Blackhawks 5, Stars 2

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The Hawks began the first half of their back-to-back games on a high note Friday night as they beat the Dallas Stars 5-2. Cam Barker, Brent Sopel, Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien all scored their first goals of the season, and Patrick Kane added three points (1 G, 2 A) of his own. The three-goal victory is the Hawks’ largest margin f victory on the season.

“I guess a few different people got us going tonight,” said Kane. “It’s big, especially against a team like Dallas. They’ve got a lot of skilled players, and seeing them getting frustrated is going to give you momentum.”

The Hawks’ scoring started mid-way through the first period with a power play goal by Cam Barker, who was playing in his first home game of the season. Patrick Kane put Chicago up 2-1 on a feed from Martin Havlat to close out the first period. After the Hawks successfully killed a 5-on-3 power play, Brent Sopel scored the go-ahead goal to put the Hawks up for good.

“Special teams is going to win and lose you games,” said Soepl. “If they score the 5-on-3 goal, it’s a whole different game.”

“I always feel that if you have a 5-on-3 and don’t score you generally don’t win the game,” said Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville. “Tonight, we had a huge kill. Our penalty killers were strong tonight and definitely factored into the outcome.”

Byfuglien and Ladd scored in the third period to seal the win, the first two goals of the season from the Hawks’ third offensive line.

“We need contributions from everybody, and that includes us,” said Andrew Ladd. “We need to keep it up. It’s just more confidence- hopefully we can keep it rolling.”

The win was a total team effort; on the night, nine Blackhawks skaters had points in the game, and Nikolai Khabibulin had 21 saves.

“We can’t wait for Kaner, Toews and Sharp and those guys to score every night,” said Sopel. “We need to be a balanced team from start to finish.”

The Blackhawks play at Columbus Saturday night, their only road game out of their next six.