BLOG: Blackhawks Looking to Build Consistency from Early Performances

It's been a frustrating start to the year for the Blackhawks, no doubt, but the mood of the room is still one of optimism as they look to take good portions of games and translate them across a full outing.
"We're looking at, are guys improving and are we starting to see how it should look?" head coach Jeremy Colliton said of his focus early on. "The message to our guys is we have to find a way to reach that level more often and narrowing it down to as small of bites as shift to shift. We can't think game-to-game yet. We've got to find a consistency."

"You've got to just get better and better all the time and you've got to learn how to win, that's the main thing," Mattias Janmark said. "That game (Sunday) was there for the winning in the third, but we found a way to lose. I think going forward here, we're just going to have to stay patient and learn how to fight and win games."

That learning process is indicative of the larger goal for the group this season. The wins might not be there yet, but the overall task at hand is to build to a team that eventually will -- this year and in the ones to come.
"We've got a bunch of young guys that are just getting their first taste or it's in their second year or third or fourth year and that takes time to build the base so that your minimum level is high enough to play against top, top players," Colliton said. "Results are important and we want to win every night and we certainly want to win tomorrow because it's a lot easier to move things forward if you're having team success. Ultimately we can't lose site of we're trying to build a group that can win in the long term."
"It's not fun to be 0-3, but today was a really good practice, a lot of energy out there," Lucas Wallmark added. "All of us out there want to get to the game tomorrow and really find a good game and play good for 60 minutes and get the win. That's what it's all about right now."