Um, Cristo... that little black thing that's behind you? Yeah, about that...
Andrew Ladd had the first hat trick of the season for the Blackhawks, scoring three of the Hawks’ four goals. Unfortunately, four goals wasn’t enough on Sunday, as the Hawks lost to Detroit 5-4.
Cristobal Huet ripped the heart of the team out by folding liks a sheet of notebook paper in the second period, allowing four goals on just eight shots in the period.
Despite all of the positive thinking and forced attempts to paint the Blackhawks goaltending situation as survivable, until one of the two settles down and grabs the job for himself, the Blackhawks achilles’ heel could keep them from achieving their One Goal this year. After Sunday’s debacle, coach Joel Quenneville indicated that he won’t comment on the starting goaltender situation until after practice, which means the Hawks still have a question mark on their most important position.
Will one of these guys step up? Please?
The Detroit Red Wings traded forward Ville Leino to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday for defenseman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen and a fifth round draft pick in the 2011 draft.
Detroit then immediately placed Tollefsen on waivers.
Leino, 26, had disappointed the Red Wings this year by only scoring seven points and earning a -10 rating in 42 games. This move was simply a player dump to make room for some of the returning veterans that Detroit has had on the injured reserve, including Johan Franzen. In 55 games over two seasons with Detroit, Leino scored nine goals and seven assists.
Detroit enters Saturday in ninth place in the Western Conference, and has been bouncing back and forth with Calgary for the eighth and final playoff spot. The Red Wings haven’t been healthy all year, though, and should be near 100 percent after the Olympic break.
For Philadelphia, they receive an underachieving forward in exchange for Tollefsen, 25, who has missed a total of 30 games because of concussion and MCL injuries. Tollefsen signed with Philadelphia in July after spending three seasons in Columbus. If he clears waivers, he’ll be assigned to Grand Rapids.
On Sunday in Detroit, the Blackhawks won a fantastic game 4-3 in a shootout. The action was back-and-forth, there was great goaltending for both teams, and even the casual fan had to get excited when Kris Versteeg threw down with Patrick Eaves.This was a win in the middle of January, though. Certainly a win 60 percent of the way into the regular season doesn’t get a monkey off the back of an entire franchise… right?
For years, the Red Wings have owned the Blackhawks. While “Dollar Bill” Wirtz was throwing the fans down the drain at the expense of squeezing every last penny out of the 4,000 people at each game, Detroit was stamping their name on the Stanley Cup. For 18 consecutive years, the Red Wings have been in the playoffs; indeed, they have finished in first or second place in the Central Division in every season since 1990-91.
Last year was special for Chicago hockey. After spending most of this decade getting ready for baseball during the final six weeks of the season, Blackhawks fans had something to cheer for into late April and May. The magical run came to an end just short of the Cup Finals though… and it was at the hands of, you guessed it, Detroit.
Let’s jump in the Flashback Machine and think about this storyline, though. A young Chicago team gets bullied for a decade by a team from Detroit, and can’t seem to get past them to achieve their ultimate goal of a championship. Ring any bells?
Yeah, I thought so.
From the 1987-88 season through the 1989-90 season, the Bulls had to settle for a notch on the Pistons’ championship belt. Each year, Michael Jordan continued to build his legend as one of the great individual players in the NBA, but he couldn’t seem to get past Chuck Daly and his “Jordan Rules.”
It wasn’t until 1990-91 that Jordan matured enough to realize that ball movement and a team game was what it would take to beat the hated rival from Michigan. That year, Jordan’s Bulls swept the Pistons out of the Eastern Conference Finals and started the last great dynasty in professional sports (sorry, Patriots’ fans; win six in eight years and we’ll talk).
Sunday had a very similar feeling to that day in 1991 when Isiah Thomas led his team to the showers before the final seconds had ticked off the clock. No, the Blackhawks didn’t send the Red Wings home for the summer, but they did make a bold statement.
The win was the third consecutive victory over the Wings for the Blackhawks, and the second straight in Detroit. In December, the Blackhawks shut out the Red Wings 3-0 twice in four days, with the first win coming in Chicago and the second on the road in Motor City.
But those two wins were against a Red Wings team that had every excuse in the book. Most of their best players were injured, and the games were right after Christmas. Certainly once the Red Wings had their roster back together they would be able to handle their business.
Which brings us back to Sunday.
After a hard-fought game in Columbus on Saturday afternoon, a game in which the Blackhawks exceptional defense allowed five goals to a last-place team, coach Joel Quenneville switched goaltenders and hoped to receive a better effort in front of the net.
