Uh-oh.

The recent Blackhawks winning streak is history. They've now lost three in a row, though both their shootout defeat at the hands of Tampa Bay Thursday night and this afternoon's overtime loss to the Caps did each earn the Good Guys a point. On the positive side, the champs did tie the game with 38 seconds left on a Jonathan Toews goal after pulling the goalie on a power play late in the third period.

The Hawks aren't far from where they need to be. Mainly, they need defense and penalty killing- not goaltending; Corey Crawford has been just fine. Keep in mind, by the way, in viewing the stats to which the link above leads that Crawford has only been the Hawks' starting goalie for a little more than half the season.

But tomorrow nights's home game against San Jose is huge. All of the Hawks' remaining games are against teams with winning records, and they're in the midst of a run of games with the  four or fiveother teams that are pretty much lumped together with them for the last couple of slots in the playoffs from the Western Conference.

The Hawks repeating as Stanley Cup champions looks to me like a longshot; I have to like Washington, Philadelphia, and Vancouver right now. But again, we're not that far away. If we don't repeat, here's hoping that the Bowmans can figure out a way to upgrade our defense and penalty kill enough to overcome Dollar Bill Wirtz's final joke: the salary cap he single-handedly talked the Board of Governors into adopting, which forces the Hawks to get rid of six or seven key players from their Stanley Cup winners of last year for much, much less than they were worth.