Winning Is Infectious (Also: Toews Slightly Injured)

Tommie Lee
Dec 13, 2014
2 min read

If you haven’t heard about it yet, check this out: Nine players on four teams have been diagnosed with the mumps.

The outbreak has struck the Minnesota Wild especially hard, with five players on that squad all swollen and miserable right now. The Blues, Rangers, and Devils also have confirmed cases on their rosters. No one’s quite sure why the outbreak hit, and the league is offering immunization boosters to protect the players as best as possible.

Weird.

Also spreading quickly and defying traditional explanation: Blackhawks victories.

At the time of this posting the boys have snagged 16 points in the standings for each of their last eight games. That’s eight wins straight against the kind of teams they should be beating if they’re truly worthy of the praise the media has been heaping upon them this season. Since the day before Thanksgiving Chicago has taken down Colorado, Anaheim, L.A., Nashville, New Jersey, and Boston on the road, and also bested St. Louis and Montreal in the Madhouse on Madison.

I think we can all agree the win against the Devils was stolen, but for the most part the other games were strong-looking victories for Coach Q and the guys. The team is 20-8-1 on the season, in first place in the Central division, and second place in the Western conference. The numbers say the penalty-killing unit is at 91.5%, which is the best in the NHL.

For the most part this was done without a couple of key pieces. Patrick Sharp was just reactivated from Injured Reserve on Tuesday before the Bruins game, and starting goalie Corey Crawford is still suffering from his I-Missed-A-Step-At-A-Concert injury.

Our backup goalies have been stellar in Crow’s absence, with Antti Rannta standing tall and Scott Darling looking brilliant since he was called up again. He’s been in goal for the last three wins and has stopped 86 pucks. He’s 5-1 on the year with a .939 save percentage…and he’s our NUMBER THREE GUY.

The news hasn’t been all good though in this stretch of wins. Captain Serious, Jonathon Toews was boarded really, really awkwardly Thursday night by unimportant Boston defenseman Dennis Seidenberg, whom I believe was a character on Breaking Bad. Toews left the game and his status hasn’t been elaborated on yet.

A positive note from that game: Blackhawks D-Man Klas Dahlbeck netted the first goal of his NHL career Thursday night. May it be the first of many.

It’s a full weekend with a trip to New York Saturday to face the Isles, and then back home to try and extinguish the Flames. With any luck at all, the Blackhawks can tally a couple of more wins…and avoid getting the mumps.

Go Hawks!