The Red Wings had many of their stars back, including Henrik Zetterberg, and came out hitting and shooting. The fight between Versteeg and Eaves likely put a smile on Bill Laimbeer’s face somewhere, and the Wings put more shots on net than any Blackhawks opponent this year (38).
Just like Jordan’s Bulls, the Blackhawks looked better than the Red Wings early. The Hawks quickly jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period, but the veteran Red Wings never seemed to miss a beat. Slowly, Detroit skated back into the game and early in the second period they had tied the Blackhawks at two.
The broadcast crew for NBC, which did a miserable job of butchering names and providing inaccurate information throughout the game, even made a point to ask the little bald guy standing between the benches if the Blackhawks were rattled by the big, bad Red Wings storming back to tie the game.
The answer was no.
Then again, when Eaves tied the game in the third period, the question was raised again: were the young Blackhawks in shock that their lead was gone again?
The answer was, again, no.
In a dramatic overtime period that opened with an incredible Niemi save just seconds into the frame, the Hawks never looked frustrated or out of sorts. They just kept fighting like it was any other game, and certainly looked like the team dictating the pace for most of the game.
When Patrick Sharp ended the game in the fourth round of the shootout, the excitement from the Hawks bench went crazy. And they should have, considering this was the second game of an eight-game road trip on back-to-back days. Niemi was magnificent in the net, and the Blackhawks won a tough road game.
But to someone who watched the Bulls work for years to get over the hill, this victory felt like more. Sunday the Blackhawks took the best shot the Red Wings had, against most of their best players, and won in a playoff atmosphere.
Of course the full story on this year’s Blackhawks, and whether or not they can get past Detroit in April, won’t be written for four more months. But Sunday’s game could be a turning point for the organization.
Antti Niemi stones Henrik Zetterberg's breakaway chance early in overtime - the save of the game.
If there were questions about Antti Niemi’s ability to win a playoff game entering Sunday’s game in Detroit, they were answered in electrifying fashion by the Blackhawks young netminder.
Niemi was asked to stop 38 shots on Sunday, the most allowed yet this season by the Blackhawks, and he was successful on 35 of them before earning a second point in the shootout. He had to make a number of incredible saves to make up for terrible turnovers and against odd man rushes throughout the game, and was up to the task nearly every time. The biggest save of the game came after a rare Brent Seabrook turnover at the Hawks’ blue line just seconds into overtime. Olympian Henrik Zetterberg picked Seabrook’s pocket and streaked up the ice for a one-on-one with Niemi, and was able to get the puck back to his backhand side as he closed the gap with the Hawks’ goalie but a great pad save prevented the game from ending.
The action on the offensive side for the Blackhawks, as has become the trend, started early and often. Troy Brouwer scored his 14th goal of the season with a nice pick out of traffic just under eight minutes into the game. Seven minutes later, Patrick Kane scored his team-leading 20th goal of the season on a power play and the Hawks appeared to have secured the momentum.
But this is still Detroit, and the Red Wings wouldn’t go away quietly. At 19:11, Nicklas Lindstrom scored his third goal of the season to bring the game back to just a one-goal advantage for the Hawks. That was when the action on the ice turned from hockey to boxing.
The Hawks' enjoying the Steeger fight.
Right off the faceoff after Lindstrom’s goal, Kris Versteeg and Patrick Eaves dropped the gloves and went at it in one of the better fights in a Blackhawks-Red Wings game in years. In case you missed it, here’s the video. Awesome fight, and it looked like Versteeg skated away with a win.
The Blackhawks had four power play opportunities in the first period to none for the Wings, so logic would indicate that there would be a few calls going Detroit’s way in the second period. Sure enough, the Hawks took three penalties in the first nine minutes, and the Red Wings cashed in on the third to tie the game at two goals apiece. Zetterberg beat Niemi for the tying tally, and that would be the final penalty called in the game. Seven penalties power plays were taken in the first 29 minutes of the game, and there weren’t any in the final 31 on Sunday.
At 11:10 in the second, Patrick Sharp redirected a missile from Duncan Keith to give the Hawks back the lead; it was Keith’s career high-trying 44th point of the season. In the second period, the Red Wings would outshoot the Hawks 12-5, but would escape with a 3-2 lead.
