I know this is strange, but the Hawks were on the road Thursday night. It's been a while, I know, but they took the lovely scenic trek down I-55 to pungent St. Louis, where smelly beasts like Barrett Jackman, David Back-ass, and Ryan Reeves reside. I TOLD you it was pungent. The Blues have had their issues since the Blackhawks last faced them, but they were still as dangerous as any team in the NHL, and I DO mean dangerous. With rookie future star Vladimir Tarasenko out, that gives the Blackhawks some more breathing room, but with players like Oshie and Steen still skulking around, nothing is safe. The Blues were actually worse at home (4-4-1) than the road (6-2-1), so that was another factor in their favor. Rivalry game for the Hawks. Live from the Scottrade Center in smelly St. Blew-us, it's the Blackhawks and Blues.
After the Hawks went up 1-0 just seconds into the game, the meat of the first and second periods was pretty boring. The Hawks out shot the Blues 7-6 and 8-7 in the periods, but it was fairly uneventful, overall. That's perfectly fine though, because the Hawks had the lead.
The third period was just the icing on the cake, with the Hawks scoring two insurance goals to extend their point and regulation undefeated streak to 20 games this season. There were 8 shots either way, but the Hawks really didn't seem to be in any danger. The goal 12 seconds in set the tone, and the Blues had no answer. Next victim, Columbus Blue Jackets.
- It didn't take long for El Capitan to take a 1-0 lead for the Hawks. He won the opening faceoff, and then ended the play with the puck in the St. Louis nets, before all the fans were in their seats. As it turned out, the Hawks never lost the lead. Twelve seconds into the game. How ya like us now, St. Louis? There was a classic camera angle right after the goal of a Hawks fan standing up and cheering the goal, with a fat greasy Blues fan sitting right behind him shaking his head in disbelief. CLASSIC!
- Just a couple of minutes into the third period, Bryan Bickell and Shaw had a similar play to the previous game, with a bang-bang pass and goal to put the Hawks up 2-0. He had a rough time in Rockford, but Shaw is making things happen with the big boys. I didn't think he could repeat the success he had last year, but he is proving me wrong. He's become everything that Tallon thought Kyle Beach would be.
- El Capitan put an exclamation point on the night with a goal, that Halak initially made the save on, but flipped up over his shoulder and into the net. The asshurt out of St. Louis could be heard clearly from the Chicago area at this point.
- Emery. He simply did what he had to which, the way the Hawks are play, isn't necessarily much. More on Emery later.
- The Hawk allowed the league's top rated powerplay on the ice 4 times. Luckily they didn't yield any goals, but that's playing with fire.
- Well, the worst part of the night has to be losing Crawford again to that non specific upper body injury. No matter what the press and Quenneville say, I have a sneaking suspicion that it is more after effects of his undisclosed concussion. He sort of stumbled out of the net the end of the first period and never returned. The Hawks have been playing the Crawford situation close to the heart, and this is no different. The most anyone will say is that he is day-to-day with and upper body injury. When I watched the first period back again, there didn't seem to be any plays where he took a shot or anything else to the head, out of the ordinary.
- Blues prodigy and Alex Pietrangelo was a minus 2 on the night, along with Schwartz, Cole and D'Agostini.
- Thursday night was the Barrett Jackoff bukkake festival. Some crap about playing playing the most games as a Blues defenseman, which is about the same as the winning the special olympics. To show what soreasses that the Blues and their fans are, this is a picture from the ceremony on the official Blues instagram page, in which Jonny Toews (far right) is completely cut out of the picture. Almost, as douchy as something Vancouver would pull...ALMOST
- Shaw and Frolik were both completely dicked at the dot, going a combined 5 for 17.
- The Reaves/Bollig charade was embarrassingly stupid. The played patty cake and danced around like a couple of kids at a middle school mixer just long enough for the refs to get fed up and put and end to it, before a punch was even thrown. Let the gorillas go at it and take them out of my life for 5 minutes. Please!
- Look I'm going to spell this out for all the meatballs. No matter what you think Crawford is the #1 goalie, and until he plays otherwise. This is the typical Chicago backup QB syndrome. Emery resigned here as a backup for a reason. If there were going to be teams looking for Ray Emery to be their load bearing starter, they were going to be desperate ones. Emery has been an excellent back up and fill-in. That's what he is. He has less lateral movement and he's older than Crawford, not to mention has worse hips than an inbred German Shepherd. This is not a knock on him; he's just not the better goalie. Enjoy that the team has a successful backup, and enough with the Emery for starter horseshit, because you just look like a lunatic.
