KANATA, Ontario — The Blackhawks have been hammered by bad news and bad results over the last two weeks, and the hailstorm didn’t let up Saturday.
Frank Nazar will miss about four weeks after suffering a facial injury in the Hawks’ 6-4 loss to the Senators, coach Jeff Blashill said. That leaves the team without its top two centers — and arguably its top two forwards — for the time being.
Nazar took a shot from Senators defenseman Jordan Spence to the right cheek five minutes into the first period and skated directly to the locker room, bleeding and cursing. Later, Blashill said Nazar “got hit right in the face” but avoided specifying if it was a jaw injury.
Frank Nazar takes a puck to the face and goes straight to the dressing room pic.twitter.com/d9ttxYDDI9
— BHF (@BlackhawksFocus) December 20, 2025
Without both Nazar and Connor Bedard, who has been ruled out until at least early January, the decimated Hawks somehow scraped out four goals. Rookie Ryan Greene stepped up as the de facto No. 1 center, playing a career-high 22:46 and tallying two assists, and Ilya Mikheyev snapped a long drought with two goals.
But the Hawks still got handily outplayed in their fifth consecutive loss, their fourth consecutive without Bedard and their 13th in their last 16 games overall. They’ve fallen back into the basement of the NHL -standings.
Blashill said he was “disappointed,” and he very much looked discouraged.
“One of the things that leads to consistency is depth, so our depth is getting -tested,” Blashill said. “Guys in those roles have to ultimately play at a higher level. As you play more minutes in more important roles, you’ve got to play that much better. It’s a challenge. It’s not easy. That’s why you have so much respect for the guys that do that night in and night out.
“As a group, we need to get more out of more guys. We’ve talked about that. We’ll continue to talk about that.”
Just as they did Thursday against the Canadiens, the Hawks kept the game tied into the second intermission — battling back from three one-goal deficits during a bizarre second period — before capitulating.
David Perron gave the Senators the lead for good with 18:15 to play, and the Sens outshot the Hawks 18-3 in the third period.
The Hawks’ sloppiness with the puck, unsteadiness on their skates and poor defensive angles — which allowed the Senators to -easily skate around them over and over — eventually caught up to them.
For those reasons, the Hawks yet again didn’t give backup goalie Arvid Soderblom much help, but Soderblom yet again wasn’t sharp, either, allowing six goals on 40 shots — including a backbreaking goal by Fabian Zetterlund with 3:50 left that he should’ve stopped.
General manager Kyle Davidson defended Soderblom’s play and role Friday, but the ugly truth is he has allowed 29 goals in his last five starts.
The one bit of positive news for the Hawks was Nick Lardis’ first NHL goal — a pretty backhand shot past Senators goalie Leevi Merilainen in the third period — but even that felt relatively meaningless compared to the crushing weight of so much bad news.
“It was a pretty special moment, obviously,” Lardis said. “[It was a] great play by [Alex Vlasic] to get the puck to the net. One of my strengths is being at the right spots at the right times in the offensive zone.”
Lardis’ playing time in an unusual fourth-line role was low: 8:17. Blashill argued that ice time and developmental value aren’t perfectly correlated, but he conceded that usage might not be “ideal” for the latter objective.
The Hawks return from this disastrous Canadian trip with one home game left (Tuesday against the Flyers) before the NHL holiday break.
The break is much needed, but the Hawks probably wish it was a lot longer than just three days. Their confidence, which reached new heights in October and early November, has cratered.