Hawks Hockey Hoiden

The most consistent thing about last night’s 5-2 win over the Oilers was the inconsistency of the officiating.  Beyond all the missed hooking calls that were so numerous I lost count, there were a couple of missed boarding calls (i.e. dirty hits from behind).  The weird thing is the refs didn’t allow any fights.  So, in theory, the refs would allow dirty hits which had the potential to do damage, but they wouldn’t allow fighting ostensibly because fighting leads to injuries?  Yeah, that makes sense. 

Also how many interference calls were missed?  I think I counted two times when I looked up and one of the Oil was holding a Hawk against the boards. Those are pretty obvious penalties to miss, if in fact you’re just missing them and not, say, overlooking them altogether.

And in terms of overlooking things, it’s really too bad that Bryan Bickell overlooked his own safety while open-ice checking Oiler Dustin Penner which resulted in Bickell slamming his head on the ice after tripping over Penner.  It’s never a good sign when two of your own teammates (in this case Niklas Hjalmarsson and Troy Brouwer) have to help you off the ice.  Bickell got his bell rung but good and is certain to have a substantial concussion.  I hope that the Hawks management will remember how Bickell took one for the team and ask him back up when he stops seeing double (or triple or quadruple).

Ok that was the bad, now for the good stuff. How much of a nail-biter was it when Cristobal Huet made that awesome save in the 2nd period by coming out of the crease so far he was halfway to the blue line!  At the same time you have to cringe because of course you never want to see your goalie that far out.  Yikes!  (It was good that Huet was performing so well last night and that Khabibulin was not in net for the Oil because seeing those two go head-to-head just feels really wrong somehow.)

Huet would again star in another nail-biting moment later in the 2nd period.  With the clock showing 0.1 seconds left, Oiler Shawn Horcoff supposedly scored a goal.  It wasn’t a pretty goal and had it stood it would’ve been called a garbage goal, but the War Room ruled a ‘no goal’ determining time had run out before the puck went in.  Once again, Huet had another great night.

Jonathan Toews too had an excellent night. He had two goals — one in the first period and one in the third on a power play — and an assist. (Also to score were Kris Versteeg, Patrick Kane, and John Madden.)  Tazer’s forechecking is now back to his pre-injury caliber so it’s nice to have him back all the way.  It’s nice to have this team back…finally.  Now, if the Hawks can keep up their winning streak on the road, they will make Hawks fans some very happy humans (as Pat Foley would say).

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 am and is filed under Bryan Bickell, Chicago Blackhawks, Cristobal Huet, John Madden, Jonathan Toews, Kris Versteeg, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Pat Foley, Patrick Kane, Troy Brouwer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.