Whether we like it or not, the constant burden we will have to bear for as long as Cristobal Huet is the Blackhawks' goaltender is the sad reality that there will always be meatballs who refuse to see that he's given the Hawks more efective goaltending than anyone expected.

He is 4th in the NHL with a 2.19 goals against  average, and of his 35 starts, he's given up 2 goals or less in 20 games. He has 22 wins, one of which was today's 6-5 barnburner against the Columbus Blue Jackets to begin the Hawks' 8-game schlep around North America.

We'll get to more of the meatball shit shortly...

THE GOOD:

Jonathan Toews. The Hawks had a 3-1 lead 13 minutes into the first period, and started the third down one. The Captain snapped a wrister past Steve Mason to tie it up early in the third. to tie it up.Both just absolute lasers.  After Ben Eager gave the Hawks the lead, Toews snapped another past Mason for an insurance goal that the HAwks needed.

Patrick Kane. His three assists today give him 55 points for the season, good for fifth in the NHL. Look at the names above him. Henrik Sedin, Alex Ovechkin, Joe Thornton, Sidney Crosby. That's it. You're watching the best Right Winger in hockey. Hopefully we never become blasé about plays like his pass to Troy Brouwer to set up Brouwer's goal. Just a thing of pure beauty.

THE BAD:

Sloppy play by the Hawks' defensemen. Rick Nash ended his goal drought on a rebound on a Huet kicksave that Dunc Norris didn't clear. Keith also deflected a Kris Russell shot on goal, Huet bailed him out. A sloppy hand-off of a stick from Colin Fraser to Niklas Hjalmarsson that pulled Hammer out of position leads to another Nash goal. A collision at the blue line between Brouwer and Brent Sopel led to Raffi Torres' breakaway goal late in the third. That's four goals off defensive miscues.

THE UGLY:

The stupidity surrounding Huet. Look, he's having a good year. Much better than any of us expected. In his last 5 starts, he's been a little off his usual game, and he's still averaging less than 3 goals a game. Oh, and the Blackhawks have only gotten a mere 9 out of a possible ten points in those 5.

But here's where your friends at HOCKEENIGHT do you a big solid. We read the meatballs so you don't have to. Click on the links at your own peril.

After the Minnesota Meltdown last Saturday, we expected the meatballs to come out. And did they ever.

Here's  Fro Dog calling for Antti Niemi (he of the 1,022 NHL minutes) should be the Hawks' starting goalie. This is indicative of the typical Chicago sports fan who always wants the backup (or third string) quarterback to get a shot, or the "scrappy" outfielder. Now, I guess you can add the backup goalie. We love you Fro, but this is a bad idea.

Or this assclown over at Hendricks Hockey. His idea of buying out Huet is asinine, as getting a goalie as good as Huet combined with Huet's buyout will pretty much equal Huet's pay anyway. But he achieves true assclown status by calling himself (and his blog) "Committed Indian", and not being Sam Fels. His other choices were "Fourth Man In" and "Sixth Feather". If there's anything to commend this assclown, it's that at least he knows to steal from the best. But the argument again clings to the belief that Niemi is qualified to start in the NHL. The Blackhawks are a Stanley Cup contender. You don't go with an unknown quantity like Niemi in net. He's two years away from being ready to start for a Cup contender. By then, he'll probably play in tandem with Huet, before taking over the #1 job the following season.

Finally, there's this circle jerk. These idiots not only insist that Huet is a "sieve", Again, 4th in the NHL in GAA - there are a lot of teams that would love to have "sieve" numbers like that. So, I kindly pointed out that Huet had 14 games so far this year with 1 or no goals allowed. I also recommended they read the book you see here. They got all ass-hurt at that, since they weren't having their exceptional
hockey acumen affirmed, they ran off to mommy. I was informed that my comment was deleted. So apparently we've found our hockey equivalent to "Bleed Cubbie Blue". Maybe this is a sign of success for the Blackhawks, that there's now a bastion of groupthink that extends beyond the official boards.

But the bottom line here is, Cristobal Huet can't win in the Court of Internet Opinion. Fortunately, he can win on NHL ice. In fact, he made a lot of saves today that wound up saving the Hawks' bacon in this game of River Hockey. And I highly recommend that if you want to read about the Blackhawks online, stick to us, or better sites. That will give you plenty of options, and should keep your exposure to meatballs to a minimum. Oh, and bear in mind, this season the Hawks have had the two longest shootouts in their history. They won them both, a testament to how effective your goaltending is, since he's the only guy on the ice. The goalie for both shootouts?

The Sieve.

The Hawks go again tomorrow morning at 11:30 against the red-hot Red Wings in Detroit. 1 down, 7 to go.