PROBABLY THE last time anyone came on this strong on a Monday night was when Howard Cosell worked pro football telecasts.
The Hawks played their only Monday night game of the hockey season in the Stadium, and they came across bold and brassy before a crowd of 16,577 kindred spirits.
Orval`s Army bombed Gilles Meloche, Minnesota`s starting goalie, for five goals in less than 26 minutes and crushed the archrival North Stars 7-2.
The Hawks remained one point behind first-place St. Louis in the Norris Division. While the Hawks reduced the North Stars to rubble, the Blues had a blast in Detroit.
The Hawks have had an up-and-down season, but things could be worse. Just ask Minnesota coach Glen Sonmor.
”We`ve just been playing very badly for a considerable spell,” said Sonmor, whose defending division champions are 10 points behind the Blues.
”If you want to call it a general breakdown, you could. That`s what it is.”
STEVE LARMER, Doug Wilson and Denis Savard led the Chicago demoliton crew. Larmer scored his 29th and 30th goals of the season, the first and last of the mismatch, and assisted on Savard`s 25th goal.
Savard added a pair of assists, while Wilson scored his 13th goal this season and had three assists.
The other Hawk goals were scored by rookies Ed Olczyk and Dan Frawley, and by Bill Gardner, the converted center who has found happiness at left wing on the line with Savard and Larmer.
Gardner`s 12th goal of the season made the score 5-1 with 14 minutes 33 seconds remaining in the second period. It inspired Sonmor to yank Meloche and send in Roland Melanson.
Frawley`s goal was his first in the National Hockey League. He has played 13 games this year and three last season.
Steve Payne`s goals in the first and third periods prevented Hawk goalie Murray Bannerman from getting his first shutout of the season. Bannerman made 33 saves. Despite the final score, the Hawks had seven fewer shots.
THE BIG DIFFERENCE was the special teams. The Hawks made good on three of six power plays while Minnesota failed on six of seven.
”We were a little bit more controlled than we have been,” Doug Wilson said. ”You can`t force it. You should just try to get one or two real good chances. We`ve been fairly successful in doing that on the road, but we haven`t at home.”
The game wasn`t all seashells and balloons for the Black Hawks. Wilson`s defense partner, Bob Murray, became the latest member of Team Snakebit to go on the disabled list. He pulled a muscle in his back in the first period and didn`t return.
”His back is pretty bad,” coach Orval Tessier said. ”We won`t know until the morning what his status is.”
Like the Hawks, the North Stars have been besieged by injuries. On the list of missing players for Minnesota were defensemen Craig Hartsburg, Curt Files and Dan Mandich, goalie Don Beaupre and right wing Paul Holmgren. Right wing Willi Plett, who is healthy but hasn`t produced, watched from the press box.
THE HAWKS absent with injuries and illness were wingers Al Secord, Darryl Sutter, Curt Fraser and Bob MacMillan, and defensemen Dave Feamster and Keith Brown.
The Hawks had only 17 skaters, one short of the limit, for Saturday night`s loss in Pittsburgh, the Hawks` second straight defeat. With Brown out with a bruised hip, right wing Tom McMurchy was recalled from Milwaukee of the International League. McMurchy had 18 goals and 15 assists in 44 games with the farm club.
”One of the things I was most pleased about was the solid play of our third and fourth lines,” Tessier said. ”People like Frawley and McMurchy, and Jeff Larmer (Steve`s brother), too. Jeff is just now getting into shape.” He missed more than a month because of a broken jaw.
Tessier also was pleased with the Hawks` ability to sustain momentum after a good start, a quality that was lacking when they lost their two previous games.
”At the end of the second period, I told them to go out and play basic positional hockey and they`d have all kinds of chances to score,” Tessier said. ”It probably was a good thing that Minnesota got that goal 20 seconds into the third period. It woke us up.”
If there was anyone asleep in the house, the din from the fans drowned out their snoring.
