Amonte's Money In 'Hawks Win
When the Chicago Blackhawks needed their top scorer, Tony Amonte personally took charge.
Amonte's two goals in the final three minutes led the Blackhawks to a 3-1 victory over the Flames on Wednesday night.
Amonte broke a 1-1 tie with 3:01 left when he took a pass from Ed Olczyk skating into the Calgary zone and beat goalie Fred Brathwaite. Then with 42 seconds left, Amonte scored his 34th goal into an empty net to seal the Blackhawks' first win over Calgary since April 11, 1997.
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"It was a great pass from Eddie to the net and and I just got lucky enough to put it up over Fred's shoulder," Amonte said of the winning goal. "He (Brathwaite) made same great saves (throughout the game) on some rebounds."
Calgary's Phil Housley tied the game at 1-1 with his 300th NHL goal at 1:12 of the third period. Rene Corbet skated behind the net and passed to Housley in the right circle. His shot appeared to be deflected by a Chicago player and it got past goalie Jocelyn Thibault.
"They had a couple of good shifts and got fired up. They seemed to get out of the gate (in the third period) pretty quick. They got that goal right away," said Amonte. "To our credit, we stayed calm, relaxed and poised and just let the game come to us."
Calgary finished a seven-game road trip with a 5-2-0 record.
"It doesn't take anything off (the trip)," Calgary coach Brian Sutter said. "Obviously, it's the best road trip in the history of this hockey club. but I despise losing. I'm not very happy. But (this game) could have gone either way.
"I don't think we were playing on all cylinders tonight. ... Maybe we ran out of gas a little bit in the third, but we had great opportunities. We knew if we cranked it up a little bit we were going to be fine and we did for two periods."
Chicago took a 1-0 lead in the first when J.P. Dumont scored his fourth goal off a reboud of Christian Laflamme's shot.
The Blackhawks missed an opportunity to pad the lead when Amonte hit the post and the puck slowly glided towards the goal line before being poked away by a Flames' defender.
In the second period, Calgary's Ed Ward was given a four-minute high-sticking penalty. However, the Blackhawks failed to score in that span.
"We played very well defensively and held them down," Amonte said. "They didn't get many shots (25). Throughout the whole game they didn't have many offensive chances. It was a great confidence builder for us. We tried to play better defense, and work the puck around. We seemed to control the game all night."
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