Thursday, March 20, 2008

Hawks vs. Capitals

Last night the Hawks honored legendary goaltender Tony Esposito in two ways. Before the game there was a nice "welcome back" ceremony in which some of Tony's teammates returned, Tony gave a speech about Chicago being a great city, and the Hawks brought Tony's older brother, Phil, who gave Tony his iconic mask to wear briefly. During the game the Hawks absolutely dominated. It started just a minute and a half into the game when James Wisniewski took a shot from the point and Jason Williams made a great deflection and the puck when above goalie Olaf Kolzig's head and into the net. Just a few minutes later Johnny Toews, on the power play, took the puck hard to the net and managed to shove it past Kolzig. About six minutes later Robert Lang dropped the puck back to Yanic Perrault who fired a lovely shot into the upper right hand corner of the net for the Hawks. About six minutes after that Patrick Sharp fired a huge rebound into a wide open net for his team leading 35th goal of the season. About half way through the second period Alex Ovechkin mishandled a bad pass and the puck was stolen by Jason Williams. He then bounced the puck off the boards right to Rene Bourque who went on a breakaway and slid the puck between the legs of Olaf Kolzig. That did it for the scoring in the game; Khabibulin made sure of that when he made one of the most spectacular saves ever made when the got the glove on a puck fired by Alex Semin, which appeared to be going into a wide open net. Perhaps Tony-O helped Khabibulin perform at the top of his game.

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