From a different angle, Blackhawks a winner
It didn't take too long to realize that Sunday night might just be one of those nights.
About 3½ minutes, to be exact.
That's when Blackhawks defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson pinched in from the blue line and blasted one from the circle that easily beat Dallas goalie Kari Lehtonen but lost to the crossbar.
Fast-forward 30 seconds, and there's the Stars' Jamie Benn sweeping a pinballing puck past Corey Crawford for a 1-0 lead as a stunned house at the United Center tried to figure out what just happened.
Of course just more than a minute later Brandon Saad tied it up on his 10th goal of the season, but for every Hawks response, the red-hot Stars had an answer. And with time winding down in the third, it looked like they might make it 9 wins in their last 10 games.
But then Brad Richards struck, beating Lehtonen from a seemingly impossible angle along the goal line, tying it at 4-4 and ensuring that an entertaining back-and-forth game that shouldn't have, and didn't, end in regulation.
"I'd love to tell you that I picked that spot," Richards said of the obtuse angle from which he scored his eighth of the season. "The puck came off nice where I could get a good piece of it and where I could create havoc."
That was just the momentum the desperate Hawks were looking for, and they took advantage a few minutes later when Patrick Sharp scored his first game-winning goal of the season in overtime to give the Hawks a thrilling 5-4 victory.
"At the end of the night, we got a break there tying it up and overtime," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "Both teams had a couple of adventures."
Erik Cole scored twice for Dallas, and the Hawks also got goals from Patrick Kane and Bryan Bickell, but it will be Richards' goal that most remember from a game that will be hard to forget.
"Something was little off tonight," Richards admitted. "We struggled in certain areas, but it's a veteran group and we stayed with it. You always know you're going to get a big play from someone, and we kept clawing our way back and then took it over in overtime."
And they did it against a team that couldn't be any hotter.
"They're a dangerous team," Quenneville said. "They're playing their best hockey. They're as dangerous as anybody off the rush, and we tried to stress that today, but they still were effective and generated some scoring opportunities, goals and chances."
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