Paul Bissonnette took the Blackhawks apart live on air

The Chicago Blackhawks were two goals down to the Florida Panthers after twenty minutes on Wednesday, having given up the opener to a Teuvo Teravainen turnover in the neutral zone and a power-play goal to Carter Verhaeghe 28 seconds into the advantage.

Paul Bissonnette was waiting in the TNT studio.
“I don’t see a lot of identity. I see a soft team,” Bissonnette said during the first intermission. “They don’t check well. They don’t forecheck well. They don’t really do anything well.”

He didn’t stop there, going back to the whiteboard repeatedly through the night and describing the team as brutal and unwatchable. Mark Lazerus of The Athletic kept a running tally of the words used on the broadcast, which included pathetic, soft, brutal, Mickey Mouse, AHL-level and horrible.

Chicago’s season so far:

Why are the Blackhawks struggling?

Sixteen games in they have lost twelve of them and haven’t won once away from the United Center. Connor Bedard is in his first season as captain and said during the summer that he wanted the club in the playoff race. They currently look like a lottery team again, which would make it a fourth straight year of the same.

To their credit, they responded to the shredding. Chicago were considerably better in the second and third periods and pulled the deficit back, though not far enough. The final score was 5-3, a fourth consecutive defeat and a twelfth in sixteen.

Henrik Lundqvist offered the more measured analysis from the same desk, which left Bissonnette to do what he was hired for.

This isn’t the first time he has gone at this particular club on this particular network either. In February 2025 he described Bedard’s play as pond hockey on a TNT intermission, which prompted the Blackhawks’ own social media account to post a comparison between Bedard’s recent scoring and Bissonnette’s 22 career points.

Chicago’s road trip continues in Tampa Bay before a visit to Carolina, which is unlikely to improve the viewing.