Sunday presented a tough test for the Chicago Blackhawks. Coming off a hard loss to a Montreal Canadiens team that isn’t known to be an overly physical group, arguably the most physical team in the NHL — the Florida Panthers — were in town.
After the Montreal loss, I asked Blackhawks head coach Jeff Blashill about the physical play of the Canadiens and if that was something that shifted the momentum of that game. I shared his full response to that question in our Saturday bullets, but he led with a simple statement:
“I think we have guys in the room that are going to hit somebody back.”
Well, they were going to need to hit back if they didn’t want to be asphalt under a paver against the Panthers on Sunday afternoon. Yes, the Blackhawks got out-hit 33-18 in the game. But they stood tall in the face of Florida’s bully tactics and didn’t back down. The Hawks had plenty of great chances to win the game, but just couldn’t finish.
“They play hard,” Frank Nazar told me after the game. “They definitely play through your body, through your chest, making sure that they’re getting a piece of you no matter what. And I mean, they won two Cups in the last however many years, so learning from their game, right? They play hard. They’re tough to play against. They run right through you. So being able to compete against that and just show that we can push back is something that’s encouraging to our group. If that’s the way to win, then maybe we’ve got to start doing a little bit of that.
“Two shots, one shot, right? I mean, when it’s tied, we had a couple Grade A’s, could have just taken a lead right then and there. A couple power plays we score on different game, right? It’s right there. It’s within reaching distance. We’ve just got to grab it, take home.”
Brady sends Nazar flying pic.twitter.com/mBpf7sIahl
— BHF (@BlackhawksFocus) October 25, 2026That’s been the story against physical teams a few times early this season. I was interested before the game to get the perspective of both head coaches on how the Blackhawks might look to combat the physicality of the veteran Panthers — especially after Friday night’s performance — and how the team that’s usually the hammer saw the Hawks as their opponent.
Before Sunday’s game, I asked Panthers head coach Paul Maurice if he saw his team’s physicality as an advantage against the Blackhawks. Here’s his response:
“I mean, hits are okay. When we hit, we’re a good team if we get there. But the late hits, and I don’t mean the penalty late hits, the puck moves doesn’t really affect the game. You just get a piece. We finish our checks, but those don’t really change the way the game is played. So hits with speed are very, very impactful. But hits without speed is just you’re letting them move the puck around you and you’re finishing your check burning energy doing it.
“So we’d like to have a puck a little bit more than we have, certainly. But we need to get to our hits quite a bit earlier so we can actually use them to affect the game. It doesn’t matter. We went in and played Pittsburgh the other night. They were a less physical team than Chicago is and we chased it around all night.”
(Penguins less physical than the Blackhawks? Thank you, Paul!)
Blashill was also asked before the game about how the Blackhawks planned to approach the Panthers’ physical play. Here’s his answer:
“You know it’s going to be a physical game. You know they’re going to dump a lot of pucks in. … You’d like to be able to do a job in the neutral zone to eliminate their ability to especially get on the rim forecheck … But you know especially certain groups are going to be physical, it’s just part of it. And I think it’s more the pressure they put you under and the way they gap all over the ice, that’s kind of their MO. And so if you beat that pressure, you get real chances. And if you don’t, you spend a lot of time in your end.
“You got to understand the fact that you’re going to be under that kind of pressure. You’re not going to beat it every time, so you’re going to have to defend. But if you can beat it enough times, you’re going to get real chances [and] you’ve got to score.”
Arty gets crushed by Verhaeghe: pic.twitter.com/30HeYG4LA5
— BHF (@BlackhawksFocus) October 25, 2026Artyom Levshunov might have been on the receiving end of the big hit above, but he was noticeably more physically engaged last night; he led the Blackhawks with five hits in the game. Jordan Greenway and Ryan Donato didn’t back away from a physical challenge at all last night, either. They were credited with three hits each as well.
Nazar might have been the nail in the clip above — an ill-advised hit that almost/could have seriously hurt Aaron Ekblad — but he never backed down. At one point he chirped the entire Tkachuk family… not something I would recommend, but he did it.
The attitude the Blackhawks showed on Sunday afternoon was a departure from the team that allowed themselves to be pushed around on Friday night. That’s a welcome sight. And will pay dividends as the season progresses, especially when they play against teams that don’t play as hard as the Panthers.
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