Kane flipped a puck into the slot that found the Wings' Henrik Zetterberg, who then fed teammate Johan Franzen for a goal. Kane angrily swung his stick into the net after the score.
"It's unacceptable when you make some turnovers like that," said Kane, who had the Hawks' goal while on the power play. "We all have to take ownership of it, accept it and make sure we fix the problem. No one likes being on the ice when the other team is scoring goals."
The Hawks' sloppy play wasn't done as in the second period David Rundblad's pass through the neutral zone was picked off and ended up on the stick of Joakim Andersson. Crawford stopped his wrist shot but the rebound found Tomas Tatar and he didn't miss. Quenneville wasn't as upset about that misdirected pass as it didn't occur right in front of his netminder.
"We were playing perfect hockey until we served up the second pizza there," Quenneville said. "We had a good first period, tough play on the goal we gave up and a tough play on the second goal we gave up. Then we got out of our game."
The Hawks entered the game having yielded the eighth-most giveaways in the league with 140 and exited it with 148.
"I don't think that our effort was overly bad at times," captain Jonathan Toews said. "We gave them those two opportunities for their first two goals. We just didn't have the response we needed. Sometimes that happens. We have to be smart, we have to keep the puck out of the middle of the ice, especially against a team in our zone. We didn't do that and it hurt us.
"It comes down to sometimes you make those mistakes and you have to find a way to battle back in the game and we didn't have that."
After two victories that appeared to move them in the right direction, they instead regressed and fell to 9-7-1 on the season with a looming stretch of six of their next seven games on the road.
"It's frustrating," Toews said. "As a team, we definitely need to address the fact when we do have momentum we have to keep it and build on it. Every single guy in here needs to take responsibility and be accountable. That starts with myself. We can all just bring a little bit extra and it's going to make a world of difference for our team."
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