Friday night's best

'Original' Six matchup: New York Rangers 3 - Chicago Blackhawks 2, OT

Admittedly biased because its the only game I saw, being there in person, but a great game nonetheless.

The Blueshirts did their best to give the game away affording the Hawks FOUR five-on-three opportunities. Chicago capitalized finally on chance number four, tying the contest with 4:29 to play in regulation.

Chris Drury scored twice (numbers 14,15) including the deciding deflection of Wade Redden's overtime shot from the point that eluded Nikolai Khabibulin.




The Blackhawks announced a crowd of 22,624. It was their 20th sellout of the year at the United Center. Chicago has now played 21 home games, though one was at Wrigley Field. They're averaging 21,648 in 'announced' attendance at the UC this season. I use the term announced because the Blackhawks have taken to the practice of exaggerating their attendance numbers slightly all season for the purpose of ensuring they'll remain atop the attendance standings. It's a marketing thing.

They've twice this season (10/25 vs. Detroit and 12/26 vs. Philadelphia) claimed to have broken the single-game attendance record at the United Center when in fact the largest crowd ever at a Blackhawks game inside the UC came on February 15, 1997, a Saturday game against the New York Rangers which drew 22,819 fans, or 107 more people than the recent Boxing Day matchup with the Flyers.

Friday night's game with the Rangers currently ranks 9th all-time attendance-wise in Hawks' games played at the United Center. That figures in both regular season and playoffs, a number that now totals 554, just 18 of which have been postseason features. The United Center began hosting Blackhawks games in January of 1995. The all-time United Center average attendance is currently 16,632. Yes, there were a lot of lean years. And yes, I do keep those kind of statistics.