With 23 games left in the regular season, the Blackhawks have two more points than they had all last season.
In the 26 games in which they’ve had the lead going into the third period, the Hawks haven’t lost. The record in these games is 24-0-2.
The Hawks finished their season series with the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche with three victories and one defeat.
Defenseman Jon Klemm, who came to the Hawks from Colorado as a free agent last summer, said it best after they rallied to defeat his old team 3-2 Saturday night before a hostile crowd of 18,007 in the Pepsi Center:
“You look at the guys we have and talk to the guys who were here last year. The difference is night and day.”
Brian Sutter is the coach who made the Hawks see the light. He has transformed ex-coach Alpo Suhonen’s underachievers into overachievers and has them en route to the playoffs for the first time in five years.
Sutter has inspired his players to believe in themselves and in his system and will to win.
Saturday’s game was typical. The Hawks had lost three of their previous four games going into this last of their five consecutive road games. They had played relatively poorly the previous night in San Jose, where they lost 4-2, and they had seldom-used backup goaltender Steve Passmore making his first appearance in 12 games.
They also had “something to prove,” according to first-year left wing Kyle Calder, because “last time we were in Colorado they beat us pretty good.”
This time Calder submitted the most compelling piece of evidence in making the case that the Hawks are the better team. Nine minutes into the second period he rammed home the winning goal at the expense of Patrick Roy, who has won more games than any goalie in National Hockey League history.
“The puck was right on his pad,” Calder said. “I kind of pushed his pad and the puck into the net. We were down 1-0 and 2-1 in the first period. They’re a tremendous hockey club, the Stanley Cup champions. It’s a credit to everybody on this team that we came back to win it.”
After surrendering goals by Dan Hinote and Joe Sakic in the first 10 minutes, Passmore made some exceptional saves to stop the Avalanche’s roll. Particularly outstanding were the stops he made on difficult shots by Rob Blake later in the opening period.
According to Passmore, who wound up stopping 21 shots, those saves bolstered his confidence “big time” and “helped a lot.”
In the third period Passmore got more than a little help from his friends–the Hawks held the Avalanche to two shots. And the Hawks’ penalty-killers were flawless during the entire game–erasing two infractions in both the first and second periods and one in the third.
“We tried to keep the puck off the sticks of Sakic, [Milan] Hejduk and [Chris] Drury,” Tony Amonte said. “We fell behind but we stuck with it and kept on working. Coming off a disappointing effort [in San Jose], it was a big challenge.
“Colorado is a measuring stick–this was a big, big win for us.”
Amonte put the Hawks on the road to victory by scoring their first goal and his 21st nearing the midway point in the first period.
And 77 seconds into the second period, Steve Sullivan outmaneuvered Roy to tally the short backhand shot that made the score 2-2.
“I thought I’d go behind the net,” Sullivan said. “When I saw him leave the post, I hammered on the breaks and was able to stick the puck in the side of the net.”
What made each of the Hawks’ goals even more pleasing to Sutter was that they came from close in.
“Tony was in front, Sully was behind the net and Kyle was in front,” Sutter said. “And when I came to this team, there were people telling me that we didn’t have people who could jam the net.”
That’s just one of many things said about the Hawks before the season that has turned out to be misinformation.
