With the Blackhawks expected to finally improve defensively this season, it was assumed the Hawks’ penalty kill would improve in step.
But the preseason results on the penalty-killing front weren’t encouraging.
In five games in which the Hawks fielded partially or fully NHL-caliber lineups, they killed just seven of 13 opponent power plays, including just one of five Monday against the Red Wings.
And that wasn’t simply small sample size-related bad luck; they also conceded golden opportunities left and right. The Hawks’ preseason penalty kill ranked 24th in shot attempts allowed, 30th in scoring chances allowed and 30th in expected goals allowed per minute.
Those numbers are alarming because they so closely mirror the Hawks’ penalty-killing woes last season. After faring well in 2019-20, tying for eighth in the NHL with an 82.1% kill rate, they dropped to 28th with a 76.8% kill rate in 2021. They ranked 19th, 22nd and 23rd, respectively, in those three aforementioned stats.
There’s still plenty of hope this regular season will be different. But the Hawks will at least need to learn from what they did wrong in the preseason. Ryan Carpenter, the de facto ‘PK captain’ for three years running, certainly realizes that.
“Sometimes early on, as a ‘PK’-er, you want to work hard, but sometimes you’re not working smart,” Carpenter said. “Sometimes you have to stay calm and just hold the middle and be in the right spot. [If] you get running around too much, usually the first unit is way too skilled — they’re going to make that pass through you and it’s going to be a grade-‘A’ chance. That’s what it might have been a little bit against Detroit.”
Colliton has somewhat dismissed the preseason results because of rust, players likely not going 100% and his own experimentation with player combinations.
His belief the units will improve over time began to be validated in the preseason finale Saturday, as the Hawks killed off both Wild power plays and Carpenter scored a shorthanded goal.
“We’ve had a scrambled group throughout camp,” Colliton said. “We’ve been trying to find out who can kill... A lot of it is just familiarity with the forward pairs and ‘D’ pairs and reads everyone’s making. You can have the same ‘PK’ structure, but within the structure there’s always a lot of reads.
“You [have] to play together a bit and have those reps before you feel comfortable... It’s going to be a test, it’s not going to be perfect, but we expect to get better as we go.”
Kirby Dach and Alex DeBrincat are two players who will likely receive more ‘PK’ time moving forward. They weren’t heavily utilized there during the preseason, during which Carpenter, Jonathan Toews, Brandon Hagel and Jujhar Khaira saw the most shorthanded ice time among forwards.
Using top-six forwards on the ‘PK’ is a trend around the league right now, and that duo’s emergence as viable killers — with their ability to translate turnovers into shorthanded counterattacks quickly — was a bright spot late last season.
“What’s cool about offensive guys like [Dach and DeBrincat on the PK] is they know, from a power-play standpoint, the seams you’re looking for and certain plays to try to execute,” said Connor Murphy, who trailed only Jake McCabe in preseason shorthanded ice time among defensemen.
The Hawks did modify their penalty-kill forechecking strategy slightly for this season, but that’s the only change they made, Carpenter said.
Notes: The Hawks cut their camp roster to 28 by sending down Mike Hardman, Reese Johnson, Nicolas Beaudin and — surprisingly — Jakub Galvas to the AHL late Saturday night... The NHL unexpectedly ruled Alex Nylander waivers-exempt for this season, and the Hawks promptly sent Nylander down to the AHL on Sunday.
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