The third period began with a lot of hard hitting and back and forth skating by not many shots. However, in a bush league jinx move that could only be accomplished by a national network trying to put a hockey game on the air, a video montage talking about how well Niemi was playing played over the game-tying goal from Eaves. Thankfully, when NBC got done telling the viewing public about the great game Niemi was having, the first live voice heard was exclaiming that the score was suddenly tied… on a shot that wasn’t seen until a replay was run over more live action.
NBC’s coverage of the game was awful from start to finish. Not only did they butcher players names on both teams, but made a number of clerical errors when speaking about both Chicago and Detroit. At one point in the third period, they said Andrew Ladd was acquired last year (wrong), something that fills air time but does screams amateur to fans that pay attention.
Once NBC got back to showing live action, there wasn’t much to speak of from that point forward. Both teams played the final seven minutes conservatively, apparently saving the fireworks for an intense overtime period. Detroit had four great shots on net in the extra period, and Marian Hossa had a wide open look sail wide with just seconds left before two exhausted teams settled for the shootout.
Cam Barker was playing just his second game in as many days after missing time with an upper body injury, but he made a number of crucial mistakes with the puck that were pointed out by the NBC team almost as well as this fan’s eyes. One mistake could have cost the Hawks the game, as he tried to dump the puck back in behind the net to Brent Sopel without looking to see that Sopel was nowhere near where he was dumping it and there were two Red Wings waiting for an easy wrap-around chance. Thankfully for Barker, Seabook and Brian Campbell, who also had a bad turnover late, Niemi was up to the task on Sunday.
Brouwer led the Hawks with a goal and an assist, and Sharp was the Number One star of the game with one goal in regulation and the winner in the shootout. Detroit netminder Jimmy Howard was exceptional as well, stopping 26 of 29 shots against a hot Chicago offense. It was clear throughout the game Sunday that as Detroit continues to get All Star players back from the injured reserve, they will be able to match up well against anyone in the NHL. Thankfully, in the second game of a long road trip just 22 hours after a hard-fought win in Columbus, the Blackhawks were able to get a third consecutive win over the Red Wings, and second in a row in Detroit.
After a less-than-special performance from Cristobal Huet on Saturday, this exceptional performance from Niemi could begin to put pressure on the Hawks’ number one netminder again. In October, when Huet was struggling, Niemi was fantastic when given the opportunity and Huet responded by having a great November. With Huet struggling yet again, we could see more of Niemi between now and the Olympic break in February.
The Blackhawks have won 2 of 3 in Detroit, and the last 3 straight against the Red Wings.
The Hawks won't face Jason Chimera, front left, in Columbus again.
On Monday, the last-place Columbus Blue Jackets made a fairly substantial deal that could improve the youngest roster in the NHL and make them more competitive in the Central Division in 2010.
The Jackets traded veteran forward Jason Chimera to Washington for veterans forward Chris Clark and defenseman Milan Jurcina. Chimera, 30, was a well-respected leader in the Jackets’ locker room and had 17 points (8 G, 9 A) so far this season. Chimera, with 47 penalty minutes, becomes Washington’s new leader in that category. The struggling Jackets have enough holes that this was a move of necessity.
Clark had been the captain of the Capitals for the last four seasons and was enjoying a moderate renaissance this season with 15 points already (4 G, 11 A). The younger Jurcina, 26, has only four assists on the season while averaging over 17 minutes per game for the first place Capitals. Washington has the luxury of depth on the blue line, so Jurcina was an affordable loss.
It has been an interesting couple days in Washington. On Sunday, the team announced a one-year extension for emerging 25-year old forward Alexander Semin, and then traded their captain on Monday. It isn’t very often that a first place team trades a captain in the middle of the season, and Washington will not rush to select a replacement.
On Monday, without the traded players being available, the teams saw opposite results. The Jackets shut out the Red Wings 1-0 in overtime behind a fabulous 34-save night from Steve Mason. The Capitals, meanwhile, lost 6-3 at home to the bad Carolina Hurricanes.
While the Blackhawks have already wrapped up their season series with the second-place Nashville Predators, they have only played the last-place Blue Jackets once this year. The Hawks will get three shots at the Jackets before the Olympics, though, and will see Chimera again on March 14 when the Capitals come to Chicago.
Yeah, it's only been two days since they last played... but who cares? It's Chicago-Detroit!
After shutting out the Red Wings on Sunday night, the Blackhawks get another crack at their hated Original Six rival on Wednesday. There will be a couple changes this time around, though.
