Sixteen months later, DeBrincat took the ice for the Hawks across from Shaw and the Canadiens at the Bell Centre - and proceeded to score his first NHL goal.
DeBrincat jolted the Hawks out of a sluggish start and added an assists as he spurred them to a 3-1 victory Tuesday over the Canadiens for their third victory in four games. The Hawks also rode the hot glove of Corey Crawford, who continued his strong play in his hometown of Montreal with 41 saves.
DeBrincat could not crack the goal column despite the Hawks scoring 18 goals in their first three games of the season, but on Tuesday he and linemate Patrick Sharp were hunting that goal early, and they eventually bagged it.
Sharp and DeBrincat missed on a couple developing chances until they struck late in the first period with the Hawks ceding a lot of ice to the Canadiens. Sharp shuffled a pass to his left and DeBrincat, in perfect shooting position, rocketed a shot past vaunted Canadiens goaltender Carey Price to net his first NHL goal 17 minutes, 53 seconds into the game. The Hawks scored on their next shift 19 seconds later when Brandon Saad muscled the puck into the offensive zone and made it to the net, where Jonathan Toews hit him with a feed to set up Saad’s fifth goal of the young season.
Those goals were needed for the Hawks allowed a goal 1:19 in to Tomas Plekanec in their third consecutive period of sluggish hockey dating back to Monday’s overtime loss to the Maple Leafs.
In response to loss, coach Joel Quenneville made a change along the blue line for the first time this season, inserting veteran Cody Franson into the lineup. The surprise was who Quenneville took out – Connor Murphy, the prize of the Niklas Hjalmarsson trade with the Coyotes.
Murphy is signed with for the next five seasons at a cap hit of $3.85 million, but fell out of Quenneville’s favor for the night because of how well Jan Rutta (two goals) had played entering the night. All are right-handed defensemen, so Quenneville wasn’t going to remove a left-handed blue liner like Michal Kempny or Gustav Forsling to make room for Franson - and Quenneville won’t scratch the right-handed Brent Seabrook - so Murphy was the odd man out.
Franson and DeBrincat teamed up on the Hawks’ third goal, which came on a second-period power play. Franson started the sequence with a smooth pass to DeBrincat, who one-touched the puck to Artem Anisimov camped out near the net. Anisimov shoved the puck in for his first goal of the season at 10:44.