BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Blackhawks’ disastrous season-opening road trip culminated with a 4-3 loss to the Sabres on Saturday.
It was easily the Hawks’ most competitive effort of the trip, given they carried a lead into the third period, but their long list of glaring problems appears far from fixed.
Jiri Kulich scored the Sabres’ game-winning goal with less than seven minutes left after Patrick Kane turned the puck over deep into a four-on-four shift and the Hawks never got locked in defensively. The Hawks haven’t won in Kane’s hometown since 2019.
"We started off playing the way we wanted to," Alex Vlasic said. "We need to do a better job of just maintaining that level of compete and speed and detailed hockey throughout the course of the game."
Coach Jeff Blashill reunited basically the same forward lines he had deployed throughout training camp — only to change them right before this trip — and that might've helped a little with chemistry.
Teuvo Teravainen, Anton Frondell and Tyler Bertuzzi, for example, connected on a beautiful tic-tac-toe goal in the first period.
Blackhawks have their second real highlight — the other being Patrick Kane's goal in Vegas — of the season: pic.twitter.com/DFYk5hHfFn
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) October 3, 2026
The Hawks still seem structurally broken when it comes to limiting transition attacks, though, as the Sabres' 37-19 advantage in scoring chances belied.
Too frequently, all three Hawks forwards pushed too deep in the offensive zone and failed to force turnovers, leading to all three chasing the play as the Sabres raced the other direction on four-on-two rushes. Blashill said the Hawks talked about their "F3" positioning between periods, and it did seem to improve somewhat.
The Hawks’ defensive-zone coverage, puck support on defensive-zone breakouts and passing accuracy when trying to break out remain issues, too.
"I thought our compete and swagger was way better," Blashill said. "That’s more the standard that we want to play with. Obviously you’re going to make mistakes, and you want to learn and grow. That’s what we’ll focus on."
New Hawks defenseman Bowen Byram missed the game — which would've pitted him against his Sabres teammates for the last three years — while attending to a family matter, Blashill said.
Byram's wife, Kailey, posted on Instagram in July that the couple was expecting twins this fall.
Byram struggled in his first two Hawks games while handling huge workloads (about 25 minutes each), prompting Blashill to move Byram back to his natural left side halfway through the Mammoth game. The Hawks remain optimistic Byram will elevate their defense once he gets settled.
Byram's absence allowed both Kevin Korchinski and Ethan Del Mastro to slide into the lineup as a pairing while Sam Rinzel sat out. Blashill made it clear after the game that he liked Del Mastro's performance better than Korchinski's.
Former Hawks defenseman Louis Crevier, part of the trade package for Byram, decided to sign a four-year contract extension with the Sabres before playing any regular-season games for his new franchise.
"It's just nice to know where I'm going to play for a long time," Crevier said.
The towering Quebec native was not only beloved by Hawks fans but also by Hawks teammates, coaches, staff, reporters and broadcasters — basically by everyone — so there were many warm greetings exchanged Saturday morning.
Crevier's eagerness to shoot — which the Hawks know well — paid off for the Sabres in the second period when Tage Thompson tipped in Crevier's shot to tie the game 2-2.
Former Hawks defenseman Lyle Odelein died Friday. He was 58.
Odelein played 77 games across parts of two seasons (2001-02 and 2002-03) with the Hawks near the end of his long career. He won a Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1993 and later served as the first captain in Blue Jackets history.
