TAKEAWAYS: Blackhawks Fall Behind Early in Loss to Devils 

As the Chicago Blackhawks try to find another victory, the team’s struggle with turnovers continue to prevail in Sunday’s 4-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils. 

Taylor Hall secured his second goal of the season early in the first period to put the Blackhawks on the board first, but some turnovers early on gave the Devils an advantage to take the lead in the first period. 

“I know we're trying to make plays and trying to score but this kind of hurt us all year,” Seth Jones said. “Odd man rushes against and, you know, it’s good league and it’s going to end up in back in the net.”

Late in the third period, Ryan Donato cut the Devils’ lead by a goal to try and help create an offensive spark. However, it still wouldn’t be enough as New Jersey increased its’ lead with an empty net goal to finalize the results. 

Head coach Luke Richardson noticed that once the Devils scored on the power play, then his team began to lose their energy once again. While Richardson understood that it made be easy to feel the struggles of a back-to-back matchup but would have liked to see the players use as a motivation tool. 

“I think fatigue really showed in our team today, and in the decision making, and just overall sloppy play,” Richardson said. “It took us a while, I think, to get back on track, but we pushed at the end of the period.” 

Following the contest, veteran leadership agreed to have a meeting with the players to focus on where things might have gone wrong in not only Sunday’s game but over the first few weeks of the season. 

Instead of placing the blame on a certain play, they all noticed a common theme of not playing as an actual team and creating a bond to rely on each other.

“The more that we can rely on each other, the more you can grow as a team,” Donato said. “Tonight, it hurt a little bit and a lot of the things that we preach, we didn't do, and it came back to bite us.”

As the Blackhawks look to head back on the road to face the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers, Corey Perry stated that now they need to find the energy they built on Saturday night to fix some of their consistency struggles. 

“It's definitely disappointing when you play like we did last night and you came out here tonight,” Perry said. “We played well for some parts, but again, we didn't put a full 60 minutes together and there's some things we can work on, and we talked about, and we'll get better.”