The Blackhawks welcomed the Blackhawks South into their home away from home, the United Center. This is not the same old Florida Panthers. They are playoff bound at this point, and had a solid back end. Of course, this solid lineup was composed of former Blackhawks. The Blackhawks started the game without one of their more important defenders, Johnny Oduya, who was out due to injury.
The first period stared with an unfortunate injury, which then led to a 1-0 powerplay goal. The Blackhawks seemed to have more of a sense of urgency after that, with some big hits and a 15-8 shot advantage after twenty minutes.
The second period started off slow for the Blackhawks, but they hit their stride about halfway though. The Hawks out shot the Cats once again 12-8, and were able to add one more goal to their lead. All the physicality was going to make for an interesting final period.
The Blackhawks coughed up their 2 goal lead in the third period, yielding 16 Florida shots to their 10. Not the Blackhawks best 3rd period, to put it nicely. The overtime was chaos, but neither team could end it, and the Blackhawks finally won it in the shootout.
- Immediately following the Petrovic penalty, the Blackhawks were able to actually sustain pressure on the Cats, ending up with a Jonathan Toews powerplay goal. I heard all kinds of griping about the Hawks not retaliating, but they got a powerplay goal. At this point goals are rare, acting like a slobbering goon does nothing but probably put you in the hole.
- Following the Hossa penalty, and unfortunate block of a Patrick Sharp shot wound up on the tape of Kris Versteeg, who had a fairly open net. Versteeg stung his former team burying the goal, and it was 2-0.
- Lemont Native Scott Darling was pretty good. He buckled in the third period, but was strong for the remainder of the game. Still not the best goalie on the team, but he was adequate.
- The Blackhawks gave up two early 2-on-1's that could have been ugly fast. Luckily, no harm no foul.
- Just a few minutes after the Bickell stick infraction, Marian Hossa ended up in the box for knocking Bobby Lu's stick away from him, while it lay on the ice next to the net. Strange calls.
- Darling lost the shutout late in the third period, but my mind was on the missing league leading scorer.
- The Hawks were goofed on, at the dots, again. Losing 60% of the draws won't win you a lot of games.
- Just a few minutes into the game, and Alex Petrovic cross checked Patrick Kane in the side while he was in a vulnerable position and Kane went down awkwardly. He stayed on the ice for a while and got up holding his left arm. That's all this team needs. As I said on Twitter, they need this like 6 O'Donnells on the blue line. A source told me that the injury was a broken clavicle and Kane was done for possibly the season. God dammit.
- Derek McKenzie got a penalty shot in the second period because of a loose stick being "shot" towards him, by Bryan Bickell. Stupid ass play. Why would you do that? FrankenBickell.
- A crazy hop late in the third period ended up being reviewed and was over the line. I'm sure this was a conspiracy to make the Blackhawks lose too. I wasn't in the mood to argue that, after hearing the Kane news.
Toews scored on Luongo
Trochek stopped by Darling
Sharp beat Luongo
Bjugstad never got a shot off.
The Lineblender
Saad-Toews-Hossa
Sharp-Richards-Kane
Versteeg-Shaw-Bickell
Smith-Kruger-Nordstrom
Keith-Rundblad
Seabrook-Hjalmarsson
Cumiskey-Rozsival