Connor Bedard and Connor Murphy scored, Frank Nazar had two assists, and Arvid Soderblom made 38 saves for the Blackhawks (21-24-9), who have lost four in a row (0-2-2).
“I think there’s a number of individuals that aren’t feeling it right now,” Chicago coach Jeff Blashill said. “So, that hurts your team’s confidence because the makeup of your players [isn't] as confident, you know? So, we’ve got to get some swagger back, but the only way to get that back is to earn it.”
The Penguins scored six consecutive goals after Murphy put the Blackhawks ahead 1-0 at 9:32 of the first period, taking a pass from Ryan Greene for a wrist shot from the high slot past Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang and Silovs’ glove.
Dewar tied it 1-1 at 11:24. After Noel Acciari recorded the Penguins’ second shot on goal at 11:20, Dewar collected the rebound in the slot for a wrist shot through traffic.
Kindel gave Pittsburgh a 2-1 lead at 5:54 of the second period. The 18-year-old rookie scored his 11th goal on an off-balance wrist shot from the left face-off circle.
“The puck just kind of falls on your stick in the right spot, so just one of those nights for us, I guess,” Kindel said. “We've just got to keep creating the chances and, sometimes, the puck's going to go in.”
Egor Chinakhov and Mantha then scored 31 seconds apart. Chinakhov took a spinning backhand pass from Evgeni Malkin and stickhandled around Blackhawks defenseman Artyom Levshunov to go in for a wrist shot that made it 3-1 at 15:30; Mantha extended the lead to 4-1 at 16:01 with a backhand shot past Soderblom on a breakaway.
“Second period, we played exactly the way we should be playing,” Mantha said. “It paid off.”
Shea pushed it to 5-1 at 19:30 on a one-timer from atop the right circle set up by Ilya Solovyov.
“I feel like we shot ourselves in the foot with some of our puck play,” Murphy said. “Irresponsible with breakouts by us, coming out of our end and then even getting across their blue line. Then, it turned into us having a lack of compete kind of overall, man-to-man.”
Dewar scored his second of the night, collecting a loose puck out of the scrum in front for a wrist shot, to make it 6-1 at 13:59 of the third period.
