Hawks know they must regroup

There’s one less thing to worry about for the Blackhawks in the aftermath of Thursday’s 5-0 loss at Dallas.

Catching the Red Wings and winning the Central Division is out.

The Hawks are 10 points behind Detroit with 11 games to play and even though they play the Red Wings three more times, those are points that will be needed simply to get into the playoffs.

“Those will feel like very important games for them too,” Jonathan Toews said. “They’re not going to be just throwing those games knowing they got the division all sewn up. We don’t know what’s going to happen in these next few games before we play them. There’s a chance we can tighten the gap between the two of us.”

Right now Sunday’s game against the Coyotes in Glendale, Ariz., is the most important one for the Hawks, who have dropped to seventh place in the Western Conference.

It’s difficult to imagine the Hawks playing any worse than they did in Dallas, where nobody appeared ready to play.

“I’m not a psychologist,” Toews told reporters following the game. “I don’t know why we decided to pack it in like (Thursday), myself included. It was one of the toughest games of the year and we had one of our worst performances.

“Those were 2 points we pretty much gave away.”

Corey Crawford was pulled in the second period when the game started to get out of hand, but there’s no reason to believe coach Joel Quenneville won’t come right back with his rookie No. 1 goalie Sunday.

Crawford is one of the chief reasons the Hawks are even in the playoff race and Quenneville will certainly ride him to the finish line.

Crawford wasn’t at fault in Dallas when there weren’t many of his teammates competing in front of him.

“Over the course of the year you might have some games you throw in the garbage can, that you don’t foresee happening,” Quenneville said. “It’s one game, but a game we didn’t really give ourselves a chance to get anything.”

It didn’t help that the Hawks played with only 17 skaters with left winger Bryan Bickell unable to play because of the flu.

The Hawks left on their two-game road trip with only 20 healthy bodies with Dave Bolland and Brian Campbell sidelined by injuries and neither on injured reserve.

Not having an extra player on the trip was a risk, and the Hawks found themselves burned, which shouldn’t happen to a team fighting for a playoff spot.

Quenneville told reporters he thought Bickell would be able to play, even though the winger missed the morning skate, which is why nobody was recalled from Rockford.

“I asked him if he was ready to go and he said he was, then he presented real sick before the game,” Quenneville said.

The Hawks do have space under the salary cap to bring up a player from the minors.

For a team that has been successfully rolling four lines, playing a man short without Bickell was a disruption against the Stars.