Chicago Blackhawks ends four-game skid, beat Vancouver 5-2

The Blackhawks hadn’t won a game in 10 days, and they weren’t going to make it 11. Chicago snapped a four-game winless skid on Wednesday night in Vancouver, defeating the Canucks 4-2 for its first victory since defeating Boston 3-2 in a shootout on Jan. 19.

The much-needed victory started inauspiciously for Chicago. The ‘Hawks found themselves down 1-0 just 16 seconds into the game when Chris Higgins took advantage of some lax defending to slide one past Corey Crawford. It was Higgins’ 15th goal of the year, putting him three behind team leader Ryan Kesler (18).

Vancouver doubled its lead when Tom Sestito scored his fifth of the season just 2:24 into the second period, but that goal seemed to awaken the ‘Hawks as they proceeded to score four times in under eight minutes — and kicked off the scoring spree in style.

Three minutes later, Saad scored his 16th of the year to even the score at two. That was followed by goals from Jonathan Toews (his 18th) and Patrick Sharp (his 27th) — when it was all said and done, Chicago had completely wrestled away control of the game and deflated their once-fierce rivals.

Saad would go on to add an empty netter with 38 seconds left in the game, recording his second three-point game of the season.

When the final horn blew, Chicago looked down on the scoresheet and saw major contributions from its best players as Hossa, Sharp and Toews all went for two points each. The same, however, couldn’t be said of Vancouver — Daniel Sedin was again a non-factor as his goalless drought extended to 14 games, his longest since the 2007-08 season.

Alex Burrows was also held scoreless and has now gone 23 games without a single goal this season, registering just three assists.

- Mike Halford, NBC Sports