With two top offensive players out, coach Trent Yawney made it simple for any Hawk who felt he should be on the ice more: “It’s put up or shut up time.”
The silence at the United Center on Wednesday was deafening.
Except of course for the small–and angry–announced crowd of 11,641 that let its feelings be known, as usual.
In what may be a sign of things to come in the next three weeks to a month–or whenever Martin Havlat gets back in the lineup–the Hawks fell easily to the Vancouver Canucks 5-0.
The loss was the Hawks’ third in a row and dropped them under .500 (4-5) for the first time this season.
It also came against a Vancouver team that was playing the final of a five-game road trip and finishing a stretch of nine of its first 11 games on the road.
But the Canucks still had enough to have their best offensive output of the season.
Since Havlat got hurt Friday in Dallas, the Hawks’ mantra has been that one individual doesn’t mean more than the team. But without Havlat’s game-breaking skills, the Hawks looked a lot like the offensively challenged unit from last season.
