CHICAGO -- Eyes roll across North America when two professional hockey teams play a full five minutes of overtime.
A shootout?
Lame, but necessary over an 82-game season.
But Patrick Kane in a shootout? Exciting, viral and very, very necessary over an 82-game season.
On Sunday afternoon in Chicago's 2-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, Kane thrilled the crowd and thoroughly embarrassed Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury with one of his patent-pending shootout dekes. Kane froze Fleury with his initial stickwork as he slowed to a scratch, before finishing with a Tim Hardaway-like killer crossover that left Fleury splayed on the ice while Kane calmly slid the puck in past his right skate.
After a Corey Crawford save, Patrick Sharp, the team's third shooter, fired in the game-winner with power, not patience.
"Kaner had just shot before me and he stole my move," Sharp said with a smile. "I had to come up with something different."
On our way out of the locker room, Sharp said he used a similar move in an intra-squad preseason practice but doesn't have the chutzpah to use it in a game, though he didn't say "chutzpah." Kane has whatever you want to call it. That's why he's Patrick Kane. His creativity innate and practiced.
"Yeah, I mean, I think your first priority is to score," Kane said. "That's the most important thing. But there are certain ways to do it. I don't know. I have a certain mentality. I've been working on it all season. Hopefully it continues."
Kane, a perennial leader in Showtime, is also the NHL's points leader with 63 (27 goals, 36 assists).
"This is no slight to Sidney Crosby, Crosby is probably best player in the world, but if I was going to sell a ticket to tell someone who's never watched a game, to watch one player, it would be Patrick Kane," Blackhawks forward Kris Versteeg said to me last season. "The way he can control the puck and handle the puck, as a fan you can be awed by it."
This was the 57th game of an interminably long season that still has 25 left and nearly two months to go before the real NHL season begins in the playoffs.
Chicago lost its first two games of their eight-game homestand, one in a shootout and one in overtime. That's two points squandered. This was a game they needed to win.
"Yeah, it's important to pick up that extra point when you let two slip away," Kane said.
How important is that extra point? Well, you only find out when the season is complete. Better safe than sorry.
The Blackhawks have 74 points, four behind St. Louis for second in the Central Division and six ahead of Winnipeg. They are eight behind Western Conference leader Nashville, which just loaded up for the playoffs with a big trade.
If the season ended today, the Hawks would play the Blues in the first round of the playoffs, in a rematch of last season. The Hawks won that matchup, 4-2.
For the Blackhawks, it's more about self-confidence than playoff positioning heading into the last two months. Every athlete says the same thing when faced with this quandary. Of course, you want to win heading into the playoffs.
And when it gets to February and March, every close game with a good team feels like a playoff matchup. This one was no different, Kane said, with strong performances from two strong goaltenders, which limited scoring chances.
To come out on top means more than entertaining the masses with fancy puck-work.
"I think we're at that point right now where we're trying to get as strong as a team as possible heading into last 25 games here, pick up points, start playing the right way," Kane said. "If you get toward the end of the season and you start losing games, it's hard to turn the switch on and off, so we'll start trying to prepare right now."
Just for fun, I went back through the last five seasons, from the Hawks' first Stanley Cup season to last season, to see how they fared in the last 25 games (or 15 games for the 2012-13 lockout season), and if overtime/shootout losses affected seeding. Of course, it's impossible to determine whether extra-period wins or losses affected confidence or bonhomie, and injuries affected the records.
The biggest swing in the last 25 games came in 2012, when the Blackhawks went 16-5-4 to end the season. They finished three points behind Central winner Nashville and one behind Detroit, losing in the first round to the Phoenix Coyotes in a series where the first five games went to overtime, and infamously, Raffi Torres knocked out Marian Hossa in the third game.
In 2011, the Stanley Cup Hangover season, the Blackhawks finished 15-7-3, with five overtime/shootout wins, compared to three losses, to beat Dallas for the eighth playoff spot by two points. The Hawks then took Vancouver to seven games in one of the more memorable first-round playoff exits.
In Chicago's second Stanley Cup run in 2013, they finished the shortened season 11-2-2, cementing their best record in the NHL.
Last season, the Hawks had a fairly poor finish, going 13-11-1 with two overtime/shootout wins. But they still made it to the Western Conference finals as the fifth seed, losing to sixth-seed Los Angeles in seven games.
So, what does this mean? Nothing surprising. Chicago has to take the points that are there in front of them. And if comes to a shootout, Jonathan Toews, Kane and Sharp aren't bad choices.
The Blackhawks know they have what it takes to return to the conference finals and beyond, but this core of this team has dealt with playoff failures as well. They know the talk and they know the walk, and what truly matters as winter turns to spring.
"We're a confident group and we feel like we can play better," Kane said. "But by no means are we taking anything granted."