Huet, Consider Yourself Shunned: Stars vs. Hawks Game Diary

For tonight’s game diary, we will be watching the Stars and Blackhawks duke it out at the United Center. The Hawks will look to run their winning streak to five games. Along for the ride are a bunch of Twitter users, who I would highly recommend following if you are passionate about Blackhawks hockey. Enjoy!

First Period

-Alex Auld is also in goal for the Stars. Last time I saw him, he was the executive greeter/door opener for shots to the Ottawa goal.

-James Neal gets stoned about 45 seconds into the proceedings. Huet squared him up, and directed the rebound to teammates.

-Tomas Kopecky just keeps looking good on the ice. He just took on two Stars players to try to get at a puck in the offensive zone.

-John Madden is also contorting himself into weird shapes to receive passes. That looked pretty cool. He also made a good stop on top of it in the neutral zone. Four minutes in, 0-0 game.

-Cam Barker just made a sliding block on a rush by the Stars. He took the puck with him into the corner and ended the threat. Good blue collar play. Twitterer ChiBlackhawks offers up this critique: “Alert the presses! Barker with a defensive move!” Well said.

-Good Hawks mojo gets kaboshed by a Brian Campbell spin-o-rama that ends with him sprawling to the ice in a self-caused manner. Soup, I know Denis Savard, and you are no Denis Savard.

-Dustin Byfuglien keeps up a trend that Hawks players have been into recently: hitting players through the glass. If that keeps up, I don’t see how the Hawks will have any problems intimidating people.

-We are halfway through the first period, and it’s still scoreless. The Hawks are getting a ton of pucks on net, but Auld isn’t playing like himself: he is actually stopping them.

-Sharp-Toews-Ladd had a great shift, notching five shots but, as NHLBlackhawks said, “only thing missing was a goal”.

-Huet has looked pretty good tonight, making a couple of tough saves.

-The first penalty of the game is called on the Stars at the 16:16 mark of the first period as Tom Wandell gets called for hooking.

-First period ends with the Hawks outshooting Dallas 14-5, but with the score 0-0.

Second Period:

-Stars score early to make it 1-0. Huet thought he had the puck, and the four Hawks around the net still allowed an open Star. Ridiculous defense there.

-Wandell gives us another power play, this time for holding.

-We manage one shot, and Dallas comes down and scores a fluky goal off of a Dallas skate. The puck was headed wide of the net, and it deflected off a skate past Huet. That was plain weird. 2-0 Stars.

-In what I like to call a response worth noting, Troy Brouwer comes down and fires a wrister past Auld to make it 2-1. See, that’s what a goal is supposed to look like.

-Huet lets in an easy one from the left face-off circle. 3-1 Stars, and I’m hoping the hook comes out soon. Any high school goalie could have stopped the shot with no one in between them, and it was a 60 footer that Huet flat whiffed on. Ridiculous.

-Patrick Kane commits a dumb hooking penalty, which prompts Twitterer mishmash87 to say “Kane has graduated from high-sticking penalties to hooking this year”. Completely correct.

-Huet, a native of France, shall now be nicknamed “Mr. Mustard”. Why? Because like French’s Mustard, his contract is a stain that is nearly impossible to get rid of.

-After Auld moronically plays a puck behind the net with Sharp all over him, Jonathan Toews puts it in the open cage to make it a 3-2 game. The United Center has come back to life after being ruthlessly tortured by Mr. Mustard.

-And the Hawks will get a power play with 1:17 left in the second period. Let’s try to get more than one shot on this, huh boys?

-The Hawks have some trouble setting anything up, and go into the 2^nd intermission still down by a goal. Huet looked God-awful, the defense had some bad moments, but at least Tazer finally hit the scoresheet with a goal. What’s with these bad starts goal-wise for the captain?

-The Blackhawks are outshooting Dallas 22-14. While they are losing, they have definitely had more quality chances than the Stars, but the Stars have better angled skates apparently.

-As a quick aside, I really wish that the Hawks would go back to playing the different players’ songs. They have been playing “Chelsea Dagger” for everyone. I miss “Sharp Dressed Man”, “Johnny B. Goode”, and “Rock You Like a Hurricane”.

-Watching a Comcast commercial right now. “Did you hear about the guy who’s turning into a tree?” Yeah I have…..he’s a total sap. Thank you to my buddy Aaron for the lamest joke of the evening.

-Third Period:

-The Hawks come out of the gate and failed to score on their third power play of the game. According to percentages, there’s the three out of five the Stars are supposed to stop. Anybody? Anybody?

-And just like that, Andrew Ladd commits a moronic high-sticking penalty. In wide open ice, with the puck nowhere near him, he got the stick up. Jeesh.

-After Colin Fraser and Kris Versteeg come up with a great short-handed rush, the Hawks have the penalty killed off it looks like……but Brent Seabrook commits a penalty to give the Stars another power play. Come on guys!

-You can see why Versteeg had four short-handed goals last season: he is really freaking quick, and can out-deke just about any defender. Couple of real good plays by him with the team a man down.

-Hawks kill off the other power play. Great job on the PK by the Hawks there, now hopefully we can get something going.

-The Hawks really haven’t been able to get anything going, but of course the three minor penalties in the frame aren’t helping matters. John Madden was cross-checked in front of the Dallas net…no call. Hjalmarsson touches James Neal rushing toward the other net…interference penalty. Real bad call there by the officials.

-Great penalty-killing there by Madden, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, and Dave Bolland. Stuck on the ice, they kept skating and skating and they managed to finish it off.

-Robadias scores a freaking stupid goal. Shooting it from the red line, it bounces off a stanchion in the glass, and bounces from the corner and past Huet into the net. I know it was fluky, but you have GOT to cover your post. Come on Mustard!

-These have been two of the stupidest goals a team can hope to make. A team cannot possibly expect to get a goal like that during a game, much less get two of them. I am at a loss for words on how that is even remotely possible.

-The Blackhawks score a goal with 4:25 left to make it 4-3. Hjalmarsson scores with Byfuglien’s butt in Auld’s face. That’s the kind of thing you like to see as a fan: Buff with a butt in a goalie’s face.

-And……there it is again: the dumb penalty bug. This time, Brent Sopel plays whack-a-mole to a Stars’ face. If there’s blood coming out, this game is pretty much over because of a four-minute penalty.

-Phew, no blood no four-minute minor.

-I’m getting tired of watching Huet be unable to cover up a puck when it’s within arm’s reach.

-And Brendan Morrow gets tagged with a penalty that shouldn’t have been called. So the game is now in a 4-on-4 with 2:11 left.

-And now’s it’s 6-on-4 with Huet out of net. Come on boys!

-After some insane rushes on the play, the Stars have beaten the Blackhawks 4-3. You can point to a lot of things in this game that caused the Blackhawks to lose.

-Alex Auld made some outstanding saves to preserve the win for the Stars. Gotta say, I’m kind of surprised, but I’ll give him some kudos anyway.

–As objective as I am trying to be, how can you not pin this game on Huet? Yeah, the skate-score was not on him, but the shot from the circle that passed through zero traffic and the puck off the glass that bounced past his dumb non-post-protecting self were totally on his head. It’s time to go grab a smoke. Til Wednesday folks, cheerio.

Tags: Alex Auld, Andrew Ladd, antti niemi, Brent Seabrook, Cristobal Huet, Duncan Keith, Dustin Byfuglien, French's Mustard, James Neal, John Madden, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Tomas Kopecky