Hawks evoke memories of '09-10

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The Chicago Tribune recalls that it took the Blackhawks 36 games to reach the 50-point mark. The last time they did it in 36 contests was in 2009, the season that ended with the Hawks hoisting the Stanley Cup.

Let the comparisons begin.

"It's natural people will probably start doing that," captain Jonathan Toews said Tuesday. "It's nice to hear those accolades. Maybe it's always easier to keep cruising when people are believing in you and giving you high praise by saying that we're comparing our team to the one we had two years ago.

"We knew right from the get-go this season that we had that type of potential to go far, but we're not looking too far ahead."

Instead, a look back at the team that snapped a 49-year championship drought can provide a blueprint for this season. That group managed to win games even on nights when it didn't play particularly well, something at which this team is becoming adept.

"Even if we don't play our best game, we know we can find a way to win," Toews said. "One of the biggest things about our team a couple of years ago was that we had different guys stepping up every night, and we're seeing more and more of that right now."

The Tribune points out that while the numbers are gaudy and the confidence is brimming, there is no sign of the Hawks going on cruise control.

"There's no reason to be complacent or comfortable with where we are," veteran winger Patrick Sharp said. "There are areas we can improve in, and we plan on doing that."

Added Toews: "We always focus on what we have to do. The same way we do when it's not going so well. We'll keep working. We know we have a lot of room for improvement as a team, and we'll look at it that way."

Not surprisingly, coach Joel Quenneville also sees room for improvement for a team that has won seven of its last eight games overall and posted a 9-1-1 mark during December.

"Whether it is defensively or our puck possession game or the four lines all giving it to us game in and game out, shift in and shift out, that's where we can be better," Quenneville said. "There are so many good teams in our league. … I still think there's growth in our game."

The Calgary Sun illustrates that Canadians often talk about hockey as though it’s life and death.

But it isn’t.

It’s just a game — a game this country is extremely passionate about — but a game nonetheless. Unfortunately, it takes a tragic event to put things in perspective. Russia lived through, and is still dealing with, that tragedy. Nearly four months after a plane crash claimed the lives of an entire team — the powerful Yaroslavl Lokomotiv — the country is in mourning.

Two members of last year’s world junior championship squad — forward Danill Sobchenko and defenceman Yuri Urychev — were on the plane. Russian superstar Nail Yakupov said the tragedy is never far from players’ minds.

“When I heard this news, it was a shock,” Yakupov said. “These were good players, like NHL players. I knew a couple of guys. It’s hard for hockey.

“I think everyone thinks about Lokomotiv, and if we win, it will be for Lokomotiv.”

Two other players who would likely have cracked Russia’s lineup at this tournament — Maksim Shuvalov and Pavel Snurnitsyn — were among the 37 team members killed in the crash. Goaltender Andrei Makarov, who plays for the Saskatoon Blades, said the tragedy has made it more difficult to travel.

“I knew a couple of players who died,” Makarov said. “It’s too bad.

“It’s probably a little bit scarier to fly now in the plane.”

The Sun notes that Yakupov, the front-runner to be chosen first overall in this summer’s NHL Entry Draft, said it is strange not seeing the perennial powerhouse team in the KHL. Lokomotiv is playing the remainder of this season in the VHL, Russia’s second-tier league and will return to the KHL next season.

“I used to watch Lokomotiv games,” Yakupov said. “I sat behind the bench.

“They had the best team in the KHL.

“They had very good coaches. It was an amazing team.”

The Calgary Herald notes that today marks the first anniversary of Jay Feaster’s occupation of the Calgary Flames general manager’s throne.

Not that it’s a big deal to the man. Apparently.

“The job is such, that once you’re into it, it’s every day, it’s constant,” Feaster is saying outside the visitors quarters at Nationwide Arena. “You don’t take time to sit back and think, ‘Gee, it was just a year ago.’ And it’s a situation where we’re not where we want to be . . . and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

“That’s the focus all the time.”

Under his 12-month watch — exactly 82 games, including Tuesday’s 2-1 shootout win in Columbus — the Flames have compiled a 43-26-13 log (and 99 points).

