Milwaukee, Here I Come: Blackhawks vs. Wild preseason preview

Oct 2, 2022 - 4:15 PM

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The Chicago Blackhawks preseason second of a back-to-back against the Minnesota Wild, but the destination is a new one: Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

This isn’t the first time the Blackhawks have participated in an exhibition game at a neutral location — they’ve done preseason in Europe several years and played the St. Louis Blues last preseason at Cable Dahmer Arena in Independence, Missouri — but it’s the first in Wisconsin is almost 30 years.

The preseason so far for Chicago has been very up and down — literally. It started off with a 4-1 loss to St. Louis last Tuesday, followed by a 4-2 win against the Detroit Red Wings Thursday, and then a 3-0 loss last night to Detroit. Perhaps this means the Blackhawks are due for a win, but they’ll definitely need to clean up their turnovers from the last game as well as figure out how to get scoring.

Lineup changes should at least help with the latter part as Patrick Kane and Seth Jones are slated to play Sunday. They are undeniably the biggest offensive catalysts for Chicago’s front and back ends, respectively. Other players like Max Domi, Andreas Athanasiou, and Petr Mrázek are expected to play as well.

Also to note, Chicago made a handful more roster cuts after last night’s game, sending several players to Rockford for the IceHogs training camp or off to the respective juniors teams.

As for the Wild, they’re sending a mixed roster of NHL regulars — like Ryan Hartman, Alex Goligoski, and Joel Eriksson-Ek — and young players that are the future of the team — like Marco Rossi and Matt Boldy. However, they will be without star forward Kirill Kaprizov, which is good for the Blackhawks but bad for anyone wanting to be entertained.

Chicago will also be facing a familiar face in net with Marc-André Fleury, who spent 45 games as the No. 1 netminder for the Blackhawks last season before being traded to Minnesota around the NHL Trade Deadline.

Tale of the tape (statistics from last season)

Blackhawks — Statistic — Wild

45.98% (30th) — Corsi For — 46.13% (28th)

45.48% (30th) — Expected goals for — 46.30 (27th)

2.60 (29th) — Goals per game — 3.72 (5th)

3.52 (26th) — Goals against per game — 3.04 (16th)

49.6% (16th) — Faceoffs — 47.6% (27th)

19.2% (21st) — Power play — 20.5% (18th)

76.2% (24th) — Penalty kill — 76.1% (25th)

Projected lineups (subject to change)

Blackhawks

Athanasiou — Domi — Kane

Robinson — Guttman — Blackwell

Savoie — Lafferty — Teply

Seney — Philp — Gust

Vlasic — Jones

Korchinski — Murphy

Stillman — C. Jones

Mrázek

Söderblom

Wild

Gaudreau — Hartman — Boldy

Dewar — Rossi — Duhaime

Petan — Eriksson-Ek — Foligno

Cramaross — Fogarty — Walker

Lambos — Goligoski Spurgeon

Mermis — Johansson

Hunt — Hicketts

Fleury

McIntyre

How to watch, listen

When: 6:30 p.m.

Where: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wis.

TV: NBC Sports Chicago, NHL Network

Radio: WGN 720 (in the Chicagoland area)

Live stream: Sling TV