Hawks still seek to be best in West

ANAHEIM, Calif. - When the Blackhawks look at the Western Conference standings they're still more focused on the San Jose Sharks than those teams gaining ground on them.

The Phoenix Coyotes were only 3 points behind the Hawks going into Wednesday's games, with the Vancouver Canucks just 5 back.

The Hawks were 2 points behind first-place San Jose before taking on the Ducks at the Honda Center.

"To be honest, I don't think a lot of guys know the exact standings," Hawks winger Adam Burish said. "You've got to play good hockey and you've got to win hockey games and lately we haven't done that. We've been finding ways to lose games instead of finding ways to win them.

"The last seven or eight games are the most important games of the year if you're going to make playoffs because that sets the tone of what you're going to do. If the playoffs were tomorrow, I wouldn't feel real good about where we're at right now."

The key for the Hawks remains winning the Central Division, which still would give them home ice in the playoffs even over nondivision winners that might finish with more points than them.

"If we play the right kind of hockey we'll finish in first place (in the West)," Burish said.

"Teams are having some runs right now, but we're worried about our own game and how well we're playing going into the playoffs," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "We've got some room for improvement.

"If you look at how we've played over this stretch of games, we've been fine through most parts of the game, but we have strong segments where we give up 2 or 3 goals in a short amount of time and we lose the momentum.

"We want to solidify how we're playing from start to finish. If we can do that we'll be playing the way we want to play."