Blackhawks blow out Stars 8-1
BY MARK LAZERUS mlazerus@suntimes.com March 16, 2013 9:37PM
Chicago Blackhawks center Jonathan Toews (19) and Dallas Stars defenseman Alex Goligoski (33) skate for the puck during the first period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, March 16, 2013, in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Updated: April 18, 2013 7:12AM
DALLAS — In the NHL, there are things you can do when you have a six-goal lead — like try a spin-o-rama. But there also are things you can never do — like watching your own highlights when your teammates are around. So Patrick Kane resigned himself to the fact that he’d have to wait until he was safely tucked away in his hotel room in Denver late Saturday night to watch the clip of him spinning around Dallas defenseman Brenden Dillon and flipping a backhander into the net, a spectacular score that capped the Blackhawks’ 8-1 obliteration of the Stars at American Airlines Center. “It’s probably the first thing I’ll do when I get into Colorado, I’m not going to lie to you,” Kane said. “Unless someone pulls it up on their phone, because I can’t pull it up on my phone. If I get caught, I’ll be dead in the water doing that.” And just about everyone got in on the fun. Jonathan Toews had two goals and an assist. Kane and Nick Leddy each had a goal and two assists, and Bryan Bickell and Viktor Stalberg combined to assist on three goals. Marian Hossa had a pair of goals, and Brandon Saad (two assists) and Duncan Keith (one goal, one assist) each had two points. Perhaps no one as much as Toews, who got things going with a pair of goals 95 seconds apart midway through the first period. Like Kane, Toews wanted his highlight-reel moment, and on his next shift — on a power play — he was circling the crease like a shark, looking for a rare natural hat trick. “He really wanted it,” Hossa said. Instead, Toews had to settle for a three-point game and a blowout victory.
The Hawks chased Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen — who was so stellar in the teams’ first meeting, a 3-2 overtime win for the Hawks on Jan. 24 — after Johnny Oduya scored his second goal in as many games midway through the second period to make it 4-0. Backup Richard Bachman didn’t fare any better, giving up the two Hossa goals. In the third, he was beaten by Keith’s blue-line blast, then Kane’s circus shot.
Only Trevor Daley’s third-period goal past Corey Crawford (18 saves) prevented it from being a total annihilation. The Hawks looked — and with the rest, felt — like themselves again. And once again, they head to Colorado, where the streak ended with a 6-2 shellacking, with an obvious swagger. “Everyone was gunning for us [then], now we’re kind of gunning for them after they beat us that bad in Colorado,” Kane said. “It’s kind of revenge after they broke the streak there. We’re a team that wanted a restart after those two losses, and to get back to the way we were playing. And we’ve done a good job of that.”