Which, over a single winter, would be enough to cinch a playoff berth.

Nevertheless, the Flames finished 10th last season in the Western Conference. And, because of early-season sluggishness, they have spent this campaign gawking up at the eighth rung.

And this happens to be precisely how Feaster assesses his program.

Not for bite-size improvement.

Not for better salary-cap use.

Not for flashes of competence.

But, plain and simple, for post-season entrance.

“Be clear about this — there is only one measure of success for the Calgary Flames,” says Feaster. “It’s the playoffs. Then, once in the playoffs, it’s about playoff success. There’s a lot of work that goes on with the organization, there’s a lot of good things we’re doing. I’m happy and proud of the things we’re doing. But, at the end of the day, the measure of success is the playoffs.

“We went into this season believing we had a team that should make the playoffs. To be sitting five points ahead of last year’s pace? That’s just not good enough. Yeah, it’s better to be where we are now than where we were a week ago . . . yet it’s not where we should be.

“There’s still a big road ahead of us.”

And should he ever be at a loss, Calgarians, ever helpful, will happily provide all the advice he needs. After all, Feaster is one of only 1.1 million general managers in the city.

“I would rather have the sport-talk radio filled with whatever they want to say about me, about us,” he says. “I’d rather have people talking (about the Flames) than having to convince people to become passionate about the game. That’s an incredible advantage we have in Calgary — people care.”

Scott Howson has finally seen enough, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The five-game losing streak the Blue Jackets lugged into last night’s game against Calgary convinced the team’s general manager that something has to be done.

“We’ll be active,” he said.

This is no small thing. Although Howson’s epiphany might not merit a full-blown parade, it probably is worth a band, a couple of floats and maybe the mayor waving from an open car. At the very least, it’s probably cause for a small party.

“This last five-game stretch has given us a little more clarity,” Howson said. “We’re just not good enough as a team.”

That might have seemed obvious to many of us before now — the Jackets have a woeful 9-22-5 record after last night’s 2-1 shootout loss to Calgary — but Howson isn’t like many of us. Even when his team is last in the entire NHL, as it is now, he leads the league in patience.

This can be reassuring and maddening. When you listen to him talk, sometimes he seems almost too reasonable to be running a professional sports franchise when the paying customers want to win yesterday. At other times, you almost want to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Where was he a month ago when the season was leaving town?

“The first six or seven weeks of the season, it was too disjointed,” he said. “We had (James) Wisniewski out. We had (Jeff) Carter out. We had (Radek) Martinek out. We had (Mark) Dekanich out. … It was just too disjointed to get a clear picture. The picture is becoming clearer now. We aren’t playing well enough and … me as management has to find a solution to help the team.”

The Dispatch asks: What does he think is going wrong here?

“We’re not good enough defensively, first,” he said. “And that’s a team-wide thing. It’s goaltending, it’s defense, it’s forwards playing together as a group. We gave up six (goals) in St. Louis. We gave up four (in Chicago). We gave up six in Nashville. We gave up six in Edmonton. You can’t win like that. It’s impossible.”

If that’s true, a major move is needed. Howson seems to acknowledge as much.

“Everything’s on the table,” he said. “We’ve got to look at everything. We’ve got to seriously look at everything. Now that’s different than saying, ‘I’m going to phone every GM tomorrow and say who do you want, (Rick) Nash, Carter or (R.J.) Umberger?’ but we’ve got to look at the whole situation and we’ve got to consider everything.”

So the Blue Jackets are going to be “active.” Exactly what that means isn’t clear, but “active” is good because it shows that management is at least trying to solve the problem.

The paying customers deserve nothing less.

The Toronto Sun indicates that John-Michael Liles has been placed on IR by the Maple Leafs, a move that was confirmed by coach Ron Wilson. Wilson said Liles is suffering from “concussion-like symptoms.” If that in fact is the case, he is not alone.

Indeed, with stars such as Sidney Crosby and Chris Pronger already sidelined with similar issues, the list of those plagued by such ailments continued to balloon on Tuesday with Liles, Nashville Predators defenceman Shea Weber and Los Angeles Kings forward Simon Gagne all finding themselves the newest victims of the NHL’s concussion craziness.

