Ignoring games in hand, which are very important of course, but Calgary and Anaheim, the 9th and 10th teams in the west play tonight. This means that if the hawks do not get at least 1 point tonight, they will find themselves out of the playoffs at the end of the night. I'm pretty sure that since the hawks last played on Thursday, every single thing that occured has gone against the Blackhawks interests. Plus, after today the Hawks have another 2 days off between games, so (again ignoring games in hand), the Hawks will surely be playing catchup from 9th or 10th place even if they win tonight.