Burakovsky's goal in 3rd period lifts Blackhawks past Mammoth

CHICAGO -- Andre Burakovsky scored the go-ahead goal on the power play at 8:55 of the third period to help the Chicago Blackhawks win their first game of the season, 3-1 against the Utah Mammoth at United Center on Monday. It was the first victory for first-year Chicago head coach Jeff Blashill.

“It’s nice,” Blashill said. “The biggest thing I would say is I really, really like this group. I like them as people. I like them as competitors. I like them as athletes and how they work in what they want. They’re a group that wants to have better days than what they’ve had. They’ve shown that with their work ethic and their ability to come back day in and day out and, honestly, take a lot of coaching. Sometimes taking coaching isn’t easy because there’s some negatives sometimes to that. They just continue to come back and want to get better. They’re a group that ultimately wants to be great.”

Ilya Mikheyev scored two goals and Spencer Knight made 22 saves for the Blackhawks (1-2-1).

"It's big for a lot of reasons,” said forward Jason Dickinson, who returned to the lineup after missing the 3-2 loss against Montreal on Saturday because of an upper-body injury. “I'd say mainly to learn how to win. Teaching the group as a whole, this is how we do it, and this is how we have to do it a lot. We likely won't be in [many] blowouts, so we have to be willing to dig in and play for those tight wins and win every little battle because they matter. I thought we did a pretty good job. We gave some things up, but we didn't let it rattle us. We didn't let it shake us, we just kept pushing."

JJ Peterka scored his first goal for the Mammoth (1-2-0), and Vitek Vanecek made 11 saves.

“I think we’ve got to look at ourselves on this one,” said forward Barrett Hayton, who played in his first game of the season after missing the first two with a lower-body injury. “Over these first three games, I don’t think we’ve been nearly hard enough around the net. I think that’s a big thing. That’s another big piece of our team, being able to have two guys inside, compete around the net, be hard in there. We’ve just been too perimeter. When we’ve gotten around the net, we haven’t been hard enough. We’ve got to fight around there.”

Mikheyev put the Blackhawks ahead 1-0 at 9:21 of the second period. He skated toward the net along the goal line extended right and jammed the puck in on Vanecek’s glove side.

Peterka tied the game at 1:02 of the third period. He took a backhand pass from Dylan Guenther and scored from the bottom of the left face-off circle. The forward was acquired in a trade with Buffalo on June 26.

“Just pressure them, I think that was the key,” Peterka said. “To get chances off the forecheck and kind of like sit on them. That’s also how the goal went in, just forechecking and getting bodies to the net.”

Burakovsky gave Chicago a 2-1 lead on the power play at 8:55, taking a cross-ice backhand pass from Nick Foligno and scoring from the edge of the left circle.

“I saw they were kind of collapsing down there, and I was just trying to find the open ice,” Burakovsky said. “Really good vision from (Foligno) to find and see that open ice for sure.”

Mikheyev scored into an empty net at 19:54 for the 3-1 final.

“I think we played a good game defensively,” Mammoth coach Andre Tourigny said. “Obviously they’re really dangerous off the rush. We did a good job to neutralize their rush offense. I liked our second period. I liked the way we forechecked in the second period. It was the first time of the year where we really had our forecheck going. We made it hard for them to break out clean. That has to be a staple of our game. Right now, we need more consistency.”

NOTES: Mammoth defenseman Sean Durzi did not play and will miss about four weeks because of an upper-body injury, which he sustained in a 3-2 overtime victory at Nashville on Saturday. … Guenther recorded a point in his third straight game to begin the season and became the third Utah player to achieve that, joining Clayton Keller and Logan Cooley, who each did it through the first three games last season. … Burakovsky played in his 700th NHL game.