Chicago needs to tighten up its defense
--The Blackhawks have held several meetings and film sessions to address their defensive positioning recently. They entered Saturday's matchup against the Coyotes allowing 3.00 goals per game, which is only better than the Blue Jackets in the Western Conference. While poor goaltending is one factor, the Hawks say they've left their goalies too vulnerable in too many instances. They are allowing opponents to get off free shots and they've been caught too deep in their offensive zone, allowing too many breakouts the other way.
"It all works hand in hand," forward Patrick Sharp said. "It's easy to point fingers and blame different parts of our game. But the bottom line is it's our entire game. When we're playing defensively and checking that's when we create offensive chances. You can say we're not scoring a lot lately, but a lot of that is because we're not doing the right things out there."
--The Hawks are still looking for Corey Crawford or Ray Emery to step and take control of the No. 1 job down the stretch. "It has to be better," Quenneville said of his goaltending. Emery was back in goal against the Coyotes Saturday after Crawford got a chance and faltered against the Sharks a day earlier. General manager Stan Bowman has said he's confident in his goaltenders and won't be pursuing one in the trade market despite their struggles. But as the problems persist, it's thought that Bowman will consider looking at the goaltending options on the trade market. Emery made 24 saves Saturday, getting caught out of position on Radim Vrbata's wraparound goal.
QUOTE TO NOTE
"The games we've lost lately were just really tough losses where it's just critical times of games where we're not doing the right things. But tonight we hurt ourselves right off the bat and I don't think we've had to deal with this before in this stretch of games where we haven't won games." -- Coach Joel Quenneville, on what's compounding the losing streak.
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