Hawks Pick Up A Big 2 Points With Win Over Columbus

Added on Apr 02, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

After 65 minutes and a Shoot Out, It was the Chicago Blackhawks who picked up the much needed win, when they defeated the Columbus Blue jackets on Friday night. Viktor Stalberg was the hero when he picked up the only goal of the shoot out to give Chicago the 4-3 victory. The Hawks have been riding the 8^th spot of the division, which is the cut-off for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and they need all the points they can get. On the back of Corey Crawford, who made 31 saves in 65 minutes of play, the Hawks were able to improve to 92 points. They now lead Clagary by 3 points.

After running down the things his squad didn’t do right, Chicago coach Joel Quenneville said at times like these things you have to take the win and move on. He said “Nothing wrong with that, we’ll take anything we can get right now. When you’re down late in the game, it turns out to be a huge win for us.”

Stalberg has only been apart of 2 shoot outs, and so fa he has gone two for two. Stalberg said this was something they have been planning for a while, He said “It’s a big extra point for us in the standings. So far, so good, I guess. We do it a lot in practice. I try to score as much as I can there. (Quenneville) asked me a couple of weeks ago if I wanted to go if we got a chance. We haven’t had any shootouts since.”

Bryan Bickell was the one who tied it up after Columbus went ahead in the third period with a 45 footer that ricocheted off a defenseman’s stick and surprised Garon. He said “It’s kind of funny, most of my goals come from out there. I was just trying to (create) a rebound there. Good things happen when you throw it on net. It was a big clutch goal. To push it into overtime and then get it in the shootout – that’s a big two points for us.”

Columbus coach Scott Arniel was obviously not pleased with the outcome, and he also commented on how they haven’t been able to finish shutout games going 5-8. He said “It tells you we’re close. We’ve made a decision as a League that we’re going to entertain at the end of the night and we’re not going to go home with a tie game. We’ll work on the shootout part … but we don’t back off in overtime. These guys learn how to play in pressure-packed situations. It’s unfortunate we’ve lost so many shootout games, but we’ve done a great job of learning how to play under pressure.”