Antti Niemi will be in goal for the Blackhawks this time, and Jason Howard will be in net for the Red Wings. Niemi has been superb this season in relief of Cristobal Huet, and will likely be called upon over the weekend when the Hawks have a home-and-home back-to-back series with the second place Nashville Predators. Howard was a question mark coming into the season for Detroit, as they were looking for a rookie to replace Ty Conklin in their goalie rotation, but he’s been solid for them throughout the season.
Both Cam Barker and Ben Eager are expected to miss another game. Barker is dealing with a knee issue and will miss his third game, as will Eager who reportedly has been dealing with concussion-like headaches this week. Bryan Bickell is expected to play in Eager’s place again, and Jordan Hendry will continue to assume Barker’s role with Brent Sopel on the third line of defense.
UPDATE: Brian Rafalski was a late scratch for Detroit, making the injury count nine for the Red Wings this evening.
Troy Brouwer puts Detroit's Doug Janik into the glass with authority.
I’m not sure even Robocop could have given Detroit a chance on Sunday.
In the first game between hated rivals in two months, the improved Blackhawks defeated the injury-depleted Red Wings 3-0 in front of another United Center-best crowd. Even though Detroit had won four straight before losing to Dallas on Saturday, the Hawks dominated every aspect of the game on Sunday night and made a strong statement that the Central Division crown will be won coming through Chicago this year.
From the first chant of “Detroit Sucks,” the crowd was ready to witness perhaps the first game in 15 years in which the Blackhawks were clearly the better team in the building. However, the excitement and chanting developed a subtle curiosity as the Hawks kept Detroit from getting a single shot on net for over 12 minutes in the first period. The puck control and suffocating defense from Chicago in the first period was as good as I’ve seen certainly this season, and was perhaps the best from any Hawks team against Detroit in a generation.
Cristobal Huet only needed to stop five shots in the first period, and ended the day keeping all 20 shots he faced out of the net for his second straight 3-0 shutout victory. Of those 20 shots, though, Huet wasn’t asked to make too many tough saves because of the exceptional defense played in front of him.
After Todd Bertuzzi took Detroit’s second penalty of the first period for hooking Jonathan Toews on a breakaway, the party started for the Hawks offense when Duncan Keith launched a missile from the blue line that found the net behind Chris Osgood. There was good traffic in front of Osgood, but I’m not sure he ever saw the puck coming off Keith’s stick. A case could be made that Toews, who was clearly in front of Bertuzzi, should have been awarded a penalty shot, but the goal coming on the subsequent power play erased any issues with the call as the game was over.
Well, there were still 52 minutes of hockey to be played, but for Detroit it only went downhill from there.
Just over 16 minutes into the second period a streaking Brian Campbell scored his third goal of the season off nice puck movement from Andrew Ladd and Patrick Sharp. Earlier this week, coach Joel Quenneville told Campbell to look for his shot more, and it’s paid off; Campbell has now scored in consecutive goals after his only other goal coming overseas in the second game of the season.
On Friday, Sharp, Kris Versteeg and Jonathan Toews that joined Patrick Kane atop the team ranks with 10 goals. Sunday, Dustin Byfuglien joined the 10-goal club with just over 30 seconds left in the second period, closing the scoring for the night. Byfuglien and Troy Brouwer led the team with three hits each as the Hawks dominated almost every aspect of the box score.
John Madden, a University of Michigan grad, played a strong game with an assist and winning 10 of 14 faceoffs in the game. Toews won nine of 14 faceoffs, and Sharp won seven of 11 as the Blackhawks took control of the puck once it hit the ice and rarely gave it over to Detroit.
On Tuesday night, the Blackhawks host San Jose before playing in Detroit on Wednesday. With Huet and the rest of the Blackhawks’ defense dominating right now, there could be a significant distance between the Hawks and third place Red Wings when 2010 begins. The shutout was the sixth of the season for the Hawks, which leads the NHL.
The roster had two items of note on Sunday, as Ben Eager missed a second game because of continued issues with post-concussion headaches. Bryan Bickell played nine good minutes, being credited with one hit and three shots on goal, in Eager’s place. Also out on Sunday was Cam Barker, who was resting a banged up knee that cost him the third period on Wednesday. Jordan Hendry played another good game, this time in place of Barker.
Every sports team, at every level, has a list of goals they set for themselves throughout a season. For a team like the Blackhawks, they probably have, shockingly, more than “One Goal,” but rather a list of goals that start with simple, broad goals like having a winning record each month, improving their power play scoring, winning faceoffs, and playing strong defense. As the calendar moves along, though, there begin to come specific goals. Professional athletes generally won’t say they focus on one team or week on the calendar, but any Blackhawks player has had this week circled since July.
