Down. Out.

Catching up a bit, here as I managed to miss the Tuesday game entirely due to an unexpected TV blackout.  Speaking of blackouts, though, let's talk about The Blackhawks' offense.

There is none, basically.
During this recent funk, The Hawks have routinely outshot their opponents and have, with a couple games' exception, destroyed their foes in Corsi/possession.  Yet, since their lopsided win against OTT on Jan 9th we have:
A 3 - 7 - 2 record
24 GF vs. 36 GA

During these 12 games The Hawks scored three or more goals only three times and even managed to lose two of those "high-output games", too.

I hear a ton of chatter about how if Corey Crawford had been around things would be different.  Sure, I can point to several games in which, yes, Crow could well have made the difference, maybe even stolen a win here or there.
But they haven't had Crawford to lean on.  They've had to make do with Forsberg and Glass, neither of whom has set the world alight, but that's the reality.  Knowing that each of these Guys will undoubtedly give up one or more ridiculously soft goals, night-in-night-out, the rest of The Hawks should know that they'll have to come up with an extra goal, or two, to even things out.
Instead, Crow's injury coincided exactly with The Hawks' offense going into the pooper - they somehow got worse precisely when they needed to be better.
Forsberg and Glass, despite some frustrating outings, have met or exceeded expectations.  The goal scorers have not.

Last night in the post-game show the talking heads agreed that team defence is the problem.  Horseshit.  They've made their share of defensive errors but scoring more than two goals per game would go a long way toward evening those out those mistakes.
(And while we're at it, can someone please explain to Pat Foley that when your team has the puck 60% or more of the time they're gonna get "out hit".)

The Hawks offense is utterly impotent.  Toews, Anisimov, Hartman and especially Saad have all failed to deliver, and they've received practically no contribution from the back end.  Is it all on these players?  I cannot imagine that to be true.  Toews is getting older and has some hard miles on his clock, but the cases of Saad and Hartman are just baffling.  They've been shuffled up and down the lines (fourth line on Tuesday, in fact) and, in Hartman's case, from a healthy scratch to the top unit and primo power play minutes in consecutive games.
The Hawks' coaching staff are clearly out of ideas.  
I cannot say if the problems are motivational, instructional, strategic or if the players are just bad, but things cannot continue like this.
Change the players or change the coaches.  Something's gotta give.

                                                Bye, bye, playoff chances...