DETROIT — Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill struck a relatively positive tone after many of his team’s first eight losses this season, sometimes to a surprising degree considering what the games looked like.
But after the ninth loss — a 4-1 defeat Thursday against the Red Wings that was more lopsided than the score suggested — there was no positive rhetoric to be found.
“We’ve had a lot of games throughout this season where we did a lot of good things and maybe beat ourselves with critical mistakes,” Blashill said. “Tonight, to me, wasn’t that at all. It’s a step backwards. Because you just had too many guys that weren’t skating, didn’t compete hard enough or [didn’t have] enough attention to detail.”
The result kept the Hawks winless on the road (0-5) and squandered their hopes of building momentum from what might’ve been their best team-wide performance Tuesday against the Kings.
Maybe the Hawks were still bloated from a festive dinner Wednesday that kicked off the team’s biennial “dad’s trip.” Maybe the Red Wings were extra motivated to prove they don’t need Dylan Larkin after the latest dramatic twist in his trade-request saga.
Or maybe the Hawks as currently constructed — and/or as currently coached — have no chance of sustaining success. The answer remains to be seen. But there was plenty of hand-wringing in the locker room.
“Overall, it was a pretty poor effect,” Ian Cole said. “All of us expected to use Tuesday’s game to springboard us into a string of good play. It was pretty unfortunate we did what we did tonight.”
Wings goal: Arvidsson pushes in his second of the game. pic.twitter.com/ESV8Sel9N8
— BHF (@BlackhawksFocus) October 30, 2026
Patrick Kane’s son Trick was at Little Caesar’s Arena for his dad’s strangely emotional welcome back to Detroit — coming less than three years after his extremely emotional, memorable welcome back to Chicago — but Kane followed that up with a poor night on the ice.
The Wings outshot the Hawks 10-4 and outscored them 2-0 during Kane’s five-on-five ice time, and his seventh minor penalty of the season led to the Wings’ go-ahead power-play goal early in the third period.
Kane said “pretty much everything” went wrong and acknowledged he needs to cut down on his penalties.
“[It] seems like a lot of them are [me] trying to lift a stick and either getting caught in the hands or high-sticking,” he said. “I’ll be better in that area.”