Only one thing was wrong with the Blackhawks’ 3-0 victory over Los Angeles: Leading scorer Steve Sullivan broke the ring finger on his left hand in the third period.
Sullivan left the United Center after Sunday’s game not knowing if he would be able to play when the Hawks meet the New York Rangers at noon Monday at Madison Square Garden.
“I don’t know if I can hold the stick,” Sullivan said. “I need two hands on the stick. It’s a matter of my pain threshold, I guess.”
The injury was caused when a waist-high pass from teammate Stephane Quintal struck Sullivan in the tip of the finger while the Hawks were on the power play.
“Don’t remind me,” Quintal said. “I just wanted to put a wrist shot beside him, and I caught his finger.”
Before leaving the game with the injury, Sullivan assisted on the second-period power-play goals by Eric Daze and Tony Amonte, giving him 31 assists and 28 goals in the best year of his NHL career.
Sullivan also did some inadvertent physical damage to two of the Kings.
“I hit [Bryan] Smolinski and [Matthieu] Schneider in the face with pucks,” Sullivan said. “It comes in threes–right after I hit Schneider, the puck hit me in the finger.
“I never had a broken bone in my life . . . until now.”
Sick star: Jocelyn Thibault didn’t feel as good as he looked when he stopped 20 shots in recording his fifth shutout of the season and 12th of his career.
“I’ve been sick again the last couple days,” said Thibault, who had a bout with the flu in mid-December. “It was a struggle to play today.”
But Thibault perished the thought that he might ask coach Alpo Suhonen for Monday afternoon off.
“I want to play,” he said. “I’m willing to play every game till the end of the season if he thinks he needs me. We’ve got a lot of hockey left. I like our [playoff] chances.”
Though the Kings are the second-highest-scoring team in the NHL, it was not a demanding game for Thibault. His teammates gave him good coverage and left few rebounds. In the final period, Los Angeles took only five shots.
“I was able to challenge the shooter because every guy had his man,” Thibault said.
Instigator: Hawks tough guy Bob Probert fought back and decked Stu Grimson when the ex-Hawk attacked him midway through the third period. Until then Probert had gone 30 games without a fight. His last fight had been when he got into a scrap with Reid Simpson of St. Louis on Dec. 10.
Probert got off with five minutes for fighting, while Grimson received two minutes for instigating, five minutes for fighting and a 10-minute misconduct.
The other half: Monday’s game with the Rangers is the Hawks’ first with an Eastern Conference team since Jan. 25, when they lost to Philadelphia. They are 5-8-1-1 against Eastern teams, while the Rangers have a 7-10-1-1 record against Western opponents.
Of the Hawks’ remaining 23 games, nine are against teams from the East, including four of the next six.
