Patrick Sharp has a simple solution to the Blackhawks' recent early-game woes: "Have better starts."
With that, the veteran winger sat back in his dressing room stall with a wry grin.
So, problem solved.
Not so fast. The Hawks have fallen behind in the first period in each of their last five games, which, by the way, is not a formula for success in the NHL.
"It's not fun playing catch-up," winger Patrick Kane said. "We're better off when we get the lead and we can kind of wait for (opponents) to make mistakes and then pounce on them even more. That's definitely something we want to work on - make sure we can get the lead."
Added Sharp: "It's tough chasing. It's something that's been happening lately. Credit our team for battling back most nights, but you can make it easy on ourselves with a better first 20."
The Hawks have been making it a habit of spotting teams one-, two- and even three-goal leads. So just what is going wrong?
"It's a tough question," defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson said. "If we knew what was wrong we'd adjust it right away. We have to figure out a way to do a better job in the first period.
"In the long run it's not going to work to be down a goal or two after the first period. We have to turn that around pretty quick."
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the trend of falling behind early is that the Hawks can't pinpoint why it's happening. Pregame rituals and speeches have been the same, but the results have not.
"We'd like not to give up the first goal, but that's something you could sit in here and have an hour meeting about, but hockey is hockey," center Brad Richards said. "You go out there and it's so fast you never know what can happen. We'll have some focus on it, but just playing the right way and getting our team game back in order will probably take care of a lot of things."
Coach Joel Quenneville chalked it up as a hockey anomaly that will correct itself at some point.
"It's kind of been an unusual stretch," Quenneville said. "There are always going to (be) some fluky stretches with stats, whether it's production, whether it's goals-against, whether it's power play or penalty killing. It's just a situation where you don't want to change too much; you want to go about your business as generally you do."
The upside about the early deficits has been the Hawks' ability to rally. In the last five games, they have overcome the slow starts and won three of them. During Sunday night's game against the Stars, the Hawks fell behind four times before finally winning it in overtime 5-4. According to Elias, it marked the first time the Hawks had rallied for a victory when facing four separate one-goal deficits since Dec. 23, 1970, when they topped the Kings 6-4. While the Hawks are 17-4-0 when scoring first this season, they are also a more-than-respectable 9-7-2 after initially falling behind.
"We have a lot of confidence in that part of our game," Hjalmarsson said of staging comebacks. "We know that when we're down a couple of goals we still have the ability to come back and win games. We've had maybe too many of those."
Rookie's recovery: Rookie defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk, who underwent surgery to repair a left patella fracture Nov. 20, is making significant progress in his rehabilitation. At the time of the surgery, it was announced that van Riemsdyk would need three to four months to recover.
"He's on that timeline," Quenneville said. "He might even be ahead of that curve. He's at that turning point where all of a sudden he can start doing some more things with it and start more of the rehab process."
Twitter @ChrisKuc