PHIL POWER
Danault’s first NHL goal extends winning streak to six
Corey Crawford is not an All- Star this season. Not because of his play or because of some perceived lack of respect. He’s not an All- Star for a pretty simple and glaringly obvious reason — because the NHL wanted three Predators for the game in Nashville.
And the fact is, Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne is a recognizable name, if not a terribly worthy candidate.
But the fact is, other than Patrick Kane, nobody has been more important to the Hawks’ success than Crawford, who kept a sputtering, top- heavy offense and a young, learning- on- the- fly defense afloat throughout much of the first half of the season.
And now that the Hawks have hit their stride, tweaked and balanced their lineup and solidified their defense, they still have Crawford back there. And he’s still playing as well as he ever has.
Crawford made 28 saves, and one of those lineup- altering additions, Phil Danault, scored the game- winning goal ( the first goal of his NHL career) with 4: 59 left in the third period to give the Hawks a 3- 1 victory on Friday night.
It was their sixth straight win as they inch closer to first place in the Central Division. Meanwhile, it was the Sabres’ sixth straight loss as they stumble closer to 30th place in the NHL.
If Crawford — who has given up just 10 goals in his last 10 home games — was bitter about the All- Star snub, he wasn’t saying.
“It would have been fun to go there, but it’s nice to get a little bit of a break, too,” he said after the game. “It is what it is. I’ll just take the break and relax a little bit.”
Danault probably had a tougher time relaxing after scoring the first goal of his career in rather epic fashion — a game- winner with less than five minutes to go.
Danault’s wingers, Andrew Desjardins and Teuvo Teravainen, have been finding the back of the net since the new- look third line transformed the Hawks lineup. But Danault had yet to score, coming agonizingly close in Pittsburgh, then again late in the second period when he turned and fired after a sneaky stick- lift in the offensive zone.
The wait was worth it for Danault. And it was all the sweeter because Danault’s line had been on the ice for Ryan O’Reilly’s game- tying goal one shift earlier. Joel Quenneville showed his trust by putting them back out there in a crucial situation, and Danault made the most of it.
“Especially because we got scored on the shift before; I was kind of mad about that,” Danault said.
“Honestly, the last three or four games, I felt like it was coming. I was just shooting and [ goalies kept] saving it, and it’s like, oh, what’s going on? It ended up going in today and it feels great.”
Chad Johnson ( 42 saves) was outstanding for the Sabres, too, keeping the game within reach by yielding just a Niklas Hjalmarsson secondperiod goal — off a slick fake- and- feed from another dynamic rookie, Erik Gustafsson — until O’Reilly tied it with 8: 23 left in the game.
But Danault’s breakthrough goal won it for the Hawks, and Toews’ emptynetter with 24.5 seconds — after one last big Crawford save — sealed yet another win for the surging defending champs.
“I like the consistency,” Quenneville said. “I like what we’re giving up, which is very little.”