Something About Dogs and Days.... Hawks 2, Panthers 1

Here are two more cliches that make sense tonight:
Timing is everything.
Go with the hot hand.

Richard Panik hardly looked any different than he has the last three or four weeks but, today, he found himself on the right side of a bounce and, later, made the most of a rare opportunity.  Panik corralled an optimistic, wobbly pass from Dennis Rasmussen and put a sweet move on Roberto Luongo to get the scoring started.  It wasn't until early in the third, with Panik in the penalty box, that Jaromir Jagr did some garbage picking to tie things up. The remainder of regulation time and the overtime frame solved nothing, and it was in the shootout that Panik, who has, as far as I can recall, never taken part in shootout since being in Chicago salted away the win by wiring a shot over the glove hand of Bobby Lu, who was probably 100% convinced that Panik would try the same move that fooled The Panthers' goalie earlier.
It was all offense tonight, with both teams cresting 30+ shots with plenty of end-to-end action.  It wasn't pretty, though, as neither team did much with the plethora of chances they created, with a lot of late and inaccurate passes and guys just being a little too deep or a tad too wide to get ideal shots off.  Who wants Bits?
All Four Hawks Lines had their chances, with Motte, Hinostroza, Hossa and Panarin getting good looks that came to nought.  Kruger's line had a strange night, as they created an unusually high number of opportunities but also found themselves penned in their own end on several occasions,
Kruger was a beast at the dot tonight, winning 75% of his draws, at least giving The Hawks a chance on a night when they were pummeled in possession.
Only The Triple H Line were north of 50% in Corsi, but they were unable to parlay their slight dominance into goals, as they rarely found themselves in good shooting positions...yet shot anyway.
Forsling seriously pissed me off during The Hawks' first power play, bobbling the puck and then showing zero urgency to track down the shockingly quick Derek MacKenzie.
Corey Crawford was pretty terrific, making more than a few A+ saves throughout the match.
Anisimov looked as if he would stick around after taking a shot of his foot, but couldn't manage it. Here's hoping that's nothing serious; it'll be a big ask to carry on without him if Toews isn't ready to go for the next game, either.
Was Luongo the only person at The UC who thought Panarin was going forehand?  I kinda knew it was gonna be backhand all the way, for some reason.

Coach Q has been playing hunches the last few weeks...not a lot, but every once in awhile he seems to just get a feeling. Well, those feelings haven't added up to much, really, until tonight when he gave Panik the nod in OT.  Something-something about a broken clock...

Relief.