Kane injured in Hawks' 4-2 win over Flames

The challenge recently for the Blackhawks has been to try to win without Marian Hossa.

Now they must find a way to get points without Patrick Kane as well.

Kane suffered what appeared to be an injury to his left leg in the opening minutes of Sunday night's 4-2 win over Calgary at the United Center and is going to be “out a little bit,” according to coach Joel Quenneville.

Kane was curling away from a check by Flames defenseman Cory Sarich when he went awkwardly into the boards, skates first.

“We'll know more (Monday) exactly where we're at,” Quenneville said. “It's tough to speculate and I don't want to go there right now, but it's not real serious. I'll go to that extent.”

Even without Kane, the Hawks struck for 4 power-play goals in a game dominated by special teams. In fact, all 6 goals were scored on power plays.

With referees Frederick L'Ecuyer and Dan O'Halloran calling every little thing, it seemed, the Hawks were 4-for-9 on the power play and the Flames 2-for-8. The Hawks killed 6 straight Calgary power plays, including three in the third period while protecting a 1-goal lead.

“Our penalty-killing was better as we went along in the game, none bigger than the (3) kills we had in the third,” Quenneville said. “Everything was tight tonight, what was being called. We had to get the job done, and we did.”

Corey Crawford was a big part of the penalty-killing success as the rookie goalie made 24 saves to extend his personal winning streak to six starts.

Crawford is playing as if he wants to be the No. 1 goaltender going forward, and his teammates are feeding off him.

“He's been great,” defenseman Duncan Keith said. “He made some real nice saves there and he really calms things down. When you can get that save it maybe doesn't look like much, but it really calms things down and makes the difference in the game.”

Crawford hasn't lost since Nov. 7 against Edmonton.

“It's good. It's fun, I won't argue with that,” he said. “But the big thing is we've got to keep working here and keep giving our best effort and keep doing the little things right.”

Of the Hawks' 4 power-play goals, the first one by Bryan Bickell at 4:14 of the first period might have been the biggest since it came moments after Kane was helped off the ice.

“You can't really feel sorry for yourself or think, ‘Boys, we better pick it up because Patrick's gone,' but at the same time scoring early on that power play certainly helped,” Quenneville said.

The Hawks made it 2-0 at 10:21 of the first period when Dave Bolland scored the team's first goal of the season 5-on-3 off a nice cross-ice pass from Jonathan Toews.

It was the first goal in 17 games for Bolland, who later added an empty-netter in the final seconds to clinch the win.

“Hopefully it's something that can help my confidence from here,” he said.

The Flames tied it in the first period with power-play goals from Jarome Iginla and Anton Babchuk, but Toews got the fifth power-play goal of the period at 17:33 to put the Hawks ahead to stay.

“It was an ugly game, but the thing we were saying at the second intermission was we've had a lot of 1-goal leads that we've squandered in the third period in our building and enough's enough,” Toews said.

“We said no matter what happens to find a way to stay with it, and obviously you saw guys come up with the kills. We all stuck it out and we'll take an ugly win like that once in awhile. It's what we haven't been doing enough of.”