The extended summer vacation that ensued from the Blackhawks first-round playoff exit last season keeps paying dividends for 37-year-old Marian Hossa.
“He seems to have found the fountain of youth. He’s looking better and stronger than ever,” defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson said after Hossa’s wrist shot beat Cory Schneider in overtime to give the Hawks a 4-3 victory over the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night before 21,351 at the United Center. “Whatever he’s doing, I’m just going to follow and do the same thing.”
It’s never a bad thing to follow Hossa’s lead, especially when he’s performing at mid-career levels. With Jonathan Toews missing his fourth consecutive game with an upper-body injury and the Hawks struggling to score goals, Hossa stepped up and made the difference. The goal was his fourth game-winner — the third in overtime — and his 12th of the season in 24 games. He scored 13 all of last season — when the rigors of three consecutive deep runs in the playoffs seemed to be taking a toll.
After taking a pass from Patrick Kane, Hossa drifted across the slot, held onto the puck and fired a wrist shot past Schneider.
“Obviously it feels great to score in OT,” Hossa said. “Kaner gave it to me at the blue line. I tried to hold, see my options and I didn’t see anything and tried to shoot through the screen. It wasn’t a hard shot, but I just tried to shoot it at the net.”
Hossa’s goal helped the Hawks overcome Travis Zajac’s hat trick and gave the Hawks (16-6-3) seven-of-eight points in four games (3-0-1) without captain Jonathan Toews, who still is recovering from an upper-body injury.
It probably shouldn’t have been this difficult — the Devils (10-7-6) came in 3-7-3 on the road; the Hawks came in 9-1-2 at home. But after falling behind 1-0 following a sluggish first period, the Hawks found their groove in a three-goal second period, then found a way to win after Zajac’s third goal tied it at 8:49 of the third period. Hossa’s goal came seconds after the Devils’ Taylor Hall was stopped on a breakaway and Michael Cammalleri hit the post in overtime.
“Maybe some young teams would [hit] the panic button,” Hossa said. “I think there’s a calmness in the dressing room, even when we don’t play the best game we know we can steal one point and in overtime maybe we get another one. We’ve done a good job so far in that.”
Artem Anisimov scored his 10th goal with a forehand-to-backhand move off a rebound of a Duncan Keith slap shot to tie the game 1-1 at 12:25 of the second period. But the other two goals came from unlikely sources: forward Marcus Kruger on a wrist shot from the right circle off a rush; and defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson on a shot though traffic that gave the Hawks a 3-2 lead. It was Kruger’s second goal of the season — and two more than he had last season. It was Hjalmarsson’s third goal of the season — one more than he scored last season.
“I didn’t mind our game,” coach Joel Quenneville said. “Finding a way to win — you’ve got to complement our guys. We’ve played a lot of games that have been tight. We’ve gottena lot of fortunate points, a lot of bonus points in the overtime, too. We’ll take our record. Every games been close. We’ve been fortunate and we’ll take it.”
But even Hossa acknowledged the Hawks eventually will have to reach a higher level.
“Definitely,” he said. “Teams come in here ready to play us. They see us as a measurement. They bring their “A” game every night. When you have to play these ugly and tough games that’s a good thing [that] we find a way to win. But it would be nice to have some cushion.”
