GEORGE CASTLE: A lot of holiday cheer, little for Hawks to complain about

CHICAGO | Quibble about goaltending issues or slow starts in some games, but you'd be stretching things to say the Blackhawks have any significant troubles going into their four-day Christmas break today.

General manager Stan Bowman's strategy in his first year unhampered by salary-cap hacking is, apparently, clicking. If anything, he can be picky in casting about for midseason help in the quest to cement the Western Conference's best record, if not the NHL's highest points total that increased to 48 with Wednesday's 5-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens.

Even well-rested goalie Corey Crawford got into the Christmas spirit, showing no rust after a six-game benching by making 20 saves, allowing just Andrei Kostitsyn's power-play goal from the outer right circle early in the second period.

The holidays are cheery at the United Center, with the potential that next July 4 could be even more joyous. The overall pace is as good as any Hawks figure could have predicted in October.

On Wednesday, captain Jonathan Toews, whose 20th goal midway through the second opened the Hawks' scoring, offered his outlook at the 35-game mark, six short of halfway through the long regular-season setup for playoff positioning.

"You want to be at the top of the conference at the start of the season," Toews said. "You can't guarantee that's going to happen. Things are going as planned. The focus is staying in the right place, on the team game. Keep improving."

Crawford hadn't started in the last six games after being pulled when he fell behind 3-0 early in the second period of the Dec. 5 game won by the Phoenix Coyotes in overtime. Quenneville's hook was swift. Crawford then gathered splinters while Ray Emery unexpectedly thrived in goal.

Andrei Kostitsyn rammed through a relatively bad goal from the outer right circle on a power play midway through second for the Canadiens' only score.

"It felt great, man," Crawford said. "Our team's been playing so well. I was pretty hungry to get back in there. I was trying to get into it early to get some feeling back. I got a good warmup in there. We're winning and Ray (Emery) was playing well. It was just sitting and waiting for my chance again."

If you're going to get picky about the Hawks, Toews will provide an analysis-within-an-analysis.

"It's getting to the point where we're having slow starts, and it's starting to get frustrating," he said of tepid first and second periods, such as in Tuesday night's 3-2 loss in Pittsburgh. "It's unacceptable and it's something we've got to get rid of. We can't let it creep back into our game."

What about Hawks coach Joel Quenneville's Christmas wish list?

"The consistency in our team game -- we'd like to be better with all four lines contributing, offensively and defensively," he said. "I think we shouldn't be satisfied with where we're at -- we could be better."

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach him at DGemsNet@aol.com.