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After falling to Wild Card spot, ‘Hawks need to match Jets’ desperation

Chicago Blackhawks v New York Rangers

Jonathan Toews

Getty Images

For most of the campaign, losing three out of four games is bad, but not dramatically so. With just a couple weeks left in the regular season though, every loss is amplified and with the Minnesota Wild surging, that slump has caused Chicago to slide out of third place in the Central Division.

The Blackhawks want to undo that damage, but in order to accomplish that they have to beat a Winnipeg Jets squad fighting tooth and nail to clinch a postseason berth.

“They’ve been the ones playing the more desperate style of hockey. Tonight there’s no excuse,” Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews told CSN Chicago. “You’re going to see that type of effort from both teams and we especially have to be prepared to bring that out of ourselves.”

Toews doesn’t think that the Blackhawks are suffering from a negative trends within their game itself, but he does feel like their preparation has been insufficient. In each of Chicago’s last three losses, the squad found itself behind within the first 10 minutes of the game.

Blackhawks forward Andrew Shaw thinks the solution involves going back to their roots.

“That’s how we’ve had success, playing Blackhawks hockey: playing hard, playing with two hands, sticking to our systems and putting pucks in the net,” said Shaw.

Which is appropriate because as problematic as this slump has been given how late we are in the regular season, a team with as much playoff experience as Chicago knows how much worse it would have been if this cold streak had come just a few weeks later.

Follow @RyanDadoun