Listless Hawks had no chance

ST. LOUIS -- There aren't many teams the Blackhawks could have beaten Saturday night playing the way they did.

Certainly not the St. Louis Blues, who are every bit as improved as the Hawks.

The Hawks looked lost in a fog at both ends of the ice for the first two periods and wound up losing 3-1 to the Blues at Scottrade Center.

Blues goalie Hannu Toivonen likely didn't break a sweat for 40 minutes as the Hawks had 6 shots on goal in the first period and 3 in the second.

"They had more determination than we did, there's no secret about that," said Hawks coach Denis Savard. "We played a better period in the third, but early in the game we didn't handle their physical play and their pressure on us. The result is we didn't win."

The Hawks looked like a team that had used up all its emotion in Friday's 6-1 win over Phoenix at the United Center.

"Yeah, but this is where we have to follow up," Savard said. "This is a divisional game. I tried to shuffle lines to get people going, but we just didn't play at our best. Out of 26 games we've played there's probably been three or four performances like that. You try to limit them as much as possible."

Toivonen didn't need to make his first big save until four minutes into the third period on Martin Havlat in the slot.

The Hawks outshot the Blues 9-6 in the third period, getting their lone goal from Robert Lang with 9:54 to play. Lang's goal snapped an 11-game drought for the center.

"We learned a lesson early in the season you can't win a game by playing 20 minutes," said Patrick Sharp. "We came out hard in the third to try and steal some points, but all in all it wasn't our best effort."

The Hawks (14-10-2) entered the game as the fourth-highest scoring team in the NHL with 77 goals.

"We didn't create much in the first two periods," Savard said. "In the third, down 3-0, obviously we started playing and had lots of good chances, but it was too late."

Backup goalie Patrick Lalime started for the Hawks, but it likely wouldn't have mattered had Savard decided to come back with the hot Nikolai Khabibulin.

Lee Stempniak gave the Blues a 1-0 lead at 3:07 of the first period when he raced around defenseman Jim Vandermeer and beat Lalime.

D.J. King made it 2-0 at 4:13 of the second period when he beat Lalime with a snap shot from the right side off a 2-on-1 rush.

Mike Johnson ripped a slap shot over Lalime's glove at 13:20 of the second period with the teams playing 4-on-4.

"We didn't bring the energy we needed to, obviously," said defenseman Brent Sopel. "We know the kind of game St. Louis plays. They play hard every night, and we needed to match that. Maybe the last half of the third we stepped it up a little.

"Last night, things went well, but coming back tonight we just didn't have the legs and didn't have the energy. That was a big 2 points we just lost."