Coyotes beat Hawks 3-1

The father's trip started off poorly for the hawks as Phoenix scored two early goals & coasted to a 3-1 win.  Jonathan Toews had his father along with him, unfortunately they were both spectators, sitting in the seats watching.  The loss combined with a Columbus win in Atlanta knocked the Hawks back into a 9th place tie with Detroit. Considering the hawks relatively favorable schedule to start the season after returning from Europe, both in terms of home games & opposition, (only two of their wins have come against teams that are over .500, namely the miraculous comeback from 5-0 over Calgary & the 9 round shootout win vs. Colorado ), the hawks are now going to face more road games & tougher opponents.  Jonathan Toews & Hossa can't return soon enough.

In Glendale, Martin Hanzal scored less than 3 minutes into the game on a shot that somehow managed to get thru Cristobal Huet.   If the hawks had taken advantage of some of the opportunities the Yotes tried to give them via penalties & several breakaway chances & gone on to win, the weak goal on Huet may have been overlooked (like Moen's goal from behind the net in Friday's hawks win over Montreal).  Even worse for Huet, Ilya Bryzgolov was solid at the other end, stopping over 30 shots and stoned the hawks pp, which failed to convert any of their 6 chances, more than twice the number Phoenix had - the hawks did mange to score a shortie on 1 of their 3 pk situations, but failed to gain any momentum from that.

Bryan Campbell was victimized on two of the Phoenix goals and Cam Barker was -2 despite playing only 14 minutes (including over 5 minutes of pp time, 2nd to Campbell's 5:58 pp ice time).  Barker is a defensive liability and when not contributing on the pp, is wasting a lot of cap room on a team that has little of it to spare.

Things don't get easier tonight as the hawks face another team on the rise, the surprising Avalanche who are first in the Western Conference, despite playing 11 of their first 16 games on the road. If that were not bad enough, the Avs are 5-0-0 at home, with the hawks only 2-3 on the road, and those two wins were vs. Florida & Nashville - not exactly tough teams (or places) to play.

As the schedule gets tougher, the spotlight will increasingly focus on Huet, especially if the offense & pp continue to sputter & Toews & Hossa's returns are delayed.