The Blackhawks-Stars game Friday became the 50th game in NHL history to head to a shootout tied 0-0.
But for the Hawks, it was the first such game ever. It was also their first game with zero total goals since a 0-0 tie against the Coyotes in January 2003, before the shootout era.
The team’s third sellout crowd of the season — the announced attendance was 19,845 — thus witnessed a one-of-a-kind night in franchise history, a game somehow simultaneously the most boring and the most memorable possible.
“I’ll take a lot of those games,” interim coach Derek King said after the 1-0 shootout loss. “Obviously, our guys aren’t happy about that, because they want to score goals. But that’s a really good hockey team and we took them to the end. It could’ve gone either way. I was really happy with our performance. It was a good rebound for us.”
Marc-Andre Fleury became the 36th goalie to record a shutout and a loss decision in the same game, although Henrik Lundqvist, Mike Smith, Brian Elliott and Steve Mason have somehow already done that three times each.
The fact the Hawks hadn’t even been in that situation before was actually somewhat surprising. They’d headed to overtime tied 0-0 five times before in the shootout era, including four times between March 2015 and December 2016.
But all five times, someone scored in overtime to provide the game’s lone goal. Jonathan Toews’ first two goals of the 2015-16 season were actually both 1-0 overtime winners in consecutive games against the Lightning and Ducks.
That trend finally snapped Friday, despite plenty of chances for both teams in an admittedly exciting, back-and-forth overtime. Five of the game’s 14 total high-danger scoring chances occurred in overtime, with a number of near-misses and squandered two-on-one rushes. And that allowed history to be made.
Friday’s game also featured several other notable, if easily overlooked, statistical anomalies and overlooked oddities.
The first period had only one commercial break, as the under-10 and under-six breaks never happened due to a lack of stoppages and other technicalities. The 20 minutes on the clock took only 26 real-time minutes to complete.
Jake McCabe’s sixth-round shootout attempt made him the first Hawks defenseman to appear in a shootout since Michal Rozsival and Nick Leddy both went in 2013. He’s the seventh defenseman in franchise history to do so.
“We did a little shootout game [in practice this week, and McCabe] went down and scored a couple of goals,” King said, justifying the decision. “I’m like, ‘You know what, if we’re getting [to the fourth] round and going, I might call on you.’ He was like, ‘Really?'”
“I was hot this week in shootouts, so King gave me the chance,” McCabe said. “I thought I made a pretty good shot, but the goalie got his knob [of his stick] on it, so it’s unfortunate that one didn’t go in.”
The Hawks deployed a line where a winger (Sam Lafferty) took faceoffs instead of the center (Kirby Dach), as well.
That’s a rarely seen concept, but it was arguably surprising it took the Hawks this long to try it, considering Dach’s extreme faceoff woes. The strategy worked, too, as Lafferty won seven of 12 draws while Dach lost his only one.
Now heading into Sunday’s game against the high-flying Panthers, the Hawks have lost six consecutive games at the United Center, their eighth-longest home losing streak ever. Losses Sunday and next Friday (against the Devils) would make the ignominious streak tied for their longest since 1947.
Note: Stars captain Jamie Benn was fined $5,000 by the NHL on Saturday for unsportsmanlike conduct after spraying the face of MacKenzie Entwistle with his water bottle Friday as Entwistle skated off for a concussion check.