Spirit in the Second City: Wings 5, Hawks 4

These days, any time you enter the Blackhawks' home arena and get a win, you've done well. Detroit showed great character when defying the league's best defense with five 2nd period goals to set up the important victory.

The Chicago Blackhawks exited the ice after one period to a roaring ovation from their fans as they controlled the game for the majority of the period taking a 2-0 lead. The classy fans of Chi-town were extra boisterous with their "De-troit sucks!" chants at that point. As time went on, that roar was not so slowly muted.

The sold-out crowd went from delirious to hushed as they saw their team facing a 4-2 deficit by the 10:27 mark of the second. Two pairs of goals less than a minute apart seemed to 180 the complexion of the game, almost instantaneously.

Sparked by a 4 on 3 powerplay goal from Brian Rafalski, Detroit was on the board and quickly took control of the game. 28 seconds later, Nick Lidstrom got his 8th of the season. The second onslaught came five minutes later when Jason Williams put in a beautiful feed from Henrik Zetterberg followed by a tally from Valtteri Filppula 42 seconds later, prompting Joel Quenneville to remove Cristobal Huet from the net in favour of Antti Niemi. The game-winning came with 2.7 seconds left in the 2nd on a breakaway from Pavel Datsyuk who continue his hot-streak.

Chicago refused to die in the third as they clawed back to make the game interesting with two goals from Andrew Ladd. Jimmy Howard hung on for dear life and managed to resist the torrents of offense from the Hawks in the dying moments to get the win, 5-4.

The win moves Detroit 2 points closer to 7th place after a home loss to the Canucks for Nashville. The win was made doubly valuable as Calgary's win in Minnesota would've leap-frogged them over Detroit for 8th.

Duncan Keith was the other scorer for Chicago, while Andrew recorded his first career hat-trick.

The win was a great display of character from a team that just might have gained something form the adversities of the season. Facing a 2-0 deficit and almost going down a third had it not been for the benefit of a goalie-interference call, Detroit surged in the second period, looking like a team that wants to see playoff action this year.

The only significant negative for the day was Todd Bertuzzi's apparent knee injury sustained late in he 2nd period. No word yet on his status.

Detroit will now go for their third-straight victory -- something they are still yet to accomplish this year -- at home against Calgary, in another contest of monumental importance.