In Chicago, Pyotr Kochetkov made 27 saves for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 3-0 shutout of the Blackhawks on Monday night.
“Pyotr made a lot of great saves tonight,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “He really kept us, I don’t want to say in the game. We didn’t have to panic. A real huge performance by him. He was dialed in. They had a lot of good looks. You can kind of tell with a goalie, he was already there, even with a couple of backdoor plays. He was solid. You’ve got to give him a lot of credit. I don’t think we were great after the first little while, but we were good enough, and he was great.”
It was Kochetkov’s first career NHL shutout.
Carolina improved to 10-5-1.
Jordan Martinook and Jordan Staal staked the Canes to a 2-0 lead in the first period.
“‘Burnsie’s’ obviously a shooter, but I gave him such a bad pass that he couldn’t shoot it, so he gave it back to me reluctantly,” Staal said. “I got a little opening there, and obviously a seeing-eye (shot) with [Jesper Fast] doing a great job screening, and fortunate enough to get in.”
Chicago dropped to 6-6-3.
“It’s frustrating because I thought we played OK in the first, and we’re getting used to a team that pressures like that,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “We haven’t really had that lately. We have to get accustomed to that. We have ‘D’ playing more minutes now than maybe they’re used to playing, and they’re put under the gun even more against a good skating, strong team. I thought we weathered that storm pretty good in the first period and played OK.”
The Hawks were scoreless in four power play chances.
“I think we just need to maybe stick with our process and keep improving on that and not worry about the results,” Chicago captain Jonathan Toews said. “When they come, they come in bunches. You can’t force it. I think we’re making good plays and getting chances, and we’re just relaxing with the puck and playing hard without it and giving each other options and things just kind of develop, but when they go in, we tend to focus a little bit too much on the fact that we’re not producing and not getting the results. We’ve just got to stick with it. There’s a lot of good there.”
Andrei Svechnikov hit for a marker in the second period for the 3-0 final.
“Oh, it’s huge,” Svechnikov said. “I think he’s going to be a star in this league for a long time, especially for our team. Obviously, [the shutout is] nice, and it gets his confidence even bigger. He’s a great goalie, for sure.”
Petr Mrazek made 29 saves in the Chicago loss.
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