SportsMonday: Blackhawks Briefing

By Jim Coffman

So much more satisfying to see a hockey game end in overtime isn't it? Shootouts are dramatic and they beat a tie, that's for sure, but they are contrived. I love the regular season NHL overtime with the four-on-four format that almost always produces end-to-end excitement. And sure enough the Blackhawks' impressive early Sunday evening victory (love those 6 p.m. starts!) over the team with the best record in the league, the San Jose Sharks, benefited greatly from a thrilling overtime finish.

Only about 30 seconds had elapsed in the five-minute extra period when the Hawks gathered themselves in their own end and then busted out toward and then through center ice. A moment or two after entering the Shark zone, Jonathan Toews slipped the puck toward the goal knowing that Troy Brouwer was rushing up the slot and had a great shot at a redirection. Sure enough, Brouwer did tip the puck on net but Shark goalie Evgeni Nabokov stopped it and the rebound ended up behind the net in the possession of a Shark defenseman.

Then Toews raced in and went to work, forcing a turnover, losing the puck for an instant - at which point Brouwer foiled a potential clearance by smoothly lifting an opposing stick - and then taking it back. As he did so, Toews spotted Brent Seabrook making a move toward the net. Toews put his pass on Seabrook's stick, the defenseman went down to one knee to try to make sure the puck didn't slip past him and then pushed a one-timer along the ice toward the middle of net. When the puck slipped through Nabokov's skates and into the goal, the Hawks had the perfect send-off to the coming two-week, six-game road trip that kicks off Thursday at Calgary.

The overtime tally also capped off a determined Blackhawk comeback from a two-goal, second-period deficit. They pulled even with a pair of scores later in the middle period, the first of which also resulted from a great Toews set-up (Patrick Kane knocked that one in). On the tying goal that John Madden scored on a rebound of Andrew Ladd's shot a minute and 19 seconds before the second intermission, the call by Pat Foley and Ed Olczyk was almost better than the action. Olczyk pulled a Steve Stone, who has always impressed during baseball broadcasts with his ability to not only predict what pitch a pitcher was about to throw but also where the pitch would go and what the hitter would do (or not do) with it.

Back to Olczyk, with the puck back in the Hawks' zone with about 1:35 on the clock, he noted that the Sharks had "two tired defensemen on the ice" and that maybe the Hawks would be able to take advantage of the situation. Sure enough, the blue-liners who hadn't managed to get to the bench to allow fresher legs to sub in were back on their heels when Ladd then rushed past the Shark blue line, put a shot on net and then chopped at the rebound while Nabokov sprawled in an effort to keep it out of the net. He did but he was way out of position when Madden swooped in to fire the second rebound into an almost empty net.

The Big Picture
The Hawks have won seven in a row at home, but that hasn't resulted in any sort of major move in the standings. An NHL team can go ahead and pile up victories but if a decent number of those results are overtime or shootout wins (when the losers get one point to the winners' two) against conference foes, those wins just don't give a team a big boost. The Hawks (12-5-2, 26 points) enter this week leading the Red Wings (10-5-3) by three and Columbus (10-6-2) by four in the Central Division. Elsewhere in the Western Conference, the Colorado Avalanche and Calgary Flames have piled up 27 and 26 points, respectively, in the Northwest and San Jose, the Los Angeles Kings and Phoenix lead the Pacific Division with 31, 26 and 22. The Hawks will need to play well on the road against all conference foes during the coming trip just to maintain their position among those teams.

In Other News
My favorite headline from the weekend in sports was rookie guard Brandon Jennings going off for the Bucks Saturday evening, pouring in 55 points to lead Milwaukee to a 129-125 victory at Golden State. Jennings' total set a new rookie team record, breaking the old mark held by a certain Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jennings scored 29 points in the third quarter alone and was a one-man scoring machine in the final minutes of the fourth as the Bucks completed their comeback triumph

Jennings was the kid who decided to take a pass on the colossal sham that is college basketball when he wrapped up his high school career in 2008, choosing instead to head to Europe for the required year between high school competition and entering the draft. Jennings, who became the youngest player to ever score more than 50 points in an NBA game, was able to hone his game against better, more mature players during professional competition for Lottomatica Roma. There were also no restrictions on how much he could practice, as there are in college. His numbers (he averaged just over five points per game) were not impressive but he did well enough in Rome and at pre-draft camps to be selected 10th overall in the NBA draft earlier this year. And after just missing a triple-double in his debut for the Bucks and turning in several more impressive performances before Saturday's spectacular outburst, it is quickly becoming clear that Jennings made a move that other potential NBA players should seriously consider for developmental purposes.

Oh, and just last year he was also was paid more than a million dollars by Lottomatica and signed a $2 million contract with primary sponsor Under Armor.

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Jim Coffman rounds up the sports weekend in this space every Monday. He welcomes your comments.