CHICAGO _ Once again, the Blackhawks are making things interesting.
For the first time all season, they were dominating.
Brendan Perlini finished off a hat trick against his old team with 3.6 seconds left and Jonathan Toews added his 30th goal of the season on a penalty shot as the Hawks trounced the Coyotes 7-1 at the United Center on Monday night to pull within five points of the Wild for the final Western Conference wild-card spot.
The Hawks won by their largest margin of the season and allowed one goal or fewer in back-to-back games for the first since Oct. 23-25. Corey Crawford won his third straight for the Hawks, whose last five victories had all been by one goal.
With 13 games left, the Hawks remained four points behind the Coyotes and also trailed the Avalanche by three points, who were hosting the Hurricanes on Monday night.
The Hawks played an outstanding first period even though they gave up the first goal on Richard Panik's 12th of the season with 15:33 left. They outshot the Coyotes 11-6 and took a 2-1 lead on goals by Perlini and Brandon Saad.
Perlini's goal came on a breakaway after taking a feed from Brent Seabrook. Saad scored his 22nd of the season after setting up in front of the Coyotes' net and tapping in a beautiful pass from Toews.
A trend of following good periods with bad ones didn't take place in the second. The Hawks were more dominant and once again it was Perlini who kicked off the scoring. His 10th of the season _ and fifth in his last five games _ put the Hawks up 3-1.
After Chris Kunitz made it 4-1 a few minutes later, 11 different Hawks had scored points in the game but leading scorer Patrick Kane wasn't one of them. That changed not long after when Dominik Kahun stole the puck deep in the Coyotes' zone and started a series of passes that ended with Kane having a wide open net for his 41st of the season.
Toews' made it 6-1 as he beat Coyotes goalie Calvin Pickard for the third penalty shot goal of his career in four tries. His last one came against the Rangers on Feb. 16, 2012.
