It’s well known in hockey that special team’s performance is an important ingredient for success. If a team has a good power play and can convert often on the man advantage, they’re more likely to win. Conversely, if they can keep other teams from scoring by having a strong penalty kill, this will also lead to more success.
For the Chicago Blackhawks, special teams are an area of focus as they try to develop and grow into a better squad. But headed into the Olympic break, their power play is in a pretty big slump. Meanwhile, their penalty kill is an area of strength. Let’s look at both, in an effort to determine how they can improve in the one area and stay the course in the other.
Blackhawks’ Power Play Slump
The Blackhawks started the year pretty strong on the power play, and then went through some inevitable ebbs and flows as the season progressed. It was enough, however, to have them currently ranked 17th in the league, right in the middle of the pack.
But the team currently hasn’t scored on the power play in the last eight games, having gone 0-for-22 in that span. Ahead of the game against the Florida Panthers on Jan. 25, head coach Jeff Blashill admitted this was a sore spot.
It (the power play) hasn’t felt dangerous either. Sometimes you just don’t score. Not to say we haven’t had any chances, but it hasn’t felt dangerous enough. Last game, Tampa’s been near the top of the league in their kill all year. They won the battle in the sense that they didn’t give us much. I think some of it is confidence. Is there adjustments we can make? We know it’s got to get going again. Sometimes it’s confidence. We’ll keep working at it.
It’s safe to say the Blackhawks have also missed Teuvo Teravainen’s presence on the man advantage. He’s been sidelined with an upper body injury he sustained on Jan. 12 while playing the Edmonton Oilers. The 31-year-old missed six games before returning to the lineup on Jan. 27 versus the Minnesota Wild.
Teravainen is currently third on the team (behind Tyler Bertuzzi and Connor Bedard) with four goals and 11 points on the power play. He’s so good at distributing the puck and is such a great playmaker, his absence could be part of the missing piece right now.
Related – Teuvo Teravainen Comes Full Circle With Blackhawks’ Young Group
Let’s also remember that Bedard was out of the lineup from Dec. 12 through Jan. 9 (shoulder injury), and Frank Nazar was out from Dec. 20 to Jan. 22 (broken jaw). That’s two other integral members of the power play who missed some time.
Ahead of the Blackhawks’ game against the Wild on Jan. 27, Blashill did adjust the top power play unit to include the newly returned Teravainen. He also moved Bedard back over to the left side, where he played earlier in the season. Blashill expanded on this before the game.
The power play got a little stale, and I don’t think it’s created momentum either. It’s one thing to score, but I don’t think it’s created momentum. So we get him (Bedard) over to that side (left). He’s definitely been very good going downhill on his on his normal side (right). But I think he’s got the potential to be great on the other side as well. And so let’s get him over there and kind of give him a look and see how that see how the power play goes that way.
Power Play Unit 1: Bertuzzi Bedard-Teravainen-Moore Levshunov
Power Play Unit 2: Foligno Burakovsky-Donato-Nazar Grzelcyk
Blashill also moved Andre Burakovsky and Nazar down to the second unit and Oliver Moore to the top unit. Presumably, this deployment provides more of a balance between the two units.
The above power play deployment did seem to help against the Wild. In this game, the Blackhawks received five power play opportunities and recorded a hefty 11 shots on goal in that time. Unfortunately, none of them went in. But Blashill was pleased with the PP performance for the night,
No doubt, I thought it was better. I thought we had more chances. I think we’ve walked away from other days where it just didn’t feel as dangerous at all. And I thought we had a good number of chances. But when you have, I think we had five (power play opportunities), and you have a four-on-three in over time, you got to find a way to score.
Those are differences in winning and losing games. And so we got to get that thing back going at a good level like it has been at different times this year. But I do think, from a process standpoint, we’re gonna look and we’re gonna say, we probably had six chances on the power play. Well, if you have six chances on the power play for a night, you’re doing good things. We just gotta find a way to repeat that.
The Blackhawks certainly got plenty of practice with their new power play units! Like Blashill said, now they just have to find a way to capitalize on those chances.
Blackhawks’ Penalty Kill on Fire
Meanwhile, the Blackhawks penalty kill is thriving. They were on a streak from Jan. 1 to Jan. 12, a span of seven games, where they killed 16 straight penalties. They’re currently on another streak, having killed 12 penalties in the last five games (running through the contest versus the Wild on Jan. 27).
Related – Blackhawks’ News & Rumors: Teravainen, Lardis & Mother’s Trip
Blashill implemented a more aggressive PK system at the beginning of the season, one that had been utilized with the Tampa Bay Lightning when he was the assistant coach there. Ryan Greene recently described this system in the simplest of terms.
We’ve been doing the same penalty kill all year. I think over time we’ve gotten more comfortable in it. And obviously it involves a lot of pressure, heavy pressure. We like to put teams on their heels a little bit and not give them too much time to make plays. So I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job with it.
Blashill indicated at the beginning of the season that it might take some time for the players to get used to this new system. But he also felt he had the right players for it. In early December the Blackhawks were ranked fifth in the league on the penalty kill. At that time, the coach gave all the credit to the players.
I think anytime on any special team unit starts with players. You have to have really good players that are good at what they do. And I think we have some really, really good penalty killers, starting with Spencer (Knight) and the D-core. You know, you look at Murph (Connor Murphy) and Crevier (Louis). They’re so long, they know how to kill. On the left side Vlas (Alex Vlasic) and Kais (Wyatt Kaiser) do a great job up front. Just a number of really good killers. Sometimes Mikheyev (Ilya) is like a one-man machine out there, just disrupting plays.
So we’ve got really good penalty killers that have bought into the system. But the system is less important than the buy in. They’ve bought in, and they’re doing a really good job.
At the time of this writing, the Blackhawks currently rank first in the league on the PK with a 85.5% success rate. (24 goals allowed on 166 tries). They also boast four shorthanded goals (the league high being seven), tallied by Jason Dickinson, Ilya Mikheyev, Louis Crevier and Nazar.
a shorthanded goal to open the scoring✅ pic.twitter.com/RjdXY3AQa2
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) January 23, 2026
Of course you don’t want to play with fire. Limiting taking penalties in the first place is still a priority. But when inevitable infractions do occur, the Blackhawks can feel very comfortable with their kill. As Landon Slaggert said, “I think you just got to keep limiting their time and space and putting pressure on them. And it seems like, yeah, it does work in our favor.”
If the Blackhawks can keep this up, the penalty kill can certainly be an advantage to them down the stretch.
Related – Blackhawks Earned 3 Huge Points in Back-to-Back Despite Losses to Panthers & Wild
The Blackhawks only have four more games before the Olympic break. When they return in late February, there will be 25 contests left in the regular season. One could almost look at it as a mini season within the season.
It’s still too soon to talk about playoff hopes, but the Blackhawks will certainly be trying to put their best foot forward down the stretch, in the name of further growth and development. If they can improve on the power play and maintain their strong penalty kill, that will undoubtedly lend towards more success.
