For a team that has spent the first two weeks of its season searching for goals like loose change in the couch, Tuesday night must have felt like finding a wallet. The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-3 at home, getting two goals apiece from Roman Kantserov and Teuvo Teravainen, an assist from Connor Bedard in his return to the lineup, and the kind of spread-out, everybody-ate scoring line that had been almost entirely missing from their start to the season.
Context is everything here. Chicago had scored two or fewer goals in four of its first six games — the kind of offensive stat line that turns every night into a coin flip and every opposing goalie into a star of the week. Five goals, at home, with contributions coming from the kids, the veterans and the returning franchise player alike, is not just a win. It is a proof of concept.
Two from the kid, two from the veteran
Start with Kantserov. Two goals from one of the young forwards Chicago is building around is exactly the developmental headline this season is supposed to produce — not every night, nobody's asking for that, but often enough to remind everyone why the rebuild's timeline is measured in players like him rather than in trade deadlines. When a young scorer gets two in one night, it changes how the next opponent's video session looks, how his own coach deploys him in the third period, and how the building sounds when his line hops the boards. The two goals were the second and third of the 22-year-old's career: a power-play finish with 2:10 left in the first period, set up by Bedard and defenseman Bowen Byram, and a tip in front at 10:32 of the second, off feeds from Artyom Levshunov and Patrick Kane.
Then there is Teravainen, matching him goal for goal. His first arrived 28 seconds after the opening faceoff, off feeds from Frondell and Bertuzzi, and his second — at 15:42 of the third period, set up by Ryan Greene and Cole Smith — stood up as the game-winner. Every young team needs a veteran who quietly does the professional things — right place, right read, finish your chances — and Teravainen's two-goal night is the sort of performance that stabilizes a lineup full of players still learning the league. Kantserov's goals are the future arriving early. Teravainen's are the present holding the door open for it. Chicago got both in the same game, and that combination is precisely what the front office has been sketching on whiteboards.
Crosby kept answering
Pittsburgh made Chicago earn every bit of it. Sidney Crosby tied the game 1-1 at 6:57 of the first, finishing a 2-on-1 feed from Erik Karlsson past Spencer Knight after a Blackhawks miscue along the boards, and after Kantserov's second goal stretched the lead to 3-1, the Penguins clawed back: Nick Robertson scored his fourth goal of the season late in the second period to cut it to 3-2, and Crosby struck again at 9:17 of the third, a wrist shot that tied the game 3-3 and briefly turned the night into a coin flip. It stayed tied for six more minutes, until Teravainen's second goal broke it for good and Bertuzzi's empty-netter let the building exhale.
Bedard's return, Frondell's helpers, Bertuzzi's closer
And then, the name that bends every conversation about this franchise: Connor Bedard was back in the lineup, and he marked the return with an assist. The return ended a six-game absence to start the season, spent recovering from offseason shoulder surgery. One assist will not lead any highlight show, and it does not need to. For a player whose presence changes how opponents defend every single shift — who they send over the boards, how much room everybody else suddenly has to work with — simply being back, and getting on the scoresheet on night one, is the whole story. The ripple effects of Bedard's return show up in games like this one, where the scoring suddenly comes from everywhere.
Anton Frondell, another of the young pillars, added two assists to take his total to five on the season — playmaking numbers that suggest the kids are not just finishing plays but creating them for each other. And when the game needed closing, Tyler Bertuzzi did the closing, finishing the scoring with an empty-net goal, his second goal of the season. Empty-netters are the least glamorous goals in hockey and among the most useful: they are what a lead looks like when a team protects it properly instead of sitting back and praying.
Why this one matters more than one win
It would be easy — and wrong — to wave this off as one good night in October. The Blackhawks' problem this season has not been effort or structure; it has been finishing. A team that scores two or fewer four times in six games puts impossible pressure on its goaltending and its young defensemen, and eventually that pressure cracks something. Five goals, scored by four different players, with two more assists from a fifth, is the release valve. It is also a template: this is what Chicago games are supposed to look like as the rebuild turns — Bedard drawing attention, the young forwards cashing in, a veteran or two keeping the whole thing honest.
The test, as always, is whether it travels to the next game. The Blackhawks are right back home on Thursday night, hosting the Winnipeg Jets with a 7 p.m. CDT puck drop — and Winnipeg arrives in form, fresh off watching its own top line combine for seven points in a 5-2 win over Minnesota that we recapped in our Jets-Wild coverage. That is a real measuring stick: a Jets team that can score in bunches, against a Chicago team that just remembered it can, too. If the Blackhawks bring anything close to Tuesday's finishing to that game, Thursday at the United Center should be loud. Follow the whole race in our NHL coverage from the sports desk — and for the other half of Chicago's Wednesday news, the Bears' injury update is in our report from Halas Hall.
