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NHL Roundup: Blackhawks cool off surging Stars behind Mrazek, Bedard

Connor Bedard, Andreas Athanasiou and Seth Jones scored in the second period, and the Chicago Blackhawks stopped Dallas’ franchise-record win streak at eight games with a 3-2 victory over the Stars on Saturday.

NEW YORK — Well, the Toronto Blue Jays are through their season-opening, 10-game road trip at 4-6 and while it certainly could have been better, given the way they swung the bats it definitely could have been worse, too.

Sunday’s 8-3 loss to the New York Yankees capping their three-city trek encapsulated an off-kilter beginning, a mix of promising moments, unfulfilled opportunity and opponents ready to make them pay. Monday, they return to the renovated Rogers Centre for their home opener against the Seattle Mariners, seeking to find a rhythm that’s so far eluded them.

“We definitely could have played better, for sure,” said Bo Bichette, who reached base four times, including a hit-by-pitch in the sixth inning that left his left elbow heavily iced after the game. “We played three pretty good teams. The last two days we competed really well, played well, good baseball. But we’re going to be a lot better than that.”

Mirror-image scenarios in the third inning underlined that point as in the top half, Luis Gil loaded the bases with two out and walked in a run to open the scoring before catching Cavan Biggio looking to escape the jam. Then in the bottom half, Bowden Francis loaded the bases with two out and walked in a run to tie the game before Giancarlo Stanton ripped an inner-edge fastball 417 feet to left for his 11th career grand slam.

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The Blue Jays kept chipping away, just as they did Saturday when they fell behind 9-2 and eventually lost 9-8, getting back-to-back doubles from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bichette in the fifth and a run-scoring groundout from Guerrero in the sixth, but not the big-damage swing they really needed.

“Up and down,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said of the road trip. “Ran into some tough pitching, for sure. Had our chances. Left the bases loaded today. Had a chance to win the series here and didn’t. Just up and down, both sides of the ball, whether it was offence or pitching. Ten on the road is tough. Guys are really looking forward to getting home, as am I and hopefully find some consistency. But it was just really up and down.”

To wit, offensive co-ordinator Don Mattingly’s description of the offence as “wavy” seemed especially apt, their struggle to push across runs disturbingly reminiscent of last year’s season-long grind at the plate.

For now, at least, that can be attributed to the quality of opponent they faced and the time it can take to find level water after the initial plunge into the water, with Mattingly saying, “that’s what you see, to me, this part of the year, guys don’t seem to be as steady and consistent one day to the next.”

The Blue Jays’ revamped game-planning is meant to help smooth that process out, with Mattingly saying that “more than anything, we want to simplify.”

“It still gets down to getting balls in your area and knowing what you want to do with those when you get them,” he continued. “We want guys to work, try to get balls in areas where they handle pitches the best, work to get to those pitches and then be able to put ourselves in a good position to hit them. We’ve just been wavy. We see good games. We score eight and nine and Tampa, then we get one and two. We don’t really score in Houston, they kind of shut us down. Here, the first couple of days have been pretty good games.”

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The third one might have been, too, but the gap in power between the Blue Jays and Yankees was again evident, most so in the third, when the home side maxed out on their shot with the bases loaded and the visitors did not.

The Blue Jays also loaded the bases in the sixth but again came away with just a single run, underlying their need for big blows.

Intriguingly, Mattingly described seeking damage as “kind of a scary word because when you’re trying to hit home runs, they usually don’t happen.”

“I think for us, it’s wanting to get your best swing off, make sure you’re working in your zones, trying to get your best swing off in those areas,” he continued. “We don’t necessarily want to be trying to hit everything on the edges early in counts. Let this guy make a mistake, but be willing to let it go when you get balls in your area. It’s really just getting balls that you can hit hard. And hopefully within that there’s some home runs.

“I don’t really see us as a huge power club, but we do have the chance to have four or five guys hitting 20 or above, and that would be good for us.”

That feels like a conservative estimate, but the point is a valid one the Blue Jays are in need of impact but can easily get caught in between trying to get it. Bichette attributed the 0-for-13 skid he broke out of Saturday to that, saying, “I feel myself, when everybody’s kind of struggling, go up there and you want to do the big thing for the team and you start getting out of your approach.”

“I can’t speak for everybody, but I assume there’s a similar thing going on,” he continued. “We just have to be ourselves. Be who we are.”

Bichette’s certainly been that, reaching base in seven of his nine trips to the plate since ending his drought.

“I was probably trying to do too much damage,” he said. “But that’s not me when that happens. I understand I’m a hitter first. So kind of came to that realization. I was pretty bad. It’s good to start to feel a little bit like myself again.”

With no breathing room from the offence, there’s extra heat on the pitching staff and Francis, like Gil, had to work around Angel Hernandez’s all-caps UMPIRING on Sunday. He struck out five in three innings but made one mistake on the Stanton homer after losing the zone earlier in the inning. Like his team, he’s had consecutive mixed-results outings to start the season.

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“Keep attacking. Keep trusting my stuff,” he said of what he’s learning about himself. “These are the ones that dictate how you respond. It’s a long season, so not getting too down, getting ready to work. I’ve got to bounce back. I’ve got to get back to work for the next one. If not, then it can snowball. I’m going to keep believing and keep going.”

The same goes for the Blue Jays as a whole as they work towards the consistency they believe will inevitably come.

“Our offence has been grinding a little bit,” said Ernie Clement. “But I think we’ve done a really good job of battling and trying to find ways to win games when maybe we don’t have our best offence at the moment. If we can find a way to win games when we’re not playing our best, I think that’s huge because this this team’s going to start to click and we’re going to be really dangerous when that happens. So I think it’ll be really nice to get home and we’ll definitely try to get on a run there.”

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