Twice, in one week before Christmas, the Blackhawks get to play the hated Detroit Red Wings for the first time since early October. Sunday will be the first time the Wings come to Chicago this year.
For decades, the Blackhawks have watched as the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Painfully, Chicago fans watched as Chris Chelios raised the Cup over his head in the hated Detroit sweater. These are two Original Six franchises, the only two in the Western Conference, who have hated each other for as long the franchises have existed. Indeed, seconds after the National Anthem ends on Sunday night, you’ll know exactly how Blackhawks fans feel about the visiting Wings.
In the 2008-09 season, for the first time in 15 years, the Blackhawks got close to challenging the Red Wings’ stranglehold on the Central Division. The up and coming Blackhawks, in the first playoff appearance for most of the players on the youngest roster in the NHL, streaked all the way to the Western Conference Finals as the fourth seed, knocking off heavyweights from Calgary and Vancouver along the way.
But in the Conference Finals, it was Detroit. Big Brother was waiting, and the youth of the Hawks finally failed as the deep, experienced Red Wings eliminated Chicago.
In July, however, Detroit found themselves in a strange position. Their leading goal scorer, Marian Hossa, left for greener pastures… in Chicago. So did Tomas Kopecky. Goalie Ty Conklin left for St. Louis, and Jiri Hudler made the biggest move, heading to Russia for the year. Detroit wasn’t as deep any more.
Meanwhile, the Little Brother in Chicago added Hossa, Kopecky and veteran center John Madden to an already-stacked offense. Could the balance of power in the Central Division be headed south and west a few hours?
Back on Oct. 8, the Hawks lost in Detroit 3-2 in the first of a string of poor performances from Cristobal Huet. With Hossa in street clothes after summer shoulder surgery, the veteran Red Wings dominated the Hawks in a game that looked too familiar for comfort.
Which is why, on Sunday, the red hot Blackhawks host the Red Wings in a game that is absolutely a must win.
Detroit is a tough team to break down because they keep winning games despite their inability to stay healthy. They will be without a list of players that sounds more like a Western Conference All Star lineup than an injury report: Johan Franzen, Henrik Zetterberg, Valterri Filppula, Dan Cleary, Jason Williams, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Andreas Lilja will all be in street clothes.
And yet the Wings had won four in a row before losing to Dallas on Saturday night. In that game, the Wings got some help back from the IR, as Darren Helm returned from a wrist injury to play 19 minutes.
The Blackhawks come into Sunday night’s game in first place, at the top of the Western Conference, with a Huet playing exceptionally well in the net and an offense starting to click with a healthy Hossa scoring as regularly as his salary would indicate he should. They’re 6-2-0 in December, and have only allowed more than two goals in three of the eight games.
What makes Sunday a must win for the Blackhawks is simple: just like Michael Jordan’s Bulls needed to step on Isaiah Thomas’ Pistons and make a statement, so now the Blackhawks of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Hossa must take the next step in their maturation with an emphatic victory.
Yes, the Red Wings are the most injury-plagued roster in the NHL. But that’s precisely why the Hawks must handle their business. Allowing a team without nine of their top players to sneak out of the United Center with a victory would do as much to perpetuate Detroit’s stamp on the division as it would keep the the Big Brother-Little Brother mentality in the two locker rooms.
The Blackhawks must take care of Detroit at home on Sunday.
Already dealing with most of their stars being hurt, the Detroit Red Wings lost another top player on Monday night. Defenseman Jonathan Ericsson hurt his knee in a collission with Phoenix’s Shane Doan in the first period Monday, and Detroit GM Ken Holland confirmed that he’ll be out at least two weeks.
This injury weakens an already-thin blue line for Detroit, who has been without Niklas Kronwall since November 21. The Red Wings are also skating without injured forwards Johan Franzen, Valterri Filppula, Jason Williams and Dan Cleary, and are in third place, four point behind Chicago in the Central Division.
Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby has been ruled out of Saturday’s game against the Blackhawks with a groin issue that escalated during the morning skate. Crosby said the injury has been lingering for a while, but had scored 11 points in his last three games.
The last time Crosby faced the Blackhawks was in the 2006-07 season. In two career games against Chicago, Crosby has two assists.
Both the Blackhawks and Penguins enter Saturday night’s game in first place in their respective divisions. The Penguins, where current Blackhawks’ wing Marian Hossa was a Stanley Cup runner-up after the 2007-08 season, defeated Hossa and the Detroit Red Wings in last year’s Cup Finals.
