The Blackhawks’ sellout Saturday crowd of 20,075 was allowed to enter the United Center four hours before warmups for an in-arena “bar crawl.”
The beer turned out to be necessary.
Once the game began, the sober Hawks delivered easily their most pathetic performance in season full of those, losing 8-5 to the Kraken after surrendering six goals on seven shots in the game’s first 14 minutes.
The Kraken scored five of those goals in a span of 3:41, the third-fastest stretch by a visiting team in NHL history. Starting goalie Petr Mrazek saved one of five shots, becoming just the 11th goalie since 1970 to finish with a save percentage at or below .200 (but above .000), and replacement Alex Stalock promptly allowed goals on the first two shots he faced.
At that point, the intoxicated crowd began giving standing ovations and cheering wildly for every ensuing save, establishing an embarrassing yet comical new low (or high) point in this Hawks season.
The Hawks added a number of meaningless late goals, but still moved back into last place in the NHL at the season’s halfway point thanks to the Blue Jackets’ win over the Red Wings,
Discussions soon
General manager Kyle Davidson said he hasn’t yet met with Patrick Kane — who returned from injury Saturday — and Jonathan Toews to discuss the upcoming March 3 trade deadline, but he expects to do so within a “couple weeks.”
Kane made an interesting comment Saturday that Lukas Reichel is “hopefully…a guy I can play with in the future.”
As far as other trade conversations, Davidson said he’s making “general calls on what we’re looking to do” — and other teams are, too — but specifics aren’t being hashed out.