Will the Blackhawks be more competitive than we first thought?

The NHL season finally got going on Tuesday night, and the first game was a banner-raising ceremony for the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Despite a significant gap between the two teams based on results over the past several years, the Blackhawks were able to stay in the game, falling 3-2 on a third-period goal by Jesper Boqvist while getting a strong performance from Spencer Knight in net to go with goals from Frank Nazar and Teuvo Teravainen.

On Tuesday’s episode of  Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed the team’s performance in the season-opening defeat and why there may be some cause for optimism moving forward.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s do some Opening Night overreactions, a little fill-in-the-blank style. I thought the Chicago Blackhawks, even in a loss, looked good, so let me throw you this one. There is a blank percent chance that the Hawks can take a step forward and get to the 80-point mark this season.

Carter Hutton: Oh, let’s go 20 percent. I still think there’s going to be a lot of damage in that division. I think it’s going to be hard for them. You look at last year, 25 wins, 61 points. There was a lot of good things to go off, but when I see this game, the ice still seemed a little bit tilted. That being said, the Central Division is loaded. The Hawks are going to have their hands full… I just don’t know if this team is really ready to get of the top for me yet.

Yaremchuk: Yeah, I’m with you. I think I’ll say even a little lower, maybe like 15 percent. There were some encouraging signs. Frank Nazar looks really, really good, and I thought Connor Bedard made some great plays.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…