No decision yet on goalie for Oilers match-up

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville won't officially announce his starting goalie for Tuesday's game at Edmonton until after practice Monday.

More than likely it will be Cristobal Huet, but not because Quenneville was unhappy with Antti Niemi's play in Saturday's 5-1 loss to the Canucks at GM Place.

Quenneville pulled Niemi after the first period with the Hawks behind 3-0, but he didn't do it because he faulted goaltending.

While Niemi was scrambling on all 3 goals, he didn't get much help from his teammates.

"They had pucks at the net, loose stuff we didn't clear, second and third opportunities," Quenneville said. "That's one thing around our net, our defense is pretty good at clearing that loose stuff, but they ended up going in."

It was the first time Niemi was pulled in 16 starts.

Huet allowed 2 goals on 16 shots in the final two periods.

Upon further review: The Hawks had 44 shots on Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo in the loss but weren't happy they let him see most of them.

"The quality might have been OK, but the traffic was down," Joel Quenneville said.

The Canucks thought it might have been Luongo's best game of the season.

"He was really focused and that gives us a lot of confidence as a team," Canucks winger Alex Burrows said. "We know he's not going to get beat and we're going to get the win if we play the right way."

Luongo knew he had to be on his game with the Canucks missing three key defensemen because of injuries to Willie Mitchell, Sami Salo and Kevin Birksa.

"We weren't just expecting to win just because they were missing a couple of their key defensemen," Hawks captain Jonathan Toews said. "At the same time it's something we could have taken advantage of and didn't."

Bad numbers: The Hawks were 0-for-4 on the power play and lost 53 percent of the faceoffs to the Canucks.

"We had a lot of chances on the power play and when we didn't win draws our entries coming back into the zone weren't very strong," Jonathan Toews said.

"I think we were just kind of swinging by pucks and getting a little lazy sometimes skating by the puck carrier. When you do that you're not going to get support and get the puck back."