The Blackhawks continue their season opening road trip as they look to bounce back after dropping the opener against Utah. Tonight they kick of the front end of back to back as they take on the Winnipeg Jets. Last season the Hawks went 1-2-1 against the Jets, with the lone victory coming on December 27th, which saw Connor Bedard score two, including his first career overtime winner, and would finish the season with three goals in three games against the Jets.
The Jets come into this one off a big win against the defending Western Conference Champion Edmonton Oilers. The Jets shut out the Oilers by a score of 6-0 and did so by limiting arguably the two best players in the game, McDavid and Draisaitl, to just two shots on net total. The Jets will turn back to Connor Hellebuyck in net after he picked up his 38th career shutout, but hopefully he bought his team a nice dinner after this one as they blocked 29 shots. This is a team that is going to need to step up and play out of their minds if they want to match last season's 110 points.
According to Jets Color Analyst Mitchell Clinton, the team will be rolling out the same lineup that picked up the victory on Wednesday:
Things won't get much easier for the Hawks after dropping Tuesday’s season opener for the Jets. The team hopes to get off to a better start, as they finished off that game much better than they started. Official line combinations are not known as of writing, but what we do know is that Wyatt Kaiser, who was activated from the IR yesterday, will draw into the lineup in place of Nolan Allan. Andreas Athanasiou will make his season debut as he takes the spot of Craig Smith. With the Hawks playing back-to-back games, they will turn to Arvid Soderblom in net. Last season he posted a 5-22-2 record with a.879 save percentage. The young goaltender seems to have lost the confidence of fans and will look to take his opportunities with Brossoit out to try and regain his form.
Puck Drop is scheduled for 7 p.m. central time, and if you are in the local market, I hope you have been able to get your antenna working, as CHSN and Xfiniety still have not been able to come to an agreement on fees for the cable provider to carry the network. This has been a disaster of a transition process considering the amount of time they had to get all this in order before rolling out CHSN. To think in the year 2024 the only way to watch Blackhawks Hockey is an antenna is just unacceptable. I hope there is an app on the way because if this continues, these teams are going to lose a lot of fans.
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