The Chicago Blackhawks have lost another defenseman to injury, placing Calvin de Haan on injured reserve today. The designation is retroactive to December 10th, when de Haan left a game against the Vegas Golden Knights with a shoulder injury. The team has not provided a timeline yet for his recovery.
Already without Duncan Keith, the Blackhawks had been relying heavily on de Haan to anchor a defense that can’t seem to keep the puck out of their net this season. In fact, he’d averaged more than 25 minutes of ice time over the three games prior to facing the Golden Knights, which now stand as the three highest-usage games of his season.
The 28-year old had surgery on the same shoulder in May of this year while he was still part of the Carolina Hurricanes organization. That kept him out of training camp and the preseason, though he made his debut just a few games into the regular season and has been a staple in the lineup ever since.
Losing de Haan for any length of time hurts, but the Blackhawks were already facing quite the uphill battle in their quest for the postseason. After rebuilding the defense corps and bringing in some new faces up front (and in net), there were high hopes for Chicago under head coach Jeremy Colliton. A combination of injuries and poor play have dashed those hopes so far, as the Blackhawks currently sit in last place in the Central Division with a 12-13-6 record and -14 goal differential.
That sound you hear is the ‘Hawks circling the drain. This season’s becoming yet another mess for them…
Kinda sad that after a good decade of dominance one of the NHL’s “Original 6” teams is on its third straight year of utter decrepitude. Then you remember they still have two of the best players to ever put on the Blackhawks uniform (Kane & Toews) and it’s really mystifying.
Kinda reinforces the saying, “Hockey is the truest TEAM sport.” Even Captain Serious & Kaner can’t do all of the heavy lifting by themselves. One can only hope that they can eventually get out of cap hell and bad-drafts-hell to get back to real competitiveness, sooner rather later.
Merry Christmas mac, and everyone , hate to see my Hawks go out like this , hopefully the kids can carry on the legacy started by Toews, Kane, Crawford, Keith , Seabrook for this long , Go Hawks!
And a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS to you, too, my friend! Biggest plus for the ‘Hawks: Pat & Edso and John-O & Troy! Win-Win!