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BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 The cliche of \u201cnot being ready to play\u201d gets used in hockey too often without much meaning.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the early 1900s, when some NHL players actually did have second jobs. Realistically, every team is ready to play every night. They\u2019ve practiced, stretched, done extensive video prep and hashed out a game plan. It\u2019s just the execution, the work ethic or the attention to detail that is sometimes missing.<\/p>\n
But the Blackhawks on Friday looked as unready to play as any 21st-century NHL team ever will. They conceded four goals in the first period of a 6-2 blowout loss to the lowly Sabres, who had dropped 13 of 14 coming in. It was \u201cugly,\u201d forward Taylor Hall said \u2014 twice.<\/p>\n
![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/cdn.forumcomm.com\/dims4\/default\/df3c054\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4170x2780+171+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F69%2F6a%2F5182f13bfa79787e02b7184f7880%2Ftag-reuters.com%2C2024%3Abinary_MTZXEKCS6IP4EC-FILEDIMAGE\")
The NHL\u2019s holiday travel rules did the Hawks no favors, but the fact they seemingly forgot how to play hockey for 20 minutes cannot be blamed on outside factors. Their defensive-zone coverage and rush sorting was laughably discombobulated, and their neutral-zone turnovers were laughably frequent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t come ready to play today, and it obviously showed right from the start,\u201d defenseman Seth Jones said predictably.<\/p>\n
Said Hall: \u201cWith the day that we had, it was imperative for us to be simple and play hard and at least get our legs under us. You blink and it\u2019s 4-0. It\u2019s unacceptable. We put Petr [Mrazek] in a really tough spot. … It\u2019s just really disappointing after a break. Everyone should be mentally fresh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dec. 27 tends to be a wacky day every year since the NHL doesn\u2019t allow travel on Dec. 26, the final day of the holiday break. Some teams come out of the break rejuvenated, others rusty. The Hawks \u2014 and the other seven teams who played on the road Friday \u2014 all had to fly out around 6 a.m. and bus directly to morning skate upon landing in their destinations.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s hardly an all-encompassing excuse, though. The Maple Leafs, who were actually fined $100,000 by the NHL in 2022 for bending the holiday travel rules, flew into Detroit on Friday and bashed the fresh-off-a-coaching-change Red Wings 5-2. Most other traveling teams struggled, but not as egregiously as the Hawks, who were outshot 11-2 in the first period and 35-17 overall.<\/p>\n
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Switching goalies to Arvid Soderblom and shuffling the defensive pairings at the first intermission halted the onslaught, and the Hawks even clawed back a sliver of hope when Seth Jones trimmed the deficit to 4-2 early in the third period. But then Soderblom allowed a backbreaking and extremely soft goal to Sabres forward Alex Tuch, who later completed a hat trick.<\/p>\n
Young defenseman Alex Vlasic, a stalwart most nights, delivered arguably his worst performance of the season, but he was far from the only victim. T.J. Brodie\u2019s problems also noticeably continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were so many things that we did wrong and so many things to clean up, but overall it was our compete [level that was lacking],\u201d Hall added. \u201cWe had so many stick checks and fly-bys. They could do whatever they want. I don\u2019t know how many hits we even had.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hawks\u2019 absurd road woes from last season \u2014 during which they endured a 22-game road losing streak that stretched nearly four months and finished 7-32-2 outside of Chicago \u2014 seemed potentially resolved early this season when they started 4-4-1 on the road.<\/p>\n
Since then, however, they\u2019re a miserable 1-10-1 on the road, beating only the Rangers on Dec. 9. They\u2019ve lost five straight road games in regulation, including three in the past week to cancel out the good done by their three-game home winning streak.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll head into Detroit on Jan. 10 with just one road win in more than two months \u2014 a statistic suddenly reminiscent of last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NHL’s travel rules did the Hawks no favors Friday, but the team looked utterly unready to play in a 6-2 defeat \u2014 during which they fell behind 4-0 in the first period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chicago-blackhawks","category-nfl","category-san-francisco-49ers"],"yoast_head":"\n