Hawks flying with the ‘vintage Crow’
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Not only is Corey Crawford back, the best version of him has returned to the Blackhawks.
“That was vintage ‘Crow’,” coach Joel Quenneville said.
Crawford stopped 37 shots and Marcus Kruger’s skate redirected a shot from Alexandre Fortin past Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with 12 minutes, 17 seconds left in the third period to snap a tie and send the Hawks to a 4-1 victory Saturday night at Nationwide Arena.
Patrick Kane scored with 4:14 left and added an empty-netter — his seventh and eighth goals of the season — to seal the triumph. But without Crawford coming up huge time and time again to give him his first triumph since returning from last season’s concussion this would have been a blowout.
“Kept us in that one tonight,” Kane said. “Obviously, we didn’t have the best first two periods but he was standing on his head for us (and) gave us a chance to win. It was nice to be able to help him out there in the third.
“As ‘Q’ would say, that’s a goalie win for us.”
Alex DeBrincat scored on the Hawks’ first shot of the game with 16:12 left in the first period for a 1-0 lead to give him seven goals and run his point streak to seven games.
Crawford stopped 37 of 38 shots in his second straight start after returning from a 10-month absence as he recovered from a concussion.
“Felt really good,” Crawford said. “Was reading plays well. I thought our ‘D’ were blocking shots and I don’t know how many we tipped into the (netting). They had a lot of speed and we were taking that away.”
Kane’s first goal came after he sent a pass to Brent Seabrook, who could have one-timed it but elected to send a pass right back to Kane.
“When I saw it come back I just tried to stay patient,” Kane said. “Settle it down and make sure I hit the net because I knew I had the whole open net.”
For a minute it looked like Fortin would have the first goal of his NHL career but instead he settled for his first point, and also made Quenneville look good for sticking with the speedy forward. Quenneville moved him to the fourth line but kept him in the lineup, preferring to sit John Hayden, and it paid off.
The Blue Jackets created far more traffic around Crawford than the Coyotes did in his first start and he stood tough. Boone Jenner appeared to put the Blue Jackets up 2-1 late in the first on a power play but officials ruled Jenner pushed Crawford to loosen the puck before it went into the net and waived off the goal.
The Hawks improved to 4-1-2, their hot start intact no matter what happens against the Lightning on Sunday night at the United Center.
“That was really our main focus this year, to get off to a good start and I think we’ve done that,” Kane said. “We’re happy with our start (but) we can play a little bit better.”
Crawford probably can, too. But not much.