But so far through five games, Chicago is getting the results under new coach Luke Richardson, the latest a 5-4 come-from-behind victory against the Seattle Kraken at United Center on Sunday.
It was the third straight game the Blackhawks have rallied after trailing 2-0 to win, the first time in their history they have accomplished the feat.
"It's good, you know? The vibe's a little bit different in here," Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane said Saturday. "Luke's done a great job throughout camp and getting a lot of guys on the same page and ready to play and playing simple as well. So it's been a breath of fresh air.
"I think even you look at some of the numbers, we won our second game last year in Game 13? So, you're not giving yourself much room for failure down the stretch when you have a start like that."
Indeed, the 3-2-0 start for the Blackhawks is a far cry from last season, when they made big moves in the offseason with the hopes of making another run at the Stanley Cup, including acquiring defenseman Seth Jones in a trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury from the Vegas Golden Knights, and forward Tyler Johnson from the Tampa Bay Lightning.
However, after beginning that season 1-9-2, the Blackhawks fired coach Jeremy Colliton on Nov. 6. Fleury would then be traded to the Minnesota Wild on March 21, and Chicago finished 28-42-12, 27th in the NHL.
That led the Blackhawks to enter a rebuilding phase this summer, during which they traded forward Alex DeBrincat, who scored 41 goals last season, to the Ottawa Senators on July 7 and forward Kirby Dach, the No. 3 pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, to the Montreal Canadiens the same day.
As a result, the prevailing thought was that the Blackhawks would struggle again this season.
Following Sunday's win against the Kraken, though, Johnson echoed Kane's sentiments regarding the vibe in Chicago's locker room.
"It's a lot more fun this year," he said. "Guys have smiles on their faces. They want to come to the rink every day and compete and work."
Johnson added a big reason for that has been Richardson, who was hired on June 27.
"I think No. 1 is system. I think everyone's playing the right way, playing the style that, you know, he wants us to play," Johnson said.
"When you have everyone on the ice thinking the same way, doing the same thing, that's where teams are made. So that's been huge. Obviously, off the ice, just in our video, already having some fun, you know, being able to kind of come together as a team, even though it's been a short, short time and a lot of new faces, I feel like we're a pretty together team already. And we just got to keep on building."
That means avoiding some of the deficits they've faced early on this season, despite getting the results the past three games.
"They're understanding what they're supposed to be doing on the ice," Richardson said Saturday. "We picked all kind of clips in the neutral zone where we got better at from the beginning of the season until now already, and seems like it's starting to come automatic. And as teams start to prescout us, they'll see it, too, so we're going to have to adjust to that. But I think if we have that base that we talked about at the beginning, it's easy to adjust.
"It's a good start, but a long way to go."
