Surging Blackhawks hope Bedard, Nazar return to a reinvented, more versatile team

WASHINGTON — Four weeks ago, the Buffalo Sabres were dead last in the Eastern Conference, 31st in the NHL and hopeless as ever. They were six days away from firing their general manager and they were more than 14 years removed from their last playoff appearance. It was as bleak as bleak gets.

Ten consecutive wins later, those same Sabres were in a playoff spot.

The hole the Blackhawks dug themselves over the past seven weeks isn’t as deep as the one Buffalo was in. So, naturally, they look at what the Sabres did and figure, “Why not us?”

“We’re trying to get the wins back going and trying to keep hope to be a team like Buffalo, where you turn it around and snap a bunch of wins in a row and try to get back in the picture,” veteran defenseman Connor Murphy said.

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Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But the Blackhawks were in the playoff picture when they had Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar — their top two centers — in the lineup. Nazar, who took a puck to the jaw on Dec. 20, was hanging around the morning skate the other day, smiling and laughing. And Bedard, who injured his shoulder on Dec. 12, started shooting again on Friday, and was, according to coach Jeff Blashill, “ripping it pretty good.” Help is on the way.

Realistic or not, as they hit the halfway point of the season Saturday in Washington, the Blackhawks aren’t writing off this season just yet. A gutty 3-2 shootout victory over the Capitals — with an unlikely Nick Foligno scoring the shootout winner in the sixth round and a brilliant Spencer Knight making 32 saves — only reinforced their belief. In the past eight days, the Blackhawks have beaten the mighty Dallas Stars twice, taken the New York Islanders to a shootout and beaten the Capitals on the road. A 7-3 loss to Pittsburgh in the midst of that was the only real stumble, and even that was a better effort than the score suggests.

Just like that, Chicago is just four points behind San Jose for the second wild-card spot in the West.

“It’s huge for morale that we don’t slump and get down on ourselves,” Jason Dickinson said. “We keep clawing out wins and we keep ourselves in it. We’re giving ourselves a reason to push for the playoffs. You could easily just pack it in and say, well, there goes our best two forwards and woe is me and everybody expects us to suck now, so why not just suck? Instead, we’re talking about process and getting better as a group, and playing a more well-rounded game.”

That’s where the little kernel of hope is to be found. Without Bedard and Nazar, the Blackhawks have been trying to reinvent themselves as a team that grinds out low-scoring victories. It wasn’t going well for a while there, as Chicago lost its first five games without Bedard. But since then, the Blackhawks have looked more connected and have been sustaining offensive shifts for longer, with their young players working more below the goal line to cycle the puck and keep possessions alive. Blashill said the internal analytics show an uptick in offensive-zone time of late.

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Saturday was more of the same, with Oliver Moore chipping a puck between two Washington defenders and chasing it down for a scoring chance, Artyom Levshunov dancing along the blue line in search of a shooting or passing lane, Ryan Greene finding soft spots in the Capitals defense for Grade-A scoring chances, and Nick Lardis creating good opportunities for himself. It’s not just gritty veterans such as Tyler Bertuzzi and Dickinson grinding away out there. The young guys are, too. That’s the new “O-zone identity” Blashill has been preaching lately.

It’s a far cry from the fun-and-gun style the speedy Blackhawks were playing earlier in the season, when Bedard’s daring offensive brilliance and Nazar’s straight-line speed had them in the playoff picture. That team thrived on transition and rush offense, and when games got close in the third period — and 13 of their first 16 games were tied or within a goal either way entering the third period — someone, usually Bedard, stepped up.

This team is different now — more modest, more conservative, more careful — because it has to be. They’re a little simpler through the neutral zone, and, in Blashill’s words, eschewing risky plays to “live another day.”

“We were winning those games earlier, because a special player would score a special goal, and so we could play a different style,” Dickinson said. “But we give up that goal early in the third period now and it’s like, oh, who do we look to? Who’s going to score it? We’re learning that we can hang and we can keep battling and keep chiseling away because we’re working on a process that’s consistent and reliable. Blash is working on it every single day and we’re seeing it start to work because we’re getting a little bit more zone time, a little bit more ugly goals. (Bertuzzi) had two goals in the (second) Dallas game in front of the net. Those are the things we’re trying to work on, to create the habits to win those tight games.”

The thinking — the hope — is that when Bedard and Nazar do return in the near future, the Blackhawks will be a far more versatile team, capable of winning games in a wider variety of ways and styles.

“When those two come back, we hope we’re not going to adjust to them and make them our saviors of any sort,” Dickinson said. “They jump into a team that’s playing well and clicking the way that we want to play as a group, creating an identity. And they’re able to roll right into it and continue to play the way that we want to play as we push for a playoff spot.”

The Blackhawks have exactly one month left before the Olympic break, but they have 16 games crammed into that month. They wrap up a brutal stretch of six games in nine days Sunday against the Vegas Golden Knights. That inevitably means fewer practices, which puts an added emphasis on video sessions and individual recovery efforts. How they fare over this next month will determine how meaningful — if at all — the games in March will be. One bright side of having just a league-low one Olympian — Finland’s Teuvo Teraväinen — is that everyone else can go all out for 31 days, knowing a Mexican beach awaits them on the other side of it.

In his morning address to his team on Saturday, Blashill borrowed a coachism from Indiana University football coach Curt Cignetti about “stacking great days on top of great days.” The deficit isn’t huge, but the number of teams in their way is, so it’ll take a heck of a lot of great days to get the Blackhawks back in the Western Conference playoff picture.

At the halfway point of the season, though, that remains the goal. If Buffalo can do it, anyone can, right?

“We’re not going to outscore teams by seven without those two guys in the lineup,” Foligno said of Bedard and Nazar. “But we have enough skill. … The guys are finding ways to make plays at right moments, and then you got goaltending like we have and our D are playing their asses off. It’s making for a lot of fun.”

Foligno was 0-for-13 in shootouts in his career entering Saturday night. However, he scored a beauty during a practice shootout with some Make-A-Wish participants earlier in the week — a goal he punctuated by jokingly yelling at Blashill to put him in next time.

Blashill obliged in the sixth round, much to Foligno’s delight — and surprise.

“I’m like oh-fer in my whole career, so I was like, I need this,” Foligno said. “And I’m at the point now where it’s just that I don’t give a s— anymore. I was pumped to go out there. I looked like a little kid when he called my name. I remember popping up, looking at him all excited. … I didn’t give him a chance to second-guess it. I just jumped on the ice. It felt good to score that for the guys, obviously.”

Blashill went with 6-foot-8 defenseman Louis Crevier in the fourth round. That may have been surprising, but Crevier has been nails during practice shootouts with a signature roofed backhand move. However, he sent his shot over the net on Saturday. That gave Foligno a chance; he just walked in and scored on Logan Thompson, no fancy move, no nonsense.

It was the Blackhawks’ third shootout in their last five games, and fifth this season. They had just eight in the last two seasons combined.

“Nick and I have talked about it,” Blashill said. “When you’re young, you fret over the shootout. The shootout can be a psychological barrier sometimes. I think he’s gotten to a point where he’s like, ‘I’m just going to go and see what happens.’ Good for him.”