TAMPA, Fla. — The Blackhawks are still making plenty of mistakes. Goalie Spencer Knight’s torrid streak is covering up some flaws. Luck has broken in their favor lately, too.
But the Hawks also are finding ways to win, which is a skill to some extent. They did so again Thursday, stunning the Lightning 3-2 to extend their point streak to five games. There’s a relentless pursuit of success that hasn’t existed in some time with this franchise.
“That’s something that we’ve built the last few years,” Frank Nazar said. “There’s been some hard times and some good times. But [we’re] learning from losses and mistakes . . . [how] to be able to come out in games like this and understand what it takes to be mature and win.”
Ryan Donato scored his second goal of the game — and his fifth in the last four games — with 54 seconds left in regulation to lift the Hawks to a 4-2-2 record.
Teuvo Teravainen made a great defensive play to strip Lightning star Nikita Kucherov, who was looking for his 1,000th career point after notching two assists, then flipped the puck ahead to Nazar on a break. Donato buried a juicy rebound off Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had been undefeated in 13 career regular-season starts against the Hawks.
“I was a little nervous when it came to me just because it was such an open net and there was so much spin on the puck,” Donato said. “I’m like, ‘If I miss this, I’m going to lose my mind.’
“You’re playing against Kucherov, [Brayden] Point and some of these guys that are going to create offense. It’s a matter of weathering it, and the younger guys are starting to understand that. If you do the hard things right, usually good things happen. And I think that’s what’s happening right now.”
Unbelievable play by Teravainen pic.twitter.com/7CCCLYJ6Ln
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) October 24, 2025
Thousands of red-clad supporters at Benchmark International Arena made up probably the largest gathering of Hawks fans in any road city in years, and their roars for both Donato goals were deafening. There’s buzz around this team right now.
Those fans easily could’ve gone home disappointed, of course. The Lightning are 1-4-2 largely because they’ve been snakebitten, and that trend continued. Knight robbed a bunch of scoring chances (finishing with 29 saves on 31 shots), and the goalposts robbed a few more.
For that reason, from a tactical standpoint, Hawks coach Jeff Blashill will have plenty of constructive criticism to offer during the next video review. Wyatt Kaiser had an uncharacteristically inconsistent showing, Lukas Reichel’s inept defense quickly cost him his latest first-line opportunity and Connor Murphy committed an awful turnover in the third period.
But in terms of mental resilience and determination, the Hawks look strong. That’s radiating from Connor Bedard, who desperately tried to play through a blood-gushing face wound at one point, as well as from Nazar and Knight.
“Like a lot of games we’ve been in, I like how hard we’re playing,” Blashill said. “I thought we worked extremely hard, competed extremely hard. We make some mistakes . . . and when you make mistakes, [Knight] has been great.”
The Hawks still haven’t trailed by multiple goals, and they’ve been tied or leading at every second intermission.
Granted, their 29th rank in team scoring-chance ratio (during five-on-five play) suggests their record might not be totally deserved. But that’s not the way they’re thinking internally.
“We’ve got guys going out there blocking shots, working their tail off to kill those penalties and earn things like that,” Nazar said. “We’ve been in this spot all year, so to keep maturing our game and close out games like that, it’s super rewarding.”
