It had to happen sooner or later.
The Chicago Blackhawks won a game, their first of the season, 5-1, over the Ottawa Senators on Monday night.
Patrick Kane s scored off the power play, and had a hat trick in the win.
“Feeling good,” Kane said. “Had a bit of symptoms to start my time out, but after a couple of days, I felt pretty good. Because I had symptoms and the rules and protocol, I had to be out 10 days. That was the situation, but (I) felt good for the most part through all of it.
“There’s obviously been a lot going on, and even though I wasn’t with the team the past 10 days, you could feel not having a win weighing on us. It’s just huge to get the first one. Now we kind of got the monkey off our back.”
Marc-Andre Fleury , who lamented over the weekend wanting to get that first win, did just that with 29 saves in the victory.
“It’s more a big gorilla (off our backs), not just a small monkey,” Fleury said. “Definitely feels good. It’s been rough, it’s been tough. Guys stuck with it, kept practicing hard, kept trying hard and tonight things went well. The PK was good, power play was good, we had a great second and third period. Fun to give the fans something to cheer about.”
Brandon Hagel added a double for the Hawks.
“Too many passengers,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “We didn’t have good legs, for whatever reason. We weren’t sharp, and you could just see it from our first power play. We had great looks and just didn’t make the plays. Then they scored and we got a little frustrated. We worked uphill all night. Give them credit. Kane came to play tonight, and he took us apart.”
Kane and Hagel broke the game open in the third period when they each scored in the first 82 seconds of the frame to push their lead from 2-0 to 4-0.
“Finally, to say the least, I guess,” Hagel said. “It’s a good feeling, to finally get that one out of the way, but it doesn’t stop here. We have to build on that. After a win, hopefully we get a little bit of our confidence back and roll with it, see how this goes.”
Ottawa was scoreless in four power play chances.
Alex Formenton finally broke through for the Senators with a goal to make it 4-1 in favor of Chicago.
“At the end of the day, as a group, we’ve just got to keep on striving to be better and keep our mindset, our goal and the way we want to play and the way we want to show up every single night and work,” the Senators’ Thomas Chabot said. “We know that some nights it’s not going to go our way, but if we come back to our game plan and work the way we can, then we give ourselves a chance at least.”
Kane completed his hat trick at 7:17 of the third for the 5-1 final.
Matt Murray made 26 saves in the Senators loss.
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