The Chicago Blackhawks’ run-ins with controversial calls from the referees continued on Wednesday at the United Center. An interference penalty in overtime led to Kirill Kaprizov scoring the winning goal for the Minnesota Wild to take a 4-3 win.
The incident happened around 40 seconds in overtime when Connor Bedard was skating with the puck coming out of the neutral zone. He got hit by Wild’s Eriksson Ek, who was leveled by Blackhawks’ Ilya Mikheyev. The referees shocked the home fans by calling a penalty for interference on Mikheyev. Kaprizov would score the winning goal a minute later.
Connor Bedard, in his postgame media scrum, took a rather soft stance on the referees, calling the hit on him by Ek “clean”.
“I got flattened so I didn’t get to see it,” Bedard said.
“We’re not going to blame the refs. They’ve got a job to do and it’s not always easy for them.”
However, his coach, Jeff Blashill, took a different approach, openly criticizing the on-ice referee, Furman South.
“If I was to climb into Furman’s mind, he thought Mikky just went over and hit him because he hit Connor. But the reality is, right before Eriksson Ek got hit, he had the puck. It’s not interference,” Blashill said.
This is the second time in a week that a penalty has cost Chicago points. Last Thursday, in a game against the Seattle Kraken, Connor Bedard was given an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the dying minutes of the game. He protested a no-call by the referees for an alleged slashing attempt. The Kraken went on to score the winning goal for the 3-2 win.
Connor Bedard says “mistakes” plagued Blackhawks game against Wild
The Blackhawks went ahead 2-0 in the game on the back of goals from Jason Dickinson and Connor Bedard. However, they allowed the Wild to get back in the game with goals on either side of the second intermission. Artyom Levshunov restored Chicago’s lead, but Minnesota’s Matt Boldy tied the game for them before Kaprizov won it in overtime.
Connor Bedard rued losing a point, although he mentioned their team is on the right track.
“It [stinks],” Bedard said. “I thought we played a pretty good game, but just little mistakes that we’ll clean up. Overall, I thought there were a lot of positives to take away. But in the end, obviously you’ve got to come out with the two (points).”
The Blackhawks lost their fourth straight game and fell to a 10-8-5 record. They are fifth in the Central Division with 25 points.
Edited by R. Nikhil Parshy