Liles was hit by the Buffalo Sabres’ Paul Gaustad on Thursday, a blow that caused the speedy defenceman to leave the game in order to be evaluated. He did return later in the Leafs’ 4-2 victory at the Air Canada Centre but did not suit up on Long Island one night later because of an ailment team officials referred to as a stiff neck.

Obviously it ended up being more significant than that.

Liles takes the blame for the Gaustad hit, feeling he should never have put himself in such a vulnerable position in the first place. In retrospect, Liles, who has proven to be one of the Leafs’ team leaders both on the ice and inside the dressing room, is probably being a bit too hard on himself.

The Leafs already are without forward Colby Armstrong, who is suffering from similar concussion-like symptoms.

“We’re shutting (Liles) down for a few days,” Wilson said after the Leafs’ morning skate on Tuesday. “He was feeling a bit better today but he’s not ready to go. If we run into a crisis, we’ll have another defenceman available in case of illness or injury.

“We just wanted to make sure you don’t over-diagnose somebody,” Wilson said. “You have to give it a couple of days. Right now it’s best that he sits out and stays away from the rink for a couple of days.

“It’s as simple as that.”

The Buffalo News relays that the Sabres are looking to start a winning streak tonight against the New Jersey Devils. If it seems like it's been a long time without one for Blue and Gold, you've got the right feeling.

The Sabres have not won two straight games since taking three in a row from Nov. 5-11. They're 6-10-3 in the 19 games since — and that's their longest stretch without a winning streak since the lockout.

In fact, it's their longest drought since a 23-game stretch from Jan. 14-March 4, 2003 when Buffalo went 7-9-4-3 (four OT losses, three ties).

"First and foremost we have to get a little bit healthy and [Monday's 4-2 win over Washington] helped us in the health category," said coach Lindy Ruff, referring to the return of Brad Boyes and Jochen Hecht. "Now it's to try to put a little bit of a run together."

"That's going to take playing like we did last year when we went on the road, played a lot of road games and won in a lot of tough buildings. You have to play smart hockey on the road."

Added defenseman Christian Ehrhoff: "We can be happy with the way we played [Monday] but on the other hand, we have to make sure we come out the same way [tonight] and get on a little roll here. It can't be that we have one good game, then we don't play the way we want in the next game."

ESPN Dallas reports that with Kari Lehtonen apparently ready to return to the lineup Thursday the Dallas Stars have made some key decisions on their other goaltenders.

Andrew Raycroft, who has been the backup to Lehtonen since last season, will go on waivers Wednesday morning in order for Lehtonen to be activated in time for Thursday’s game against Columbus. That move signals that Richard Bachman will now move into the role of Lehtonen’s backup.

“It’s no secret that we’ve been taking a look at Richard the past three weeks and he’s got a good number of starts,” said Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk. “It’s always a difficult decision because Andrew is a veteran guy and he’s a good teammate, but we made the decision at this time that we are going to go with Bachman.”

The 24-year-old Bachman, called up due to an injury to Lehtonen, has appeared in nine games and started the last eight games for the Stars. He’s posted a 5-2-0 record, 2.76 goals against average and .912 save percentage. He’s had some ups and downs, but the Stars like the overall performance.

“We’ve looked at the body of work over the last three weeks and we think he’s done a lot of good things,” said Nieuwendyk. “I know he’s let in some goals he shouldn’t have lately, but he’s compact for a smaller goaltender and he is good with his rebounds. I think those goals that have gone in lately are correctable mistakes.

“I think he’s paid his dues. He’s had a good training camp, he’s done some good things in the American Hockey League and I think he will help us.”

The Stars will know Thursday at 11 a.m. if Raycroft, who was 2-8-0 with a 3.52 goals against average and a .898 save percentage this season, has cleared waivers or if another team has claimed him. If he clears he will be assigned to the Texas Stars of the AHL.

Email: chris.nichols@sportsnet.rogers.com

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­Chris Nichols is Sportsnet.ca's fantasy hockey writer.