A sizzling start for Hawks, Clendening

After the morning skate Thursday in Calgary, newly-arrived Blackhawks defenseman Adam Clendening was asked what his plans were for his NHL debut later on that night.

"I'm going to take it all in," a smiling Clendening said. "You only get to do it once, right?"

And it didn't take long for the 22-year-old Clendening to take advantage of it.

On his second shift of his very first NHL game, Clendening scored on his very first shot and the Hawks went on to win 4-3 in a wild one at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

"I had a lane and I just tried to shoot as hard as I could," said Clendening, who is the third current Blackhawk to score his first NHL goal on his first NHL shot, joining Andrew Shaw and Jonathan Toews.

"First game, first period score a goal, you can't get any better than that, and we won the game" Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "I thought he played very well too outside of the goal."

But the player of the game in this one was Patrick Kane, who scored the game-winning goal in the third period, added an assist and for the night was by far the most noticeable guy on the ice.

"He was great tonight," Quenneville said. "A lot of puck possession, a lot of zone time, dangerous, and obviously a huge goal.

"The last couple of games he's been as good as he can be."

Three minutes after Clendening opened the scoring, Daniel Carcillo, off a feed from Marcus Kruger, snapped one past Jonas Hiller to give the Hawks a 2-0 lead and it looked like the romp was on.

It wasn't, because the scrappy Flames would have none of it.

Back-to-back Calgary power plays resulted in back-to-back goals less than a minute apart.

Paul Byron's rebound goal cut the lead in half, and when Dennis Wideman beat Corey Crawford 54 seconds later, the game was on and the circus had officially begun.

"We took some funny penalties that we don't generally take," Quenneville said. "We almost got through that first one and then all of a sudden they get back-to-back on us."

The Hawks had gone eight games without allowing a power-play goal but just like that, that streak was over.

Brent Seabrook, playing in his 700th NHL game, reeled in a sweet saucer pass from Kane and blasted in his fifth of the season to put the Hawks up 3-2 midway through the second period.

It was another lead that didn't last, though, this time because of Sean Monahan's goal less than two minutes later.

But with the game tied up midway through the third, the red-hot Kane sealed the deal when he gathered up a misplay by Hiller and scored his third goal in the last three games.

"Sometimes you just have to take over," Kane said. "When you're moving well and trying to make those plays, things are going to develop."

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