Hawks' Sharp out to prove breakout season was no fluke

Now that Blackhawks coach Denis Savard has cleared up the issue of where Patrick Sharp will play - wing and not center - only one question remains:

Can the 26-year-old veteran match or surpass the career-best 36 goals he put up in a breakout season a year ago?

"I think I can reach it," Sharp said. "I'm determined to prove to people that it wasn't just a one-year thing. I feel like I can do it again, that I can do it for a lot of years, and I think the Hawks are counting on me to do it. I'm excited about proving everybody wrong."

Sharp picked up where he left off in Tuesday's exhibition opener against Columbus, scoring the tying goal in the third period of a game the Hawks went on to win 4-3.

Sharp has improved his goal totals in each of his first three full seasons in the NHL, going from 14 to 20 to 36.

"I think I can get better," Sharp said. "I've gotten better every year I've played in the league. I've been stronger and smarter. The coaches seem to have a lot of trust in me in different situations last year, so that's something I want to continue to have with them.

"I don't have any individual numbers I want to reach, but I just feel I can get better and I'm looking forward to proving it."

Savard said Tuesday his decision to keep Sharp at wing was based on him being a better scorer than playmaker.

"I'm comfortable at all three forward positions," Sharp said. "I feel like I'm a little different player playing each position, but nonetheless I feel I can do them all well.

"I still think I can produce offensively at center, but I just feel as a winger it's a little easier to focus just on the offensive side of the game. As a center you have responsibility in all three zones that you kind of carry around a little bit."

Those defensive concerns are what Patrick Kane must deal with when Savard experiments with him at center, perhaps as soon as Friday's game against Minnesota at the United Center.

"In the NHL guys are a lot stronger and being down low on the defensive end, I would have to learn how to take better angles and use my body more and use my stick well," Kane said.

When the dust settles from Savard's tinkering with his line combinations throughout the preseason, it's more likely than not he'll want to keep Sharp and Kane together on the same line, ideally with Jonathan Toews at center.

"He's a pretty easy guy to play with," Sharp said of Kane. "He thinks the game really well, handles the puck makes good plays. If I'm playing with (No.) 88, that's a good thing, but you guys know as well as I do that changes happen a lot during the season and line combinations get mixed around."

As someone who has lived through the bad times with the Hawks, Sharp is as eager as anyone to start what he hopes is a special season.

"We kept a good core group of guys together that really gets along well off the ice as well on the ice, and we added some big pieces to our team," Sharp said. "We're all excited to see what we have. We all feel we have a good team and now it's just a matter of enough talk and let's start playing."