It's home sweet home for Hawks
The Blackhawks had little trouble shaking off the Winter (Classic) doldrums Sunday night.
After two straight losses to the Red Wings, the Hawks came out smoking against the Calgary Flames.
After all the hoopla of playing a game before more than 40,000 fans at Wrigley Field, they did just fine before a capacity crowd about half that size in the United Center.
After what seemed like a month on Planet Classic last week, the Hawks came down to earth with a relatively routine 5-2 victory over the Calgary Flames.
"It felt normal again," Hawks winger Kris Versteeg said. "The conditions were different (at Wrigley). The regular ice tonight was a nice touch."
The game against the Flames wasn't exactly a must-win, but it was important to not follow a nine-game winning streak with three straight losses.
It also was important to get back into a routine and not be treated like rock stars performing as one of the headline acts at Lollapalooza.
This Calgary game was good old-fashioned hockey, teams with the NHL Western Conference's third and fourth best records facing off.
It's my contention - not all hockey mavens agree - that the Hawks sacrificed competition for promotion by playing in the Winter Classic.
The re-emerging Hawks continue to walk the thin ice between on-ice performance and off-ice production, and the Classic was more the latter than the former.
Reviews said the Winter Classic was great in every way except that the Hawks lost - and perhaps the ups were responsible for the down.
Wrigley wasn't the advantage the Hawks enjoy in the United Center. As good as the Wings are anywhere in the world, they wouldn't have come into the UC last Thursday as centered as they were.
"It probably was a little bit of a sacrifice," Hawks defenseman Duncan Keith conceded of trading venues.
The Hawks would have had a better chance of beating Detroit in the United Center. But on what was more of a neutral site, with a huge Wrigley crowd, on national television - well, that was an opportunity for the Wings to show off and they did.
Hopefully for the Hawks those 2 points won't cost them a Top Four spot and home ice in the first round of the playoffs.
Anyway, the point - or points - will be moot if the Hawks play the rest of the season the way they did Sunday against the Flames.
"We all have special memories," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said of the Winter Classic. "Now we've moved forward and I like the way we handled it."
The Hawks handled the transition back to normalcy the way a 21-8-7 team would be expected to. Even with all-star Patrick Kane out with a high ankle sprain, the offense in general and power play specifically were productive.
The Hawks scored once on the power play (Dustin Byfuglien), once short-handed (Versteeg) and three times at even strength.
Nikolai Khaibulin provided terrific goaltending and, more entertaining than anything, the Hawks held their own in several feisty fights.
"That was something we focused on in practice - to re-focus," winger Andrew Ladd said of the trip from Wrigley to the UC.
Consider the learning experience a learned experience for the young Blackhawks.