Hawks' O'Donnell takes a licking, keeps on ticking
The play was innocent enough when Red Wings winger Henrik Zetterberg bumped Sean O'Donnell along the boards behind the Blackhawks' net.
No big deal in the NHL … just another Sunday night driver bumping bumpers with another Sunday night driver.
Except, let's say that was the only time a Detroit player made contact with O'Donnell during the Wings' 3-2-victory in overtime in the United Center.
Then consider that this was O'Donnell's 1,200th National Hockey League game over the past 16-plus seasons.
How many hits is that? How many collisions? How many bumps? How many bruises? How many aches? How many pains ago?
My math says 1,200 of each, though in actuality the number has to be higher.
Wow!
Or should that be, Ouch!
Of course, O'Donnell would have preferred the milestone come in a Hawks victory.
“Tough loss, for sure,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said.
The Hawks have lost four of five games since entering the New Year with the NHL's best record.
Hockey is a rigorous game to play for one full 82-game season. A couple of years ago former Hawks players Ben Eager and Brent Sopel tried to explain for me the difference between the violent games of the NFL and NHL.
Their point was that football players compete once a week, giving them six days to recuperate. Hockey players compete as many as four times in any given week.
Yet after turning 35 years old in 2006, O'Donnell played in 402 of a possible 410 games the past five seasons.
Wow!
Ouch!
“I played my 500th game (recently) and it felt like my 1,000th,” Hawks defenseman Brent Seabrook said. “Obviously (O'Donnell) takes care of himself.”
What a long, strange trip O'Donnell has been on — traded four times, signed as a free agent four times and claimed in an expansion draft once.
The Hawks are O'Donnell's eighth NHL team. He played with Phoenix when it was a minor-league town and after it joined the NHL. He has been around so long that Wayne Gretzky was a teammate with the Kings.
“He's a good teammate,” Quenneville said of O'Donnell. “And he's a good addition to our team with his experience.”
The guy must still be able to play if his coach can reference his experience rather than his age.
O'Donnell is 40 years old, but any athlete at any age would enjoy competing in a game like Sunday night's: tight and tense, traditional rivalry, overtime required to determine the outcome.
“(O'Donnell) still finds ways to contribute,” Quenneville said.
Just putting on an NHL sweater still must be exciting for O'Donnell, playing for first place, having a chance with the Hawks to win his second Stanley Cup.
Still not impressed with a player playing 1,200 NHL games? Well, star Hawks defenseman Duncan Keith and Seabrook would have to play eight more full seasons to approach that mark.
Nick Leddy, currently a top four defenseman for the Hawks at age 20, has played a grand total of 87 career games in the NHL.
Leddy is only 1,113 behind Sean O'Donnell and who knows how many bumps and bruises and aches and pains?
Wow!
Ouch!
mimrem@dailyherald.com