Blackhawks coach Jeremy Colliton made an odd decision to dress only 11 forwards and seven defensemen in Thursday’s 4-2 loss to the Lightning.
It’s the kind of rare, unusual move that coaches typically only follow through on when they’re desperate to snap a losing skid, or when they’re stuck in a roster or salary cap crunch. Indeed, the Lightning also played seven defensemen, and it was for the latter reason exactly: forward Nikita Kucherov was injured in the previous game on their road trip.
But Colliton had neither of those justifications in his pocket. And though the coach does ultimately own the right to make these calls, the seemingly unnecessary shakeup didn’t sit well in the locker room.
“I mean, things were going pretty good with four lines and the lineup that we had,” Jonathan Toews said, after a long pause to think through his words. “You’ll have to ask the coaches on that one.”
The topic would’ve been quickly forgotten if the Hawks had won. But they didn’t.
The end result of the positional mix-up was a disjoined game lacking the chemistry and fluidity that the Hawks have shown so much lately. They were shut out into the third period, missed passes all night — in what Dylan Strome called a “disjointed” effort — and left Lightning players wide open repeatedly in front of Corey Crawford.
“Just not clicking, really,” Strome said. “Pucks were bouncing and we weren’t getting in clean. . . . The goalie saw a lot of shots from the point, the ones that got through. We got to do a better job at net front.”
With three-man forward lines and two-man defensive pairings difficult to maintain mathematically, Slater Koekkoek, Brent Seabrook and Erik Gustafsson essentially rotated on the third pairing and Patrick Kane double-shifted, finishing with a whopping 27:52 in ice time.
Colliton got Koekkoek — a near-constant healthy scratch this season — in the lineup against his former team, and partly to send a message to slumping Dominik Kubalik, who Colliton said must improve his “compete level away from the puck.”
He even doubled-down on the seven-defenseman strategy postgame, saying the poor outcome wouldn’t discourage him from trying it again in the future.
“‘7D’ is always an option,” he said. “Kind of depends on the circumstances. It’s not something you’re going to go to consistently, but sometimes it’s an option to put the right guys in.”
The Hawks still showed life in the third period, much like Tuesday against Carolina. Seabrook scored to briefly tie the game, and Strome found time late to create another furious finish.
The Hawks remain 6-3-1 in their last 10 games, so these consecutive home losses hardly represent a doomsday moment. But it seems unlikely this off-the-wall numerical approach will return anytime soon.
“Last couple road games, we had four lines contributing and a lot of pucks going in,” Toews said. “So [we’ll] try and get back to that same style.”