A few minutes after the Blackhawks’ 5-2 loss Sunday to the Sharks, wing Patrick Kane met the media in front of his stall in the team’s quiet and mostly vacated dressing room at the United Center.
About 15 feet to his left was a display honoring past Hawks glories, and Kane himself was a part of a handful of those triumphs and the celebrations that followed.
On this night, however, Kane was grappling with another loss by the worst team in the NHL at the depths of a long and painful rebuild. Instead of being asked about a pivotal moment in a big game, as he had been so many times earlier in his career, Kane fielded questions about what went wrong against the Sharks and how challenging it is for the Hawks to stay positive despite their struggles.
‘‘Yeah, it’s tough,’’ Kane said. ‘‘Obviously, we’ve been losing a lot of games, and I think it wears on a lot of guys. Guys get frustrated. It’s understandable. At the same time, when we’re in positions like we [were] tonight, we’ve got to find a way to not give up so much so easy. It’s obviously been a problem all year for us.’’
As Kane alluded to, the Hawks put themselves in a good position Sunday. Facing a lowly Sharks team in front of one of the biggest crowds of the season, the Hawks opened a 2-0 lead in the second period but wilted.
It wasn’t the start of a new year the Hawks wanted.
‘‘I think we had the right attitude,’’ Kane said. ‘‘Guys want to win. Guys are staying positive. Especially tonight, I think we had a new outlook on things after the last year and it being a new year and trying to start off the way we wanted to. It looked like it was going right there for a while, and then it wasn’t.’’
While 2023 might bring significant changes for Kane and captain Jonathan Toews via trades to contenders and subsequent free-agent contracts with new teams, the Hawks’ struggles figure to continue. Sunday was painful not just because of the loss, but because of how it occurred.
Forward Sam Lafferty, whose goal gave the Hawks a short-lived 2-0 lead, sounded similar to Kane when he was asked how difficult it is to stay positive in the midst of the Hawks’ losing.
‘‘Yeah, it’s challenging,’’ Lafferty said. ‘‘A night like tonight, we had momentum, then it’s gone out of nowhere. So tomorrow we just regroup. The good thing about hockey is you get to keep playing. We’ve got a game [Tuesday]. So it’s another opportunity for us.’’
The rest of the season will provide opportunities for players to produce some positives. On Sunday, there was defenseman Ian Mitchell keeping the puck in the offensive zone and finding Kane in the slot for the Hawks’ first goal of 2023. Players such as Lafferty will have chances to establish themselves and carve out roles.
There also will be more learning experiences for the Hawks as they endure a trying season that might see their two franchise stalwarts move on. On Sunday, they saw what happens when they play too safe against players such as the Sharks’ Erik Karlsson and Logan Couture.
‘‘We have to get over that, otherwise it’s going to be a long, difficult road to get out of it,’’ coach Luke Richardson said. ‘‘It’s up to us.’’
