Quenneville busy molding team his way

With every game and in every way, Joel Quenneville continues to put his mark on the Blackhawks.

Sometimes he uses an exclamation point. Tuesday night in Phoenix, he used a period - the second period.

That's when he benched his two leading scorers, Patrick Kane and Patrick Sharp, sitting them for most of the second as punishment for taking bad penalties.

The last couple of years players got a free pass, but Quenneville is changing that culture and won't be afraid to sit anyone who isn't responsible.

He has given the players fair warning and 13 games to get the message. They haven't, so now he's using ice time as a motivator.

Quenneville hinted at this after only two games in Chicago when he said that Kane will learn to be responsible, but he also had to know that bad habits promoted and praised for a long period of time can't be changed in one period of one game.

Obviously, he needs Kane on the ice, but he's going to have to break him down a bit and change the behavior of Kane - and others - until he gets fabulous offensive players who also can help in their own end.

This isn't a bad thing, and Kane is hardly alone in this regard, so Quenneville sent a big message to his team Tuesday that the most talented are not exempt from responsibility.

Meanwhile, he continues to learn his club and evaluate, and he will continue to make changes.

Good for him.

Fighting mad

Opposing teams continue to take liberties with the Hawks' stars, and something needs to be done before one of them gets seriously injured.

As if the rest of the league didn't already know, the Blues showed everyone the playbook last Friday when they absolutely pummeled the Hawks in their own building, and an inferior team won the game.

The Blues hit the Hawks harder and more frequently than any other team this season, and they definitely had the Hawks looking over their shoulders and giving up pucks quickly.

When I asked Joel Quenneville last week about the Hawks' toughness, or lack of it, he tried to make a case for the Hawks having "team toughness,'' but he was slow to respond and didn't go out of his way to sound convinced.

When you look back at his St. Louis teams, he always had a heavyweight champ on his roster, sometimes as many as three, with Kelly Chase, Chris Pronger and Tony Twist.

One year, he had Reed Low, who collected 6 points and 234 penalty minutes.

You can talk about the "new'' NHL all you want, but one thing hasn't changed.

You still have to protect your stars.

The goaltending

While there was great focus a few weeks ago on the Hawks' goaltending competition, it said here that there was no competition at all, and that a Nikki Khabibulin playing for a contract, for his very NHL life, would be the Hawks' best goalie.

And that has indeed happened.

He has outplayed Cristobal Huet, and as expected created a dilemma. The Hawks need to make the playoffs and send the message to season-ticket holders, in brutal economic times, that winning comes first.

Khabibulin gives them the best chance to do that, but keeping his contract makes it difficult to add scoring, size or toughness.

Meanwhile, they're stuck with Huet and have Corey Crawford, while some in the organization believe Antti Niemi will be the best of the three.

So what's a GM to do, especially one trying to save his own hide?

Good question.

Dempster street

As much as everyone likes and respects Ryan Dempster - and I'm in that crowd - not everyone would have been heartbroken had the Cubs lost him to another team, if only because the dollars and years they gave him are a lot for a guy who needs to prove himself again.

His career history is not encouraging, but many of us doubted him last year and he proved he could get it done.

Just testing

So far, from what you hear out there, teams are not going to shy away from free agents, even though there's talk of an HGH test being only months or maybe a year away.

You would think that might scare some clubs away from players who came out of nowhere or found the Fountain of Youth, but apparently this won't be the winter of free-agent discontent.

No Asteroids?

From e-mailer the Last Bear Fan, on Bears defensive coordinator Bob Babich: "My guess is that if you look in the 'Recent Documents' bin on his desktop, you'll find words like 'Frogger' and 'Pong' but nothing that resembles 'Game Plan.' ''

Overtime out

From e-mailer Jeffrey Wanka, on Donovan McNabb's overtime confusion: "This lack of knowing the rules might explain why, after losing in 2005, he still liked the Eagles' chances of beating New England in a seven-game Super Bowl Series.''

Best headline

Sportspickle.com: "Albert Pujols becomes the oldest MVP winner in baseball history.''

And finally -

NBC's Conan O'Brien: "Canada has canceled plans to build a national portrait gallery after they realized every painting was of Wayne Gretzky."

brozner@dailyherald.com