3 things we learned in the NHL: Blackhawks snap skid against Wild

The headset must have been broken, because the referee was using an iPhone to talk to the war room in Toronto during a goal review for the Wild.

• Blackhawks snap skid against Wild
• Zach Parise scores controversial goal
• Ryan Hartman making most of minutes

There was only one game in the NHL but no shortage of action and excitement. From a losing streak coming to an end and a controversial goal counting, here’s three things we learned Wednesday night.

Sigh of relief
“A win against Minnesota, finally,” said every Blackhawks fan ever, probably.

It’s taken Chicago a while but it finally broke an eight-game losing skid against the Wild with a 4-3 overtime victory.

The Blackhawks had only been averaging 1.50 goals per game and 29.2 shots per game against Minnesota during their losing skid but turned it around Wednesday night. Chicago fired 32 shots at Wild backup Darcy Kuemper during the matchup, which featured end-to-end action.

Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane said Tuesday that “as of now it’s our biggest game of the year.”

Kane’s assessment of the situation was fair — any bigger of a points deficit in the standings would have been pretty tough to catch up to. But now the Hawks are only five points behind Minnesota in the Central Division standings, although the Wild have two games in hand.

The two teams play each other two more times this season with their next matchup coming on Feb. 21.

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Confusing goal
Hockey fans were baffled that Zach Parise’s second-period goal still counted after review.

On first glance, the goal looks as though it’s offside, but after a lengthy delay (which included the use of an iPhone?!), it was ruled that the goal would count.

With the help of Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, we examined why Parise’s goal was a good one.

Making it count
Chicago forward Ryan Hartman has been making the most of his ice time of late.

The 22-year-old scored for the third straight game to open the scoring against the Wild.

The Blackhawks have received a decent amount of production from Hartman in his first full NHL season. After mixing in a few games over the last two years, Hartman has settled into a fourth-line role with Chicago and has 13 goals and 10 assists in 50 games.

His current scoring run comes despite him not getting more than 12 minutes of ice time over the last three games.

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