After what happened in Phoenix, Blackhawks coach Brian Sutter has reason to look forward to Friday night’s reunion with his younger brother, San Jose Sharks coach Darryl Sutter.
Throughout the season Brian Sutter has been urging the Hawks to shoot the puck, and in the 5-2 victory over the stubborn Coyotes on Wednesday night they took a season-high 42 shots.
Sutter has been looking for a scoring lift from the third and fourth lines and from defensemen other than Phil Housley. He got it Wednesday.
– Defenseman Jaroslav Spacek broke a 2-2 tie when he scored his second goal of the season on a shot from the perimeter midway in the third period.
– Right wing Ryan VandenBussche, who played his first full game on the third line and went into the game with only one goal and one assist this season, was a catalyst. He dug the puck out of the corner to start the passing sequence that put the puck on Spacek’s stick, and then he went to the net to set the screen for the go-ahead shot. Early in the first period VandenBussche also helped make things happen, getting into a skirmish with Brad May and drawing the penalty that produced the power play that the Hawks parlayed into a 2-0 lead.
“I told [VandenBussche] on the bench that this was the best game I ever saw him play,” said captain Tony Amonte, his teammate for five seasons.
– Third-line left wing Mark Bell ended a prolonged slump by scoring into an empty net late in the game for his first goal in 17 games and his first point in 13 games.
In losing three of the four previous games, the normally high-scoring Hawks were held to five goals total.
“We’ve got two of the best lines in the NHL,” said Sutter. “They shouldn’t be able to shut both of them down.”
Against the Coyotes, the first and second lines were lighting it up. Amonte scored the first two goals, giving him 20 for the season, and Alex Zhamnov assisted on both, raising his team-high assists total to 35. He’s also their points leader with 52. Steve Sullivan scored his 15th goal, made the pass that prefaced Spacek’s goal and helped set up Amonte’s first goal.
“When you shoot 40-plus pucks, you’re bound to score,” Sullivan said. “It was good that we had a lot of people contributing. We’re going to need everybody down the stretch.”
Self-examination: Amonte’s theory on the Hawks’ outburst: “We were coming off two losses in a row and everybody thought about that over the (weeklong) All-Star break. We forechecked hard, and in the second period we took the momentum.”
That’s putting it mildly–they outshot the Coyotes 18-3 in the middle period but only Spacek scored. “The game was won in the second period, regardless of the fact we were only down by one goal going into the third,” said Phoenix coach Bobby Francis. “They played extremely well. They took it to us.”
Noteworthy: Overshadowed by the shooting spree at Phoenix was the play of defense partners Boris Mironov and Alexander Karpovtsev. Sutter said the two “were real good.” . . . While Brian Sutter’s second-place Hawks were downing Phoenix to stay a distant 13 points behind Detroit in the Central Division, Darryl’s Sharks were increasing their Pacific Division lead to five points over runner-up Los Angeles by shutting out Calgary 2-0. Despite the disparity between the teams’ standings in their divisional races, the Hawks have seven more points than San Jose.
