They are an odd couple, these two players who have been working the point to make things happen when the Blackhawks go on the power play.
Despite a recent scoring drought, the Hawks went into Friday night’s game against the San Jose Sharks with the sixth-best power play in the NHL. A major reason for that is the compatibility of the odd couple of Phil Housley and Alex Zhamnov, who have helped transform one of the team’s liabilities last year into a major asset.
Housley is a 37-year-old defenseman who went directly from South St. Paul High in Minnesota to the National Hockey League 20 years ago.
Zhamnov is a 31-year-old Russian who already was a world-class player when he broke into the NHL in Winnipeg in 1992. He’s a center, but coach Brian Sutter has shifted him to a defense position on the power play to exploit his passing and stickhandling ability.
In contrast to Zhamnov, Housley received a crash course in the school of hard knocks when he made his NHL debut in Buffalo in 1982. But the on-the-job training served him well, and he developed into one of the game’s most skillful players.
“It’s doesn’t surprise me how good the Chicago power play is now that they have Housley,” said San Jose coach Darryl Sutter, the one-time Hawks coach who is Brian’s brother.
“Housley brings the puck out of the zone better than anybody. He enters the zone with the puck better than anybody and he passes the puck better than anybody. He’s going fast and he makes everybody else look like they’re going slow. At the same time, he plays with composure.”
Regarding Zhamnov, Darryl Sutter echoed what his brother has been preaching all season:
“Zhamnov is one of the best in the league. Always has been. When he played in Winnipeg he was third in the league in scoring the year of the strike (1994-95). The only reason he got a bad rap is because [the Hawks] traded Jeremy Roenick to get him.”
Housley spent a segment of his NHL career in Winnipeg, which moved to Phoenix the summer Zhamnov moved to Chicago.
Looking in the rear-view mirror to when he was coaching in Boston in 1992-93, Brian Sutter remembered how difficult the Winnipeg power play was to defend when Housley and Zhamnov played in tandem on the points.
At that time Smith was Winnipeg’s general manager. He, too, came to Chicago with an awareness of what Housley was capable of bringing to the power play.
So, when Calgary made Housley available in the waiver draft on the eve of this season, Smith brought him to Chicago. Sutter immediately put him at the point on the power play and moved Zhamnov from center to the perimeter to be his partner.
“We totally changed our power play,” said Brian Sutter. “You need a quarterback–that’s what Howie is. Alex complements him, and they utilize each other. If the other team focuses on Howie, Alex can destroy them. When they use each other the other team can’t bear down on either one.
“Alex is a center, but on the power play he’s a defenseman. He actually has more power-play goals than any defenseman in the league, but the league stats don’t show it because he’s listed as a center.”
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The outcome of the Blackhawks-Sharks game was unavailable until later editions because of its late start.
