Jim Cummins called it bad ice.
All coach Craig Hartsburg knows is his club was dealt another bad break Friday night. A costly break.
Ethan Moreau suffered a broken right ankle in the first period of a 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers and will be in a cast for six weeks.
It appeared as if Moreau was cross-checked by Flyers defenseman Luke Richardson in the slot, and Moreau fell awkwardly to the ice and couldn’t get up.
Cummins said the ice “was a little chippy,” the result of the circus being in town for two weeks, the Bulls being back in town and a couple concerts taking place in the United Center, including one Thursday night.
Hartsburg suggested the league review the play, which didn’t result in a penalty. Hawks senior vice president Bob Pulford said NHL supervisor of officials Dave Newell was at Friday night’s game and agreed a penalty should have been called.
The Hawks will try to survive the next six-plus weeks without Moreau, who just returned a couple of games ago from a broken knuckle. He has four goals and 10 points in 24 games.
That’s life: A lot has been made of Phoenix’s Jeremy Roenick crashing into goalie Jeff Hackett behind the net Wednesday night. But Hackett wasn’t at all upset with Roenick’s move.
“JR is a competitor,” Hackett said of his former teammate. “There are no friends on the ice. I can respect that. I love JR as a person, he’s my friend off the ice. But it’s a physical sport and those things happen.”
Goalie overload: The Hawks had no goalies at Thursday’s practice, with Hackett out with a sprained ankle suffered Wednesday and Andrei Trefilov sent to Indianapolis to play for the Ice. At Friday morning’s skate, the Hawks had four goalies in attendance: Hackett, Trefilov, Kirk Daubenspeck and Chris Terreri.
Hackett was testing his ankle, which wasn’t good enough to start Friday night but strong enough to back up Trefilov, who made his first NHL start since Nov. 26, 1996. Daubenspeck came up from Indy with Trefilov in case Hackett wasn’t healthy enough to back up, and Terreri had the pin removed from his dislocated left ring finger and can begin skating.
Hackett thinks he’ll be ready for Sunday’s game against San Jose, and Terreri might begin practicing in a week and be ready to play a week after that. As for Trefilov, he lost 4-2 Thursday night to the Cleveland Lumberjacks. He stopped 32 of 35 shots before Cleveland tacked on an empty-net goal.
The fact he played a game was a plus. Since the Hawks acquired him Nov. 12 from Buffalo, he hadn’t played at all.
Comfort zone: The trap has been trashed as the reason hockey games are becoming boring. But Hawks General Manager Bob Murray offers another reason: comfortable players.
“It’s throughout the league,” Murray said. “That’s why you’re seeing so many (rotten) games. Players aren’t playing with emotion anymore.”
“Money changes a lot of things in life,” Hartsburg said. “Certain guys can handle it, certain guys don’t. One of the surprise teams in our league is St. Louis, and they have 14 guys in the last year of their contracts.”
