There was definitely more good than bad in the Hawks 3-2 OT win over the Islanders in Uniondale last night.
First, two road points are two road points. Put 'em in the bank.
Second, the Hawks got solid to exceptional work from Ray Emery, lending further support to the belief that if Corey Crawford continues to struggle or suffers an injury at some point, Razor might be able to assume the reins and get the job done as he has for a couple of other teams in the past, including Anaheim last year.
Third, the blueline corps was better. For the last few games, Nik Hjalmarsson has been the Hawks' best defenseman with timely shot blocks, solid positioning and a big hit last night on Islander forward Michael Grabner.
The new second line came to life, with Marian Hossa and Patrick Sharp combining on all 3 Hawk goals. Big Hoss got his 400th career goal. On a side note, a couple of seasons from now, he would become the third Slovak-born player to get his 500th career goal in the Indianhead sweater (joining Stan Mikita and Petr Bondra).
Last but not least, the Hawks killed off all their penalties against a pretty hot power play unit last night and are now 27th in the league in the PK (which is only remarkable when you realize they were a distant 30th not too long ago).
Negatives? Come on, this is JJ, you knew there'd be negatives.
A couple of bad penalties were taken, especially a late roughing call on Dan Carcillo. I am a Carcillo fan. I like what he brings to the Hawks, but he needs to rein it in at critical times, like late in a tie game.
The forward defense in the defensive zone had two breakdowns that led to both Islander goals, with point men away from the puck being left wide open for bombs. These are system issues the Hawks must work out.
From 30,000 feet, it was another game where a couple of the Hawks big 4 (Sharp, Hossa, Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane) came through when they had to. You'd like to see more secondary scoring, although I thought ave Bolland and Michal Frolik, again, were effective in pest roles. And Marcus Kruger looked good, although he didn't make the scoresheet.
The aforementioned fearsome foursome by the way, are 4th (Toews), 7th (Kane), 9th (Sharp) and 13th (Hossa) in the league in scoring (which is pretty amazing) and three of them are in the top 30 in +/-, with Toews 2nd in the league in faceoff percentage (among regular players).
See you tomorrow with some kind of blog on some kind of topic (promise) before a Sharks preview on Sunday.
JJ
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