INSTANT ANALYSIS: Players Take Ownership as Defensive Struggles Continue

The Blackhawks dropped their sixth game to open the season on Sunday night -- a 6-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on home ice -- but unlike in recent defeats where pieces of the team's game seemed to be making progress, this loss was a tough performance to swallow.
"I think it's a step back from the last two games. We did a lot of good things, I thought, against New York and Vancouver and weren't rewarded for it. We've got to do it for longer and stick with it. Too much of tonight was a slip back into the things that got us in trouble on the road trip and we paid the price for it."

POSTGAME LINKS
GAMECENTER: CHI vs. DET
RECAP: Blackhawks Fall to Red Wings, 6-3
MEDICAL: Khaira, Stillman in COVID Protocol, Mitchell Recalled
HIGHLIGHTS: CHI vs. DET
GALLERY: Blackhawks vs. Red Wings
INSIDER: Gustafsson Excited to Be Home
Chicago now holds an 0-5-1 record on the young season, scoring 12 goals in total (half of which have come on the power play alone) while allowing a league-high 27 goals against.
"It's a horrible feeling," captain Jonathan Toews said of the team's start. "When things have gone well for us, we're playing the right way, we're doing the things we're supposed to be doing. We haven't found a way to generate any offense to get on the scoresheet and when things go bad for us, it just seems to kind of snowball. We only have ourselves to blame for that. It's up to us to find solutions and find a way out of it, just one shift at a time."
"We have to find a way to win games," defenseman Seth Jones said. "It's hard when you're down in a game. Give up the first goal of a game, it's hard to come back against teams. Detroit got up, waited for us to make mistakes, kept capitalizing, flipping pucks on us, just getting pucks out at their blue line and getting pucks in at our blue line and playing a hard. We can definitely take a page out of that book"

DEFENSIVE IMPROVEMENT

While the offense hasn't been clicking at full force on one end of the ice with just five goals at 5-on-5 play this season, the play at the other end has been a larger culprit to the team's early struggles.
On Sunday night, four of the six Detroit tallies came directly from Red Wings crashing the net and connecting on rebounds near the blue paint. Another came from a defensive zone turnover without numbers back and the sixth off a one-timer on a power play.
"I just think we're not consistent enough with how we're playing defensively and how hard we're making it for teams to get in our zone and create scoring chances," Toews said. "Top to bottom, I think our forwards have to help our D-men. We're just making it too easy for teams to walk into our zone, get possession, stay in our zone, generate shots, win battles. It's not the most complicated issues, it's just finding that consistency and not getting frustrated and staying with our game plan when things aren't clicking, when another team's coming at us."
"I just think we need to be a harder team to play against in all areas," Jones said. "We leave Flower out to dry in a lot of situations, situations that goalies shouldn't be in all game. We need to do a better job of our defensive coverage, our rush coverage and not giving up so many odd-man rushes. It seems like right now they're getting free chances off our mistakes. It sucks losing that way when you're shooting yourselves in the foot and you're not making the other team earn every goal they get or every chance they get making them come 200 feet."

TALKING IT OUT

The Blackhawks spent about 15-20 minutes after the loss holding a team meeting inside the locker room at the United Center. Without a win in the first six games and three straight multi-goal losses at home, the leadership group led the charge as frustrations were aired across the board.
"Specifics of what's said in the locker room always stays in the locker room, but you can imagine that we're trying to dig ourselves out of the hole that we've gotten ourselves in for six games here," Toews said. "It's not a good feeling. At the end of the day, the solution is in our locker room. It's everybody. I think everyone's trying to take responsibility on how they can be better and help our team and get in the win column."
"That's the only way to get out of something like this: together. It's not one line or two lines or one pair of D or our goalies standing on their heads," Jones said. "Every guy has got to be better for us. We all have to be on the same page with what needs to happen and I think we will be going forward."
When asked by reporters if there's still faith in Colliton as the leader of the group in the room, both Toews and Jones unequivocally said yes.
"Of course," Toews quickly answered. "At this point, there's details to our game that when we've done them, when we've stuck to them, we have four lines rolling that do things right, it's a fun way to play and everyone feeds off it. We just haven't done it enough. As a group, we want to decide to do that, commit ourselves to each other. It's not like we decided to wait six games to do it, but there's been times where we have, it just hasn't been enough and it hasn't been good enough. We've got to find a way to commit to each other and that's what we want to do. We want to start winning games, we want to start having fun playing hockey because we know we're performing much less than we can. It's underwhelming."
"One hundred percent this team has faith in Jeremy," Jones added. "I've only been here a short time, but his message has been great for us. When it really comes down to it, there's only so much coaching he can do. He's not going to lace them up for you... At the end of the day, this isn't a coaching problem. This is a locker room thing. This is the players on the ice playing the game. We have to find a way to all get on the same page and have a common goal on how we want to play and what our identity is."

ROSTER SHUFFLE

The Blackhawks were forced to make last-minute lineup adjustments ahead of Sunday's game as Jujhar Khaira and Riley Stillman joined Patrick Kane in COVID-19 Protocol and were ruled out for the contest just before warmups. All three had played in every game this season for Chicago.
In their places, recently recalled Reese Johnson and Ian Mitchell drew in, as well as forward Adam Gaudette and Philipp Kurashev. MacKenzie Entwistle was a health scratch as the only other change among skaters from Thursday night.
"We knew in the afternoon, but with the situation we're in, things can change at the last minute," Colliton said of his lineup moves for Sunday's game. "We've got to be ready to adjust and that's just how it is."
"For the most part, it's out of our control," he added.
For Kane, it was the first game he missed since the beginning of the 2018-19 season (illness) and just the second time Kane hasn't dressed for a regular-season tilt for the Blackhawks since a collarbone injury late in the 2014-15 season sidelined him for the final month and a half.
"Patty's a great player, no question. I don't want to discount the hole that he leaves, but that's not the reason we lost," Colliton added after the game.
"It is what it is," DeBrincat said Saturday. "I think it's going to happen. For right now, we're just going to try to follow the protocols and see what happens. I think we obviously don't want many more guys going in there, so we're going to follow what the doctors are saying and do what we can."

MURPH FOR 500

Connor Murphy skated in his 500th NHL game on Sunday night, becoming the 1,669th player in league history to reach the mark. Of that group is another Murphy, his dad Gord, who skated in 862 NHL contests over his 14-year career.
"He's been a really important player for us for awhile now," Colliton said of Connor Murphy earlier this month.
Aside from his continued evolution into a top-tier defenseman for the Blackhawks, this calendar year, Murphy has taken a growing leadership role as well. He was awarded an 'A' on his sweater late last season after Andrew Shaw went on injured reserve, a letter he continues to don for home games this season.
"When you've got guys who have been here a long time and they've had the careers they've had, it's sometimes hard to assert yourself in that way, just out of respect," Colliton said of Murphy's leadership. "His play has shown that he's very important and when you play the way he does, you're allowed to speak up and that's something he's embraced."