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player ready...Blackhawks coach Darryl Sutter may have been disappointed that his team bowed out of the Stanley Cup playoffs Sunday night but made no attempt to hide his pride in what the Hawks had accomplished.
“Darned right I am,” he responded when asked if he was proud of his team. “When we had those 13 games in a row that we couldn’t win, this was our whole focus, to hang on to get to this point. I’m sure it will be more frustrating tomorrow than it is tonight.”
While agreeing that it was goalie Ed Belfour who “gave us a chance to get to the Stanley Cup finals,” Sutter noted, “The whole team played well. What more can you ask?”
No surprise: Denis Savard’s goal Sunday night was his seventh of the playoffs and his fourth in the last three games. With his 11 assists he led the Hawks in playoff scoring. But he’s surprised that other people are still surprised he’s playing so well.
“They looked at the numbers (in Tampa Bay) and said those aren’t the numbers Savard used to put on the board,” said Savard. “So now he’s back; maybe he’s playing better. But last year in Tampa, to be honest, I played pretty good. Maybe I only had about 17 goals and 50 points, but I played very well on defense. This year when the season started my conditioning wasn’t good.
“It’s a surprise because people look at the numbers. That’s OK. If I can surprise ’em for two more years, I’ll be very happy.”
Up for an honor: Hawks defenseman Steve Smith, who left Sunday’s game in the second period with a knee injury, is one of three finalists for the Masterton Trophy, an annual award given for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
Smith was nominated in part for his arduous return from a career-threatening broken leg in the 1993-94 season to help anchor the Blackhawks’ blue line. Other nominees are Kevin Dineen of the Philadelphia Flyers and Pat LaFontaine of the Buffalo Sabres.
No matter: Bernie Nicholls says he derived little satisfaction from the goal in Game 3 that ended his 30-game scoring drought because the team lost. Not scoring “bothers you because you’re paid to score goals,” he said, “but if you score and you lose it doesn’t mean too much. I’ve said many times–and it’s true–that we don’t care who scores the goals. If someone thinks differently then they’re totally wrong.
“We were winning before when I wasn’t scoring and we lost that game, so that goal really didn’t mean much.”
OT special: Murray Craven now has been involved in 14 overtime games in the last two postseasons but said it had never occurred to him before a reporter brought it up. “Until you said that I had no idea,” he said. “I always just thought, well, 60 minutes are done and now we’ve got to go out and win it in overtime. Now that you mention it, I have been involved in a lot of overtime games, but I’ve come out on top in most of them.”
He was 6-1 in overtime games with Vancouver last season and 3-4 with the Hawks after Sunday night’s game.