Hawks take no guff from Blues

The Blackhawks are never going to be the most physical team on the ice, but they did exactly what they had to do Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues.

The Hawks stood up to the Blues and for each other in an impressive 5-2 victory at Scottrade Center.

On a night when the Hawks were engaged in all aspects, Jonathan Toews mixed it up with David Backes, Daniel Carcillo stood up for new linemates Toews and Patrick Kane, and the Hawks killed the penalties they needed to kill along the way.

“Everybody played for each other,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said.

“It was a big win for us against any team but especially against this team, the way they like to play us,” Toews said.

Not only did the penalty killers come up big on four occasions, Marian Hossa scored a critical short-handed goal midway through the second period to tie the game 2-2.

A short time later, Patrick Sharp put the Hawks ahead to stay with a power-play goal.

Hossa had a big game with 2 goals, giving him 399 for his career. His power-play goal early in the third made it 4-2.

“I thought we played a real strong game,” Quenneville said. “Across the board we played hard and our special teams were excellent.”

Toews scored the Hawks' first goal 51 seconds into the second period to wipe out a 1-0 Blues lead. Toews got his 10th goal in his last 12 games on a deflection of a Niklas Hjalmarsson shot after Kane beat Blues defenseman Kris Russell to a puck to save an icing.

Toews was serving a penalty when Hossa turned around the game's momentum with his short-handed goal that was set up by Duncan Keith's steal.

“That short-handed goal really took us off,” Quenneville said. “I thought we killed penalties much more efficiently, but it's only one game.”

Quenneville shortened his defense bench for most of the second half of the game, going mostly with Keith, Brent Seabrook, Hjalmarsson and Nick Leddy, and sitting Steve Montador and Sean O'Donnell.

Hjalmarsson played one of his better games with 7 blocked shots to go with his assist on Toews' goal. Keith was plus-2 with 2 assists and 3 blocks.

The Hawks held the Blues to only 25 shots, with Ray Emery turning in a big effort in goal.

The only goals Emery allowed were David Perron's roof shot early in the first period and Chris Stewart's goal in the second.

“It was a solid game by our team,” Emery said. “We got down, but we gradually chipped away at it.”

Quenneville put Carcillo with Toews and Kane to help protect them against the chippy Blues — and the move worked.

“Danny had a good game,” Quenneville said. “He did a good job moving up.”

The Hawks handed Blues goalie Brian Elliott only his second loss of the season (10-2). It was the first time in 12 appearances that Elliott allowed more than 2 goals.

tsassone@dailyherald.com