Blackhawks, Blackhawks, Blackhawks

Anyone remember the comeback that the Hawks pulled off against the Flames on Oct 12th? The Hawks let up 5 goals in the 1st, only to comeback and scored 6 unanswered goals to win the game in overtime. Or how about the dominating performance that was shown at Calgary with a 7 to 1 win and then not even a full week later while still on the road to beat the San Jose Sharks 7 to 2. But then in the month of February the Hawks minds were someplace else, probably thinking about the Olympics, seeing as 6 of them were to play for three different countries. Yes, going into the Olympic games they had a 4 game winning streak but they also lost the 3 games before that. And those wins that they were riding on, 3 of the games were decided by a shootout.

Now after the Olympic break we have started off with a 3-2 record. One of the wins I don't even want to count because it came from the Oilers, dead last in both conferences, so that win doesn't weigh too heavily in my book. But one of the loses came to the Islanders who are 4th from the bottom which kinda concerns me a bit. It concerns me because the Hawks were beat by a terrible team. But when you take into account that 4 of the Blackhawks better players were playing their hearts out just 2 days ago, I can cut those players a little slack, even though Patrick Kane had a goal. So I'm not as concerned that the team lost, more so that the other players on the team didn't step up and take that leading role to win a game.

So besides that one game against the Islanders, the Hawks really have only played one terrible period out of four games. Unfortunately that one period cost us the game against the Red Wings. Now once it comes to the playoffs, I'll give the other team one game if it means that we get the other three, it's just too bad that we can't come to an actually agreement like that. We will actually have to play and earn those wins. Which is very possible if, and I repeat, if Nemi or Huet get their act together and stop some goals. And all this talk about how the goal tending is just fine and it's just the defense needs to step up their game and block more of the shots and not let so many get to the goalie needs to stop. Since January, (I didn't feel like doing the math from the beginning of the season) there have been just over 25 shots per game when the Hawks won. When they lost the defense only let up 19 shots per game. From those statistics, I'd rather the defense let more shots on goal, maybe we would've won those games.

Overall I'm still happy with the way the Blackhawks have been playing because their offense is so dominant that no matter how many pucks slide through Huets legs, we can still pull off a win. It just makes me think of how would teams still have the energy and willpower to show up to a game against the Hawks and actually play if we were able to trade for Vokoun and have him sit between our posts.