Lalime leads Chicago over Colorado

By the end of this week, the Blackhawks should know if they can be taken seriously as playoff contenders.

The Hawks kicked off a stretch of five games in eight days Sunday afternoon against Colorado looking as if they meant business, turning back the Avalanche 2-1 at a sold-out United Center to stretch their winning streak to three.

That makes 9 out of a possible 10 points the Hawks have accumulated in the last five games, the kind of pace they may need to maintain to reach the postseason.

"We're not out of a playoff spot and for us to be playing like we are right now, it's looking good," said James Wisniewski, who assisted on both goals. "We're playing as a team. We're all connected at the right moment."

The final frantic minute of regulation showed the kind of will to win the Hawks have at the moment.

The Hawks already were killing a penalty when the Avs pulled goalie Jose Theodore to create a 6-on-4 advantage for the final minute.

Adam Burish blocked 2 shots in the last minute and Brent Sopel 1. Burish also won a critical faceoff in the waning seconds to allow the Hawks one last clutch clear.

"We were going to get those 2 points and that was it," Burish said. "It wasn't 'Let's try to survive here and see if we could sneak out with a point.' That last minute kind of defines the kind of team we want to be. We want to be a team that plays desperate every night, and if you do you're going to win a lot of games."

Hawks goalie Patrick Lalime, filling in again for the banged-up Nikolai Khabibulin, was very good in running his personal record to 10-7-1.

The Hawks came out with energy in front of their fifth sellout crowd of the season and set a physical tone, just as coach Denis Savard asked them to do.

"With a sold-out building, that's the one thing Savvy came in and said to us: Let's get this crowd going right away, get everybody into it with some big hits and some big bangs," Burish said.

Fourth-liners Burish, Martin Lapointe and Craig Adams along with Dustin Byfuglien led the way physically.

Byfuglien opened the scoring with a power-play goal at 4:48 -- a tip-in of a Wisniewski slapper.

"In the first game back coming off a long road trip, some teams struggle with the first two periods," Byfuglien said. "The last couple days our main focus was worrying about the first five or 10 minutes of the game."

The penalty-killers came up huge for the Hawks late in the first period and early in the second, snuffing out a Colorado 5-on-3 that lasted 68 seconds.

Not long after the key kill, Martin Havlat made it 2-0 with his eighth goal of the season.

"We're really paying a price here, and we have in the last little while," Savard said. "We recognize what's at stake. We're jelling, and I can honestly tell you that. They're doing what it takes to win, from our best players to our fourth-line players."