First things first for Hawks' Olympians
Patrick Kane wasn't planning to watch the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies on Friday night.
"I want to stick with my routine before a game and try not to start thinking about it too much," Kane said Friday afternoon. "Maybe if you watch you're mind will go totally on the Olympics.
"It's starting to get exciting with the opening ceremonies and all that. It's kind of unfortunate we're not there."
Kane and his five Olympic teammates will be in Vancouver soon enough, but first there is Blackhawks business to finish with games tonight against Atlanta at the United Center and Sunday afternoon in Columbus.
"I understand that the Olympics are next week, everybody realizes that, but I also understand we have two important games here and this team comes first right now," defenseman Duncan Keith said. "This is what it's all about, it's with the Blackhawks. I'm not with Team Canada yet. I'm going to play hard for these two games and then play hard for Canada."
The men's Olympic hockey tournament doesn't begin until Tuesday, with the Hawks' six Olympians set to take charter flights to Vancouver on Sunday night out of Columbus.
A plane for Canadian Olympians will be coming to Columbus from Pittsburgh to pick up Keith, Jonathan Toews and Brent Seabrook.
Kane, Marian Hossa and Tomas Kopecky will jump on a charter the U.S. and Slovakia federations are sharing.
Hossa is as eager as anyone to get to Vancouver, but he would prefer to head to the Olympics with 2 more Hawks wins under his belt.
"The media keeps asking us a lot of questions about the Olympics, but I'm sure everybody's focus in this dressing room is for the Blackhawks," Hossa said. "We still have two games left and they're very important."
The Hawks trail San Jose by 6 points in the Western Conference standings and would love to close that gap before the 15-day Olympic break.
Hawks coach Joel Quenneville isn't worried about his six Olympians looking past these last two games before Vancouver.
"We're all in that same boat," Quenneville said. "I don't think we want to look past these two games as far as the importance of these games and where we can position ourselves going into the break. These are games you can reflect upon on a lot and we want to make sure there's some positive messages coming out of these games.
"We all have the same motivation these two games. We want to get something out of them and make sure it's something good."
The Thrashers are in the middle of the playoff chase in the Eastern Conference, while Columbus took a three-game winning streak into Friday's game against Vancouver under new coach Claude Noel.
"These are teams we feel we should beat and anything less than 4 points is going to be disappointing," winger Troy Brouwer said.