{"id":449264,"date":"2026-01-31T09:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T09:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449264\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T09:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T09:40:09","slug":"coyle-has-hat-trick-assist-blue-jackets-defeat-blackhawks-to-stay-hot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/449264\/","title":{"rendered":"Coyle has hat trick, assist, Blue Jackets defeat Blackhawks to stay hot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mathieu Olivier<\/a> had a goal and an assist, and Zach Werenski<\/a> had two assists for the Blue Jackets (26-20-7), who have won four in a row and eight of nine, including seven of eight since Rick Bowness replaced Dean Evason as coach Jan. 12. Elvis Merzlikins<\/a> made 22 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we did a lot of good things,\u201d Bowness said. \u201cI didn\u2019t like that first goal against late in the (first) period like that. Those are simple things to fix. But it\u2019s on-ice awareness. We score a big goal on the power play and then we give them one. To me, we gave them one.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we battled back in the second, and they were coming in the third. We didn\u2019t put enough pucks on the net in the third, so we\u2019re going to keep preaching that. We want to play on our toes, we want to go after them, but it was a solid game. We didn\u2019t give up much in the third, so that\u2019s a good thing, but we still want to generate more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connor Bedard<\/a> had a goal and an assist, and Tyler Bertuzzi<\/a> had two assists for the Blackhawks (21-25-9), who are 0-3-2 in their past five. Spencer Knight<\/a> made 22 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust kind of clean things up a bit,\u201d Bedard said of how Chicago can right itself. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard league, so just figure out ways to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coyle put the Blue Jackets ahead 1-0 with a power-play goal at 19:13 of the first period. He lifted in the rebound of his own tip attempt in low slot after Werenski shot from the left face-off circle. With the assist, Werenski extended his point streak to four games (one goal, six assists).<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously when you can get off to a lead early in any game, it\u2019s definitely a bonus,\u201d Werenski said. \u201cI think playing from behind, you can kind of sometimes end up chasing the game a little bit, so I feel for us, to get in front, just establish our game, get to the game we want to play, I feel like maybe we haven\u2019t done that enough this year. We\u2019ve been doing it as of late and it\u2019s a big reason why we\u2019re having success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedard tied it 1-1 at 19:57. Merzlikins stopped Alex Vlasic<\/a>\u2019s shot from above the right circle but couldn\u2019t hold on to the puck, and Bedard pounced on the rebound in front.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mathieu Olivier had a goal and an assist, and Zach Werenski had two assists for the Blue Jackets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-449264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}