Jeremy Colliton enters crucial period of his Blackhawks coaching tenure

In February, three months into Jeremy Colliton’s coaching tenure with the Blackhawks and around the peak of the team’s playoff push last season, center Artem Anisimov broke a 12-game scoring drought.

‘‘It’s always nice to see the puck go in,’’ a smiling Colliton said that night. ‘‘It gives you a little bit of life. You sleep a little better, your life is better, you’re better with your kids and your wife. Not unlike what it’s like as a coach when you win.’’

That moment now feels a planet away — and not just because Anisimov plays for the Senators.

Colliton is probably not sleeping too well right now. His family might be a little grumpy. His second season has veered off expected course, dropping his support among the fan base lower than thermometers around Chicago.

Even after their 5-2 victory Thursday against the Canucks, the Hawks remained near the bottom of the Western Conference with a 5-7-3 record, their fewest wins on Nov. 8 since 2005.

But to the dismay of the Twitter critics, Colliton hasn’t yet reached the end of his rope. His seat is warm but not scorching.

He coached only his 82nd career game — the equivalent of one full season — against the Canucks. Coaches are practically never fired after that short a time, especially when a significant portion of it exceeded expectations.

And if Colliton were to go, general manager Stan Bowman — who went to bat to hire Colliton and has received his share of vitriol in recent years, too — probably would have to go, too, launching an organizational fire sale. Hawks brass won’t leap into that impulsively.

Nonetheless, Colliton is entering a crucial period. He needs to right the ship before the season is completely lost. And to do so, he’ll need to learn some lessons from the failures of the first 15 games.

The Hawks must get back to the aggressive, fast-paced, transition-based offense that fueled their surge last spring. The low-risk, low-reward strategies they’ve employed lately, which culminated in a fruitless slew of dump-ins Tuesday against the Sharks, aren’t working.

Perhaps a higher neutral-zone press that forces more turnovers can be the middle ground between Colliton’s insistence on limiting opponents’ chances and the need to unleash the playmaking ability of the Hawks’ forwards.

‘‘If the team’s set up in their structure, then it’s going to be difficult to enter [the offensive zone] without chipping it,’’ Colliton said Thursday. ‘‘We’d like to create more situations where they’re not set up in their structure, whether it’s because you force a turnover in the neutral zone or in the ‘D’ zone or you can transition out of it.’’

A more consistent set of lines also could go a long way. Colliton’s strange rant in October, in which he insisted the line combinations didn’t matter, has been proved false recently. The long-awaited reunions of Dylan Strome with Alex DeBrincat and Jonathan Toews with Brandon Saad have rejuvenated all four guys.

And the players will appreciate that, too. Just look at wing Andrew Shaw’s complaint Thursday that consistency in ‘‘the layout of the lines just going into each period . . . just hasn’t been there’’ as evidence.

All told, a mentality more open to schematic changes — and maybe a bit less scheme, in general — might be necessary to save the season.

Colliton doesn’t have infinite security left, even if he still has some now.

‘‘We’re always making adjustments, whether it’s game-to-game or over a period of weeks,’’ he said. ‘‘We evaluate how we’re playing and little tweaks we can make. But all the teams are doing that, so I don’t think we’re any different.’’