There’s an elephant in the Blackhawks’ room right now. Everyone is dancing around it and doesn’t want to say the quiet part out loud, but the entire world know it.

Seth Jones is playing terrible hockey.

Last night, down three in the second period, the Blackhawks were handed a five-minute power play. They got one quick goal early in the advantage. When Jones offered up this “effort” and the Flames scored a short-handed goal it extinguished any momentum for Chicago. And it was another terrible look from a guy who’s been fighting an uphill climb in Chicago since he arrived.

Seth Jones' turnover leads to the Flames' fifth goal, a shorthanded one. pic.twitter.com/N1nVCEXLF8

— Scott Powers (@ByScottPowers) January 14, 2025

The turnover is compounded by the watching of an opponent going the other way without any pressure at all. Again: this is worse than what got Philipp Kurashev benched.

Let’s take a step back from the one ugly moment that ended the Blackhawks’ prayers last night. Here’s the full box score (courtesy ESPN.com so you get a lot of categories split by position group):

You know what I notice?

• Shots on goal: at least one from every defenseman but Seth Jones.
• Blocked shots: at least two from every defenseman but Seth Jones.
• Plus-Minus: nobody was worse a minus-two… but Seth Jones.

I don’t know where his two hits came from in the third period, but he was an assist away from an empty box score outside of his minus-four.

Say what you will about young guys like Wyatt Kaiser and Louis Crevier maybe being out of position or playing timid at times. They’re still trying to make up for it in other areas like making a hit or blocking a shot.

According to Natural Stat Trick, since Jones returned from his foot injury on Dec. 21 he has been on the ice for a league-worst 16 goals against at 5-on-5. In 11 games since coming back, he has an Expected Goals Against of 11.87 — second worst in the entire NHL (behind Nikita Zadorov at 12.08). Among all NHL players who have skated at least 175 minutes since Dec. 21, Jones’ Corsi For percentage of 39.39 is the worst in the NHL, edging Jacob Trouba — who the Rangers gave away for effectively nothing a few weeks ago (and he was their captain).

Time for Accountability

Last night after the game, the media request to speak with Jones. He was not made available. We were told he would be in the room after the Winter Classic and he wasn’t there, either.

Interim head coach Anders Sorensen was asked about the tough stretch of play for Jones since returning from his injury last night. “What can [Jones] do to respond from this?”

“I think we all have to do some looking inwards, right?” Sorensen answered. “It’s not just him. I think it’s all of us. Just to get this back on track, what do we all need to do individually? Right? That’s probably the biggest thing right now, including us as a staff and as a group. The only way through this is going to be as a group.”

Is Jones still dealing with any issues with the foot?

“I mean it should be fine. He hasn’t said differently, right? At least not from anything of my information at least. So he says he’s fine.”

Does Sorensen think Jones might need a “reset” like Taylor Hall got earlier this year (read: healthy scratch)?

“I mean we want him on the ice too, right? We want him with the group. So it’s something we haven’t really discussed that yet.”

Well, maybe it’s time to talk about it.

Taylor Hall is a former league MVP. He was scratched earlier this season.

We’re frequently reminded that Pat Maroon is a walking ticket to the Stanley Cup Final. He’s been a healthy scratch in the last week.

Ryan Donato works his ass off and puts it out there on every shift and he was a healthy scratch earlier this season.

Guys with pedigree have been scratched. Guys who play the game the right way have been scratched.

Again, Kurashev got himself stapled back to the seats in the press box after his terrible return to the lineup. When asked about his performance after that game, Sorensen simply said it “wasn’t good enough” and then sent him upstairs for the next TBD number of games.

What message is Sorensen sending to the players if a guy like Kurashev gets punted to the press box for being bad but Jones gets to keep rolling out there on the top power play unit and penalty kill?

What message is the front office sending to the players if former MVPs and multi-time Stanley Cup champions have to take a seat when they aren’t good enough but the guy making $9.5M gets a pass when he’s been bad for (checks notes) more than three weeks?

I wrote earlier this morning about the young players in the organization coming up with a lot of previous championships and having been in positions of leadership. That’s great. But what you don’t want is friction in the room or a sense of entitlement.

And what you really don’t want is a 19-year-old who we’ve been told is the future of the league looking like his dog ran away after a game in mid-January because his team sucks and there are no answers for how to make it not be so terrible.

Seth Jones hasn’t been good. In fact, he’s been bad. He knows it. Everyone in the face of the planet knows it. At some point, there needs to be accountability for recurring issues that should be easy to fix with a player of his alleged ability.