Winning Ugly

The Hawks really had no business winning a game like this - but when you play a team like the Blue Jackets I guess you don't really have to be on the top of your shit. The Hawks looked tired and sloppy all night playing back to back games against a rested Columbus crew. The most obvious example of this being the 10 trips to the penalty box throughout the game. When you're tired, you're more likely to do something stupid.

Luckily our PK teams continue to play well and only allowed one power play goal. The too many men on the ice penalty in OT was particularly scary - I know the Jackets suck but you can't keep giving a team an extra man and expect to win, especially in OT. Fuck it though, the Jackets are 26th in the league with the extra skater at only 14% while the Hawks are 4th on the kill, not allowing a goal almost 90% of the time. Sometimes you just get lucky.


Huet finally had a good game last night too - stopping 48 of the 51 shots against him, and also stopped all three BJ shooters in the shootout. He did exactly what you want a highly paid goalie to do - pick up a tired team every once in a while. When your team can only get together half as many shots as your opponents sometimes you just need a hot goalie. I wouldn't be surprised to see him in the net again Monday just to see if he can ride the hot streak.

You could say Toews had the winning goal since he was the only one to score in the shootout - take that as proof that he'll be alright for the year and the goals will start coming in actual game situations. He's perfect in the shootout so far this year evidently having traded places with Kane from last year. Getting the winning shootout goal and being named the #1 star might even break his curse and transfer to monday night's game (hopefully anyway).

Once again the Hawk that decided to drop the gloves probably would have been better to just have kept them on. Fraser took on Tollefsen in the first and immediately took 2 or 3 big shots to the chin then looked like he was just trying to hold on after that - it was ugly. Fraser also looked like he split his head open a bit on the fall. This team really needs Wiz back or at least maybe for someone to take on Burish instead, even though Burish sucks at fighting too.

An ugly win still counts for two points and normally you don't want to give someone in your division the extra point for OT but the Jackets won't be a threat to make the playoffs so it doesn't matter. The next 5 games are all at home where the Hawks have played much better and they're 4-1-2 under coach Q. They've also jumped into a tie with Nashville for second in the Central and have enough points that if the season ended today they'd make the playoffs. Obviously the season doesn't end today though and there's a long way to go - Keep getting points boys.