By Jim Coffman
Some hockey games have true grit. The checks are frequent, fierce and finished. Goals are at a premium and the buzz builds and builds as the seconds tick, tick, tick away. The Blackhawks versus Edmonton on Sunday, a contest the Hawks rallied to win 3-2, had true grit. It would have felt right at home in the playoffs.
Wednesday’s game with Nashville’s Predators on the Comcast Network? Not so much. But the Hawks made plays on offense and mustered just enough defense to pull it out. The Blackhawks’ second 5-2 triumph in their last four games was also their fourth straight victory.
Play-by-play man Dan Kelly, Jr. (working the game with analyst Ed Olczyk) noted late in the game that the Hawks were about to record their first such streak since March 31st of 2002. That’s a five-season stretch – and not surprisingly they were five miserable seasons.
There was no shortage of highlights:
* Well, that just about answers the question of whether televising home games will hurt the box office, doesn’t it? Despite the broadcast, the Blackhawks recorded their first sellout (20,511, described as 100.1 percent of capacity by the box score on ESPN.com) of the season on Wednesday – that’s right, “on Wednesday.” Even during the glory years in the decades prior to this one the Hawks had a hard time selling out The Stadium for mid-week games against non-name opponents like the Predators. The holiday break helps – I’m sure one of the reasons plenty of folks felt comfortable taking in a relatively late game on a Wednesday (it ended after 10 p.m.) was they didn’t have work or school the next day – but it didn’t help that much. Folks are getting fired up about this team.
* The Predators would seem to have a problem between the pipes. When the Blackhawks knocked them off to start their current hot streak, they scored two goals on the game’s first two shots to banish goalie Chris Mason to the bench. He was replaced by Dan Ellis. In the rematch last night, Ellis got the start and was demonstrably better. He stopped one of the first two shots mustered by the Hawks. But when he gave up a soft, short-side goal on the third he, too, got the hook. This time Mason came on in relief.
* The Blackhawks do not. And they certainly shouldn’t, considering all the money they paid to bring in Nikolai Khabibulin a couple seasons ago. Khabibulin has put up the wall (that would be the ‘Bulin Wall of course) at all the critical times of late. The last few seasons, Khabibulin has often seemed just good enough to lose, i.e., a goalie who could make plenty of big saves but would let just enough goals to finish on the wrong side of the score. This season, the Hawk netminder has turned that around. Just after the game ended, Olczyk noted “Nashville out-chanced the Hawks – in terms of quality chances – 2-to-1.” In other words, Khabibulin was the difference.
* The rookie duo, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, have grabbed most of the pub but it has been veterans like Patrick Sharp (who is still only 25 but has been playing in the league for several years now) and Robert Lang who have really made the offense run and taken care of defensive responsibilities at the same time. Sharp opened the scoring with his seventh shorthanded goal of the season. If he keeps this up he might just catch the all-time record holder, a fellow by the name of Mario Lemieux (who once totaled 13 in a season). The Hawks lead the league with 12 shorties. Proof of Sharp and Lang’s excellence is contained in the plus-minus ranking. Sharp is a plus-14 and Lang a plus-12. Kane is a -2 and Toews is 1.
* Then again, when the Hawks seized command in the first period it was Toews who made the plays. He made a perfect rush down the left side on the first one, never even hinting he might slip a pass into the slot until the last possible instant. All Sharp had to do was tip it in. And then it was Toews who seemed to have no room to work with after Sharp hit him with a pass in a spot well off to the side of the goal. But the rookie found a way to slip it past Ellis.
*Before the game, the Hawks announced that last year’s leading scorer, Martin Havlat, was returning to injured reserve for the second time this season. The temptation with this squad is to point to its most accomplished offensive player and say if Havlat can get healthy (something he has struggled to do his entire career and a big reason the Hawks were able to get him) and stay healthy, the team has a great shot at the playoffs. But then it turns out the Hawks have a better record without him so far this season (14-8-2) than with him (5-7).
* The game ended with an intense little fight between the Hawks’ James Wisniewski and Nashville’s Jordin Tootoo. Tootoo is a noted provocateur and plenty of people had to be happy to watch him getting pummeled by the Blackhawk backliner. But in the process Wisniewski managed to hurt his knee and is expected to be out a while. It was a rough game overall for Hawks defensemen. Brent Sopel broke a finger, although the Hawks seemed hopeful afterwards that he could return in a week or two. And Brent Seabrook was slammed into what Kelly described as a “turnbuckle” in the second period. Near the middle of the ice, where there is not protective glass above the boards, Seabrook was pushed to the side and then came to an abrupt halt as his top half leaned over the boards and ran into a wall separated at the space where side-ice reporter Josh Mora hangs out from the Blackhawk bench.
* Either Kelly or Olczyk noted they hoped Mora had been able to see Seabrook fighting the wall and the wall winning in a reflection in the glass because the replay showed him turning away from the action in a hurry.
* In the end, the UC’s giant organ struck up the Bum, bum, bum – Let’s Go Hawks! Bum, bum, bum – Let’s Go Hawks! little ditty and it sounded great as the tempo picked up just a bit with every one of the approximate nine (No. 9 was Bobby Hull’s jersey number of course) repetitions. Some of the Hawks’ music choices are inspired – Queens of the Stone Age comes to mind. But I’m confident I speak for a large number of sports fans in Chicago when I say we don’t need the typical canned music at Hawks games, even if it is a bit better than the soundtrack for say, the Bulls. But the organ sounds like hockey. In fact, it sounds like winning hockey.
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Jim Coffman is covering this season’s historic home Hawks telecasts for the Beachwood.
Posted on December 27, 2007