The Blackhawks have a team of young offensive talents who play the game beautifully. I’ve often said nothing is uglier than October hockey—unless it’s November basketball—but the Hawks have been fluid from the start in rising to the top of the National Hockey League Central Division standings.
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In one game against the Anaheim Ducks, the Hawks’ Patrick Kane—out to fulfill his own pledge to become one of the game’s elite players this season at the age of 23—pulled off a spin-o-rama assist sure to make his career highlight reel whenever he retires. He skated down the right wing, pirouetted in the manner of the Hawks’ spritely Denis Savard 30 years ago, and dealt a no-look backhand pass across the goal crease to Marian Hossa, who calmly deflected it into the open net.
There’s no denying it makes for exciting and sometimes lovely hockey. Down 3-0 at home last week to the Phoenix Coyotes, the Hawks rallied to tie the game, with captain Jonathan Toews scoring twice and then assisting on the third. Reunited with Kane, who had spent the early part of the season centering another line, they came in on a 2-on-1, with Toews on the left wing and Kane drifting backward toward the right goal post. Toews got the defenseman to commit, then skated by the sprawled defender and slid a perfect pass to Kane, who slapped it past the goaltender. Yet the Hawks lost that game in a shootout. Better, if only barely, was the following game in New York against the Islanders. The Hawks took a 2-0 lead, with Hossa scoring the first and then assisting on the second, slipping what TV announcer Pat Foley called a “mattress pass,” for how smooth and flat it was, to Patrick Sharp, who knocked it home. Yet the Hawks again gave up the lead and had to win it in overtime, when Sharp converted a Hossa rebound.
