Spellman: Darling can't save Blackhawks

Joel Quenneville has consistently used the term "excellent" when describing the play of the Blackhawks goaltenders this season.

It had to be the case again Saturday night on Long Island because if it wasn't, this one could have been a laugher in favor of the host Islanders.

As it turned out, though, even a career-high 38 saves by Scott Darling wasn't enough as Kyle Okposo and Lubomir Visnovsky scored less than a minute apart in the third period to lead New York to a 3-2 victory, snapping the Hawks' eight-game winning streak.

"It could've been a goalie win, so you have to commend him on giving us a chance," coach Joel Quenneville said of Darling.

"Scotty kept us in this one; he had some great saves in all three periods," said Jonathan Toews, who returned to the lineup two days after getting run into the boards by Boston's Dennis Seidenberg. "We didn't work for pucks, we didn't generate chances, we didn't really make them do things they didn't want to do."

The Hawks had a handful of great opportunities in the first period, but it ended up scoreless thanks in large part to the play of Isles goalie Jaroslav Halak.

The second period was all Islanders as they outshot the Hawks 10-1 at one point and 17-7 for the period, but somehow the second ended 1-1.

Daniel Carcillo put the Hawks up 1-0 at 14:25 when his shot hit Halak, bounded straight up, and then trickled in behind him.

But before you could say "what the heck was that?" Cal Clutterbuck took advantage of some Duncan Keith largesse and easily beat Darling just six seconds after Carcillo's fourth goal of the season.

A tired-looking bunch of Hawks came to life early in the third when Patrick Kane scored his 14th of the season on a beautiful top-shelf backhander to make it 2-1, and it looked like the Hawks might somehow manage to come home winners of nine straight. But it wasn't to be.

A high sticking penalty on Kris Versteeg put the Isles on the power play, and they took advantage when Okposo beat Darling to tie the game.

And just 51 seconds later, Visnovsky scored the game-winner.

The Hawks had no response.

"It was one of those cases of them outworking us - putting pucks to the net and going to those hard areas that it seemed like we didn't want to," Carcillo said.

After playing 10 of their last 12 on the road, the Hawks are looking forward to getting back on track with five of their next seven games at the United Center.

"We have to find a way to get back on that page we were on where everything's going and everything's clicking," Toews said. "I think we got a little dose of what we probably deserved tonight."

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