The Chicago Blackhawks continued their road trip in the south. After beating the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday, they had a tilt with another Eastern Conference power in the Carolina Hurricanes.
This was supposed to be a revenge game for Taylor Hall as he was scheduled to play the Blackhawks for the first time since being traded. However, both Hall and Hurricanes top center Sebastian Aho were late scratches due to illness.
The Hurricanes opened the scoring late in the first period (16:57) when Seth Jarvis scored a short-handed goal. The Blackhawks found a way to go to the intermission tied though as Ilya Mikheyev scored at 18:38. It was a great response to the bad goal against.
At 4:52 of the second period, Mikko Rantanen scored his first goal as a member of the Hurricanes. One minute later (5:59), Jaccob Slavin made it 3-1. For a team as offensively challenged as the Blackhawks, that felt like a hill too steep to climb.
Connor Bedard made things interesting in the third period by scoring again to get his team within one. He has been on fire lately as this goal extended his point streak to four games.
The Blackhawks, to their credit, had a couple of late chances to tie it but they were unable to get the job done.
Mikheyev and Bedard, the two goal scorers, were flying out there in Raleigh but the rest of the team was unable to come up with enough to win the game.
Chicago will close out this trip on Saturday afternoon against the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. To say that would be a big challenge for the Blackhawks would be an understatement but they beat them at United Center back on November 21st. We’ll see if they can replicate that energy in Sunrise.
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