Red Wings seeing a familiar foe in Quenneville

Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville knows what it's like to lose to the Detroit Red Wings.

Boy, does he ever.

Quenneville has a career record of 21-49-12 against Detroit, regular season and playoffs, and is just 9-29-5 coaching the St. Louis Blues, the Colorado Avalanche and the Hawks at Joe Louis Arena.

But the most interesting number is 4 - the number of playoff series Quenneville has lost to the Red Wings. In all four of their playoff runs that have resulted in winning the Stanley Cup, the Red Wings eliminated a Quenneville-coached team along the way.

It happened three times with St. Louis and once with the Avs (last season), but never in the Western Conference finals.

"I think every year and every series is different," Quenneville said. "Every team is kind of unique in its ways."

In all of those playoff losses Quenneville was going against Scotty Bowman in one way or another, either when Bowman was coaching in Detroit or in the Red Wings' front office.

Now Quenneville will have Bowman, the Hawks' senior advisor, on his side.

"Anything you can use to enhance what you're doing, whether it's knowledge of the game or game-to-game history or preparation," Quenneville said. "Scotty is around and that's going to help. I think we have to use all assets in order to give us some help, but at the end of the day we have to get it done on the ice."

The Hawks and Red Wings haven't met in the playoffs since the 1995 Western Conference finals when Detroit advanced in five games with Darryl Sutter behind the bench.

Cheli's take: Former Hawks defenseman Chris Chelios doesn't figure to be a factor in the series unless the Red Wings have injuries.

Chelios has appeared in only four of Detroit's 11 playoff games, averaging just seven minutes of ice time.

Nevertheless, Chelios is looking forward to the West finals against the Hawks.

"They turned things around from Day One, with new management, new coaching, put the games on TV now - they've done all the right things and players have fed off that," Chelios said.

"It's a great atmosphere in Chicago. They got (Jonathan) Toews and (Patrick) Kane, who are similar to Hank (Henrik Zetterberg) and Pav (Pavel Datsyuk) when they were younger. They haven't let anybody down. They've had a great year and continued on right through the playoffs."

Some thank you: Duncan Keith practiced Friday despite taking seven stitches inside and outside his mouth on Thursday from an accidental high stick by Kris Versteeg.

"My good buddy Versteeg," joked Keith. "I bought him dinner the other day too because it was his birthday. That's the thanks I get."