Wirtz speaks out on head hits

At a luncheon at the City Club of Chicago on Monday, Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz had some strong words for the big hits a pair of his defensemen have taken of late.

The first was the one from Washington's Alex Ovechkin that drove Brian Campbell into the boards and resulted in a two-game suspension for Ovechkin, and the latest being James Wisniewski's crushing blow to the head of defenseman Brent Seabrook in Anaheim last week.

Wirtz said if the punishment against Ovechkin had been harsher, the hit on Seabrook might not have happened.

"I am convinced if they had come down harder on Ovechkin, there's no way James Wisniewski would have gone from the blue line and hit Brent Seabrook," Wirtz said on video from NBC5. "This has to stop.

"We took a player who's out for the rest of the season (Campbell); I think that player (Ovechkin) should be out for the rest of the season, (too)."

Campbell spoke about the hit Tuesday on Comcast SportsNet.

"Disbelief, I was like what are you doing?" Campbell said. "You can do some serious damage to a person by pushing them into the boards from behind.

"He's a great player, but I've seen him do it to players in the past, and he continues to do it. Use your head a bit; everybody finds a way to do that, no reason why he can't do it."

He'll be back: The last time we saw Cristobal Huet between the pipes, he was smashing his goalie stick in half over the crossbar after allowing a last-second goal in Philadelphia.

Illness forced him to miss some action on the recently concluded West Coast trip. Tuesday he served as Antti Niemi's backup.

"Huey's going to play," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "We want him playing. There's a good chance he'll be playing rather soon."

Digging the D: Since he was switched back to the blue line, Dustin Byfuglien seems like a new man.

"I feel comfortable back there and every shift I'm getting better and better," he said. "I enjoy playing back there - hopefully we can make it stay awhile."

He's so comfortable back there that he's even trash talking with stalwarts Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook.

"Every time before I go out there I always tell them to watch me and then they might learn something. And when I come off I ask them if they learned anything," he said. "They just kind of laugh at me."