Phil Thompson: Blackhawks need to get back to their grind -- or they'll be grounded

CHICAGO — This feels different.

The Chicago Blackhawks have had losing streaks before their current five-game skid. They’ve even had gut-wrenching losses before Tuesday’s very visible trouncing in the Winter Classic.

It’s not just that they’re losing. It’s how they’re losing.

The few positives they could rely on now look like negatives.

The once-solid defense has become a sieve, giving up at least four goals in the last five games and six goals in three of them.

Goalie Petr Mrázek looks like he has lost his mojo since returning from a groin injury.

The shutdown penalty kill has given up three goals in the last two games.

An offense that looked like it could turn the corner has produced 12 goals during the five-game losing streak — and only eight at even strength, a 1.6 average.

Lukas Reichel, once the team’s role model for making the most of his fourth-line role, has been benched, symbolic of how thoroughly the season has run off course.

And Anders Sorensen, who temporarily enjoyed the interim-coach bump, now sees his team down in the dumps, perhaps at a lower point mentally than it ever was under Luke Richardson. Sorensen gave the Hawks hope, only to see it snatched away — by their own hands.

To put it into perspective, the San Jose Sharks were mired in an eight-game winless streak before beating the Tampa Bay Lightning, 2-1, on Thursday — and even they are four points ahead of the Hawks in the standings.

For all of the Hawks’ efforts to escape the rebuilding phase, it keeps sucking them back in like a black hole.

“A lot of thoughts run through your head,” center Jason Dickinson said. “You wonder, ‘What’s going on? What can I do more of? How can I help move this along?’ Because you felt like things were changing and now, all of a sudden, it feels worse than it ever has.

“It’s probably because there was hope, there was a reason to be excited about what we were doing, and all of a sudden, it’s now been three embarrassing losses. I don’t know what the answer is exactly, but I just try to show up and put in the work and lead by example and hope that the results come. Because it’s always been in my head that the process is just as important as the outcome.”

But the process is where it always gets muddy for the Hawks.

They can articulate what they need to do, but they just can’t — or won’t — do it consistently. They may find a magic formula for a few games before letting it slip through their grasp like sand.

“We’ve got to be honest with ourselves,” winger Pat Maroon said. “We’ve all got to look at ourselves in the mirror. We’re not where we want to be.

“We’re hurting ourselves, and I don’t know why. … It’s unacceptable.”

The Hawks can’t seem to reconcile who they really are. They have, on paper, a lot of good role players. They don’t have a wealth of highly skilled speed players.

They can’t run around like the Colorado Avalanche or Edmonton Oilers. Maroon said the Hawks are chasing offense, “and when you chase offense, you’re turning pucks over more, you’re playing defense more.”

“We’ve got to come together as a group,” he said, “and find a way to just go back to the simple brand of hockey, which is competing, pucks in, work hard, shot-scramble game, compete in the D-zone. I think we will find success more like that.”

Dickinson agreed with Maroon, particularly on the shot-scramble approach, in which you get shots on net quickly and often and hope the scramble around the net can create openings.

“You start chasing it in the sense that you try to do one extra move or hold on to it one second longer instead of maybe making a simple, boring play that leads to extended O-zone time that leads to more offense throughout all lines,” Dickinson said. “It’s a fine line of doing too much and having success doing it, or doing too much and turning pucks over and it becoming a bit of a track race.”

Here’s where accepting what kind of team you are and what kinds of players you have comes in.

“You watch all the best players (in the league) that put up the most points, that score goals — they hang on to the puck that extra second longer,” Dickinson said. “They cut to the middle. They challenge a guy one-on-one. Once you beat a guy in the NHL, things open up (for the offense).

“It makes sense that you want to make those plays … but the reality is some of us don’t have that in our bag. I’ll speak for myself, I’m not trying to beat a guy one-on-one. I’m going to go two-on-one with a linemate so I can create space.”

Dickinson said no progress can be made until the Hawks do the work in the film room and admit: “This is what’s killing us and this is what’s not putting pucks in the net for us. Look at it, clear as day — ‘This is what’s going on’ — and then let’s work on it.”

Offense is only part of the equation. Dickinson pointed to the puck battles the Hawks are losing in the corners of the defensive zone, and he’s not the first to mention those as the culprit.

“That leads to point shots that leads to not blocking shots that leads to rebounds in front that leads to goals,” he said. “We talked about it after Minnesota. Somebody asked me about a freebie for (Kirill) Kaprizov.”

In that Dec. 23 game, the Hawks gave up a “gimme” goal when a puck trickled back door to the Wild’s Kaprizov, who had a wide-open net as Hawks defensemen Nolan Allan and Seth Jones and goalie Arvid Söderblom ganged up on Marco Rossi on the other side.

“Same thing that happened in the Winter Classic,” Dickinson said. “(The Blues) had one off the post, freebie on the back door. Another one, rebound in front, freebie back door.

“It’s not on our D-men completely that they’re not picking up the guy because there’s a bunch of breakdowns that lead to why they’re either outmanned at the front or unable to pick up a guy.”

Sorensen has harped on puck battles and drilled on that in practice this week. Asked about the mood of the team, he said: “I don’t think anybody’s out there cheering around and happy. … It’s a new day, so let’s get up on the horse and go.”

Sorensen said “the compete level needs to be better” on both ends of the ice.

It’s all about possession. You have to win possession to score. You lose possession, you’re on defense. And if you’re on defense for too long, mistakes happen.

“That was a big thing last game” against the Blues, Sorensen said. “If you look at the chances, they were even five-on-five.”

According to naturalstattrick.com, the Hawks actually had a 21-17 advantage in scoring chances in the 6-2 loss to the Blues. They had an 11-9 edge in high-danger chances.

However, “they scored four of their goals around our net and we had zero around their net,” Sorensen said. “That’s what the game boils down to.”

Underscored by the call-up of power forward Colton Dach on Thursday, the Hawks have to embrace their identity as grinders — and stick with it this time. Play smart, “grind-time” hockey, as Maroon put it, no matter how plodding and patience-taxing it can be.

“We’ve got to get back to a simple brand (of hockey),” he said, “predictability and just going to work and winning 50-50 battles.”