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Last night in Montreal, the mostly AHL and PTO Blackhawks put on their best performance of the preseason thus far, beating the Canadiens and Carey Price 4-1.
Aside from solid outings for several players, what was even more encouraging was the improvement shown by a few.
There are always a lot of rhubarbs thrown at David Rundblad on my message board thread. But Rundblad was pretty good—not perfect—last night, and he is showing signs of fulfilling the promise that Hawk GM Stan Bowman has doggedly held out for.
Mammoth Viktor Svedberg's struggles in earlier outings appear now to have been more a case of jitters. He, also, was pretty good last night.
Most impressive were Danny Paille, Ryan Garbutt, Garrett Ross, Andrew Desjardins, and Kyle Baun, indicating once again that the Hawks lower lines and penalty kill should be even stronger this year.
Teuvo Teravainen continues to show more confidence and leadership on the ice, clearly, just based on his skill with the puck, the most noticeable forward on either team last night.
Viktor Tikhonov didn't find the scoresheet, but he plays the game hard at both ends of the ice, can skate and doesn't shy away from traffic.
Finally, Jan Hejda and Lubomir Visnovsky both played well—and I have to think the Hawks are thinking hard about keeping both, especially Visnovsky because of his obvious gifts on the point in man-advantage situations.
More as I have it.
JJ