The Blackhawks got a big scare when Tony Amonte was checked into the boards and high-sticked by Dallas left wing Martin Rucinsky with 5 minutes 48 seconds elapsed in Sunday night’s game.
Blood was streaming from the dazed captain’s mouth and chin when he went to the dressing room.
He didn’t return to the bench until late in the first period, and he didn’t re-enter the game until 36 seconds before the first intermission.
The report from the dressing room was it took a few stitches to close the cut on Amonte’s chin. Rucinsky received a double minor, and Amonte later scored in the second period.
Amonte’s string of 380 straight games is the longest by an active NHL player. The last time he sat out was on April 14, 1996, when he was resting for the playoffs.
Karpovtsev back: Defenseman Alexander Karpovtsev was back in the lineup, playing with his usual partner, Boris Mironov, after missing three games because of a rib injury and a fourth for family reasons.
Joe Reekie, the veteran defenseman obtained Thursday from Washington, was Mironov’s partner in Friday’s 2-2 tie in Tampa Bay. In Sunday’s game, Reekie was paired with Jaroslav Spacek.
“We have nine defensemen, but the other day we were down to six,” coach Brian Sutter said of the acquisition of Reekie for a fourth-round pick in the June draft. “You aren’t going to keep winning with only six defensemen. [Hawks general manager] Mike Smith and I didn’t just want to add a player, we wanted to add a different type of guy to the mix. Joe is a steady, stay-at-home defenseman with a lot of experience.”
Young Star: Left wing Kyle Calder, who scored his 16th goal Sunday, is looking forward to playing in the first Young Stars Game, which will be held Feb. 1, the night before the All-Star Game in the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
“I don’t know anything about the game itself, but I’m honored to be there,” said Calder, in his first full season with the Hawks after being a seventh-round draft choice in the 1997 draft.
Seven Olympians: Two players who belong to the Hawks but aren’t on their roster, defenseman Dmitri Tolkunov from their Norfolk farm team and right wing Yorick Treille from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, are going to the Winter Olympics. Tolkunov, signed as a free agent in 1998, will play for Ukraine, while Treille, a seventh-round choice in the 1999 draft, will compete for France.
Their selections give the Hawks seven representatives in next month’s Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Spacek will play for the defending champion Czech Republic, center Alex Zhamnov and Mironov for 1998 silver medalist Russia, and Amonte and defenseman Phil Housley for the United States.
Housley ran his point-scoring streak to seven games Sunday.
