The United Center got its first taste of the 2026-27 Blackhawks on Tuesday night, and the building had plenty to buzz about before the puck even dropped. Patrick Kane was back in a Chicago sweater, Jonathan Toews and Nicklas Hjalmarsson were in the house, and a crowd that had already watched the team stumble to an 0-3-0 road start was ready to lean in.
The Blackhawks gave them a rocky opening stretch. Chicago struggled to connect passes across the ice, looked loose in its own end, and didn’t do much to threaten offensively early.
St. Louis, carrying a 1-1-0 record into the night, settled in first and grabbed the lead when Mason McTavish scored at 15:38 of the opening period.
That score held into the first intermission, and the Blues briefly looked like they might build on it early in the second. Instead, an early St.
Louis goal was wiped out for offside, and the Blackhawks used that swing to turn the game. At 5:40 of the middle period, Sam Rinzel finished off Frank Nazar’s rebound to tie it 1-1.
Two minutes later, Chicago was ahead. At 7:40, Anton Frondell buried his first goal of the season after Artyom Levshunov split the defense and delivered a sharp pass that set up the chance.
Chicago carried that 2-1 edge into the third, where the focus shifted to something the team had struggled with in 2025-26: protecting a lead. The Blackhawks held St. Louis off the board for the first 18 minutes of the final period, then had to navigate a late tripping penalty to Roman Kantserov with 2:23 left.
The finishing stretch got hectic. With the Blues’ net empty, Cole Smith scored his first goal with the Blackhawks to make it 3-1.
St. Louis answered by keeping its goalie out and pulling back within one at 3-2, but Frank Nazar shut the door with another empty-net goal to seal a 4-2 win on Patrick Kane night.
It wasn’t clean from the jump, but once Chicago found its footing, the game changed. The Blackhawks were far sharper after their first goal than they had been in the opening three games, and they did enough to walk away with something they can build on.
The only late blemish was the goal St. Louis scored with under a minute left.
Teuvo Teravainen left the game and did not return. Jeff Blashill said after the game that Teravainen will not travel for thier next game, and beyond that, his status is unknown.
The Blackhawks are back on the road next, heading east to face the New York Islanders on Thursday night.
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Blackhawks Young Core Delivered On Patrick Kanes Big Night
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Sam Rinzel and Anton Frondell were among the names that stood out in a game where the Blackhawks kept leaning on their emerging pieces in key spots. Rinzel helped spark the response on a second-unit power play, and Frondell followed soon after on a setup from Artyom Levshunov, a sequence that underscored why this roster is so closely tied to what happens next rather than what happened in the past. [Read more 🡒]
Blackhawks Win Showed Exactly What This Young Core Still Lacks
The Blackhawks got a useful home win over the Blues, 4-2, and it came with the kind of fingerprints this season keeps pointing toward. Frank Nazar, Artyom Levshunov and Anton Frondell were among the young players helping drive the night, while Spencer Knight steadied things in goal with 26 saves as Chicago found a way to finish off a divisional opponent at home.
Even so, the game also laid bare the sort of rough edges that still follow this group around. Chicago had defensive lapses along the way and now has a difficult stretch coming up, which makes the margin for error feel a little thinner despite the points in the standings. The talent is showing up more often, but the Blackhawks are still searching for the cleaner, more complete performance that turns flashes into something sustainable. [Read more 🡒]
Patrick Kanes Return Arrives As Blackhawks Desperately Need A Spark
Patrick Kanes return to the United Center arrives at a moment when the Blackhawks could use almost anything to change the mood. Chicago is still looking for its first win of the season after opening 0-3, and the timing only sharpens the attention around a familiar face coming back into the fold after spending the past three-and-a-half seasons mostly with the Detroit Red Wings.
The setting adds even more weight, with the comeback coming against the rival St. Louis Blues in front of a crowd that remembers exactly what Kane meant to this franchise for so long. Chicago signed him to a two-year, $16 million deal in late July, and now the challenge is seeing whether his presence can help steady a team trying to keep early-season frustration from turning into something worse. [Read more 🡒]