Patrick Kane had nothing but ice between him and Winnipeg goaltender Connor Hellebuyck as he raced in on net on a 2-on-1 with Artemi Panarin late in the second period Tuesday night. But instead of firing the puck on net with the sniper’s touch that earned him 46 goals a season ago, Kane tried to force a pass to Panarin, only to have the Winnipeg defenseman read it perfectly and force the puck harmlessly away, far behind the streaking winger.
Opponents haven’t exactly solved Kane and Panarin yet. But they’re learning quickly.
“It was probably something teams had never really seen when [Panarin came on the line and you had two guys carrying the puck up the ice,” Kane said in the wake of Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets, the Hawks’ third straight loss. “I think teams are kind of ready for it now. Which is fine. We should be able to fight through that.”
The Jets, in particular, seem to have figured out the key to beating the Hawks. After trying to skate with the Hawks and failing last season, the Jets are now jumping out to early leads and completely boxing the Hawks out of the slot area, essentially choking their offense. As a result, the sixth-place Jets are 3-0-0 agains the Hawks this season.
And the Minnesota Wild, riding an 11-game win streak, are just one point behind the Hawks with three games in hand.
“They played really well,” said Corey Crawford, who made 31 saves in the loss. “They’re fast. There wasn’t much room out there, and they were playing well defensively, blocking shots. It seemed like it was hard to get inside on them. I don’t think we were terrible. It was just they played that well.”
The Hawks have scored just two goals in nine periods against Winnipeg this season. And they were held to just one goal for the second straight game — both going into and coming out of the three-day Christmas break, which was supposed to, in Ryan Hartman’s pregame words, “refresh and rejuvenate” them.
Instead, the Hawks were sluggish and a step behind all night.
“Nobody’s worried in this room about our offense,” Crawford said. “It’s a long season. There’s games where it just doesn’t go in. It’s fine. Our guys are going to score goals.”
But Kane — who has 35 points in 37 games, but only 10 goals — doesn’t want to be let off the hook that easily. He pointed to his ill-advised pass late in the second and said he and his linemates need to shoot the puck more and stop looking for that extra pass.
“A lot of us have to take ownership and try to score goals,” Kane said. “You can talk about playing the right way defensively, talk about doing all those things which you want to do. But when you get around that net, you want to be able to bear down and take advantage of your chances. That’s something I can improve on.”
Blake Wheeler (on a rebound) and Mark Scheifele (a deflection) staked the Jets to a 2-0 lead in the first period. The goals came on consecutive shots on goal, but more than six minutes apart. But the second period has been Winnipeg’s bugaboo (outscored 49-28), and sure enough, the Hawks got one back at 7:37 of the second, when Kane made a slick pass to Artem Anisimov on the doorstep. Anisimov stopped the puck dead, getting Hellebuyck to bite and drop to the ice. Then Anisimov slow-danced around Hellebuyck, who could only watch from his belly as Anisimov tapped the puck in for his 15th goal of the season — a welcome return for the center who had missed the last three games with an upper-body injury.
But that was the only goal of the night for the Hawks, and there weren’t many more chances. When Drew Stafford capitalized on a neutral-zone turnover and an unfortunately timed Hawks change to make it 3-1 early in the third period, the game seemed all but out of reach. The combination of the Jets’ winning strategy and the Hawks’ suddenly punchless offense was too much to overcome.
The Hawks now take their three-game losing streak on a three-game road trip that culminates in the Winter Classic against the Blues at Busch Stadium.
“Not what we’re looking for,” Joel Quenneville said. “We gave away some valuable points in the standings. Minnesota got red hot, and we lost some ground there.”
Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com
Twitter: @marklazerus
