Chicago Blackhawks lose 2nd straight game — and have been outscored 11-2 to start the season

The Chicago Blackhawks were coming off a less-than-ideal season opener to Vegas, where the Stanley Cup runner-ups cruised to a 5-2 win . The road team struggled to do much, especially to stop the Golden Knights.

Salt Lake City was a perfect place for a rebound. The Hawks have had the Mammoth's number , winning four straight games in the NHL's newest team's brief history.

Thursday's game was a whole different story.

The Hawks (0-2-0) were overwhelmed by Utah, which emphatically defeated its Central Division opponent 6-0. The Hawks have been outscored 11-2 to start the season.

"I don't think we played very good individually, I thought we made our decisions too slow," coach Jeff Blashill said. "I didn't think we played to the level that we're capable of."

The first period, much like in Vegas, was bad for the Hawks. It was scoreless until Utah forwards Dylan Guenther and Michael Carcone scored 40 seconds apart.

Offense has been hard to come by for Blashill's team, so those early holes are steeper compared to others.

"Momentum in games matter — a lot of times when you're on the road, especially against what I think are really good teams, you're gonna get pinned in a little bit," Blashill said. "You've got to manage that and try to get out of there without giving up goals, without taking penalties, which we didn't do on either night."

Blashill's line experiments took to the ice Thursday, with line shuffles of Frank Nazar with Patrick Kane, Anton Frondell, Roman Kantserov , Teuvo Teräväinen and Tyler Bertuzzi .

"It's always fun to play with (Kane) and Roman, I thought we had some good looks there towards the end." Nazar said. "It's good going out there with everybody and trying to do our best to create something."

It might not be the best idea to mix lines this frequently with a young team, and Blashill's switches seem to be made in panic rather than strategy. The young, new-look Hawks team needs to develop chemistry with the recent roster additions.

Blashill brushed off the notion of his lineups thwarting team flow on Wednesday.

"It is what it is," Blashill said. "We're trying to find the right combos and we'll see when we get there."

The right combos were not there in the Delta Center. A below-average first period was followed by a second where Utah had 29 shot attempts with 13 on goal, compared to 12 attempts and two shots on goal for the Hawks.

Ryan Donato, Nick Lardis, Ryan Greene, Kantserov, Kane and Nazar finished with zero shots on goal. Blashill noticed that, at least.

"We've got to get to some lines that we feel can produce offense and generate chances," he said.

Lines have been ever-changing, but the defensive pairs may need a refurbishing. The Hawks blueliners combined for nine giveaways, five shots attempts blocked and a non-positive plus/minus rating for all.

"It's tough to say one or a few specific things (that went wrong) at this point," defenseman Ian Cole said. "Obviously it wasn't good enough. We're going to have to take the next 48 hours and look at it and fix some things."

Bowen Byram 's first couple of games haven't been great on his new team. Blashill did switch Byram to a pair with Levshunov for a little bit, but he doesn't have plans to involve Kevin Korchinski or Ethan Del Mastro yet.

"I'm not there, probably, we'll see," Blashill said. "We consider everything, so we'll look at it and see if we think the two other options are better than the options that played."

Cole — the 37-year-old veteran who signed a one-year, $4 million contract with the Hawks in the offseason after two seasons in Utah — received a brief but warm welcome back in the first period. Unsurprisingly, that wasn't the focus postgame.

"It was nice (but) unfortunately the outcome of the game kinda overshadows everything," Cole said. "We're professional athletes and we get judged based on whether we win or lose hockey games. Tonight was obviously not a great game."

Utah made clearing the puck near impossible, creating an endless slew of scoring chances. The Hawks spent nearly the entire game in their own zone.

The Mammoth had 65 total shot attempts, 32 on goal with five different players scoring. They also won 39 of the 54 faceoffs.

"Certainly large parts of the first and the first half of the second, we couldn't get out of our end," Blashill said. "I thought we overcomplicated it a bit again, it's just a process."

Kantserov was close to his first NHL goal in the third period, but was unable to rebound Levshunov's shot. Mammoth goaltender Karel Vejmelka (15 saves) pounced on the loose puck, just one of the highlights of his ninth career shutout.

The opening two contests couldn't have gone much worse for the Hawks, and a hungry Sabres team awaits them in Buffalo on Saturday.

"I don't think we can let it snowball; there's gonna be ups and downs through the course of the season," Cole said. "We would have preferred not to start down, but I think that there is a reality where if we can steel ourselves and we can get our mind right in how we approach the long run over the course of 84 games, we could look back at this and say, 'Hey, this could've been good for us.'"

Blashill's confidence in his team hasn't wavered so far. But he noted that Buffalo is a grand opportunity.

"You gotta go change that with your play," Blashill said. "You gotta find a way to win a hockey game Saturday against a really tough opponent in their building.

"I don't think there's any lack of belief in our group. We're 0-2, that's the fact of it. We haven't played nearly our best, but it's neither more nor less than that."