ANALYSIS: Full Lineup, Celebratory Crowd Drive Blackhawks to Victory

The Blackhawks rode a full-strength lineup and the crowd energy from a celebratory night to victory on Thursday night at the United Center.
Sam Lafferty, Patrick Kane and Dominik Kubalik all scored as Chicago led the Oilers on three different occasions before Alex DeBrincat found the overtime game-winner with a man advantage, his 30th of the season and 50th career power-play tally.

POSTGAME LINKS
GAMECENTER: CHI vs. EDM
RECAP: Blackhawks Top Oilers in Overtime on DeBrincat Winner
HIGHLIGHTS: Blackhawks vs. Oilers
**WATCH**: Hjalmarsson Honored Pregame
**WATCH**: Keith Gets Standing Ovation in Return
GALLERY: Blackhawks vs. Oilers
On the ice, Jonathan Toews (concussion protocol) and Riley Stillman (left shoulder) made their returns after respective five- and six-week absences and Tyler Johnson (neck) returned for the first time since late October. Calvin de Haan (groin) also returned after two games away over the weekend.
"Good feeling. I think guys were excited in the room," Toews said of the returnees. "It gives us some confidence too when you look at our lineup and we have all our NHLers, especially on the blue line and guys like Tyler Johnson, who's won Stanley Cups, and Riley Stillman, just go down the list. Those guys are saying the right things in the room and on the bench and playing the right way, I think it just gave us depth as well."
Off it, there were emotional, crowd-rousing tributes to longtime blueliners Niklas Hjalmarsson, who was saluted for his recently-ended 14-year career retired, and Duncan Keith, making his return after being traded to Edmonton over the summer. Standing ovations were in store for both three-time Cup champions.
"Really, really cool to see," said Lafferty, who scored his second goal of the season to open the scoring. "Just so much energy in the building with Hjalmarsson. The tribute for Duncs as well was pretty cool… I think we all [fed off the energy] as a team. Just seeing those videos and for those guys, bringing back a lot of memories and the fans get into it as well."

SALUTING LEGENDS

The energetic night started before puck drop as Hjalmarsson was honored for his 14-season career, 10 of which came in Chicago.
'Hammer' dropped a few jokes while addressing the crowd and then dropped a ceremonial puck for a pair of former teammates in Toews and Keith, who jokingly jostled over the puck in a highest-contested faceoff.
"It's great to see a guy like Hammer be honored like that tonight," Toews said. "One of those unsung heroes over the years that we don't win any of those Cups without him. Pretty special guy. Always had a ton of respect for him and always tried to really compare myself to him and I'm keeping up with him in any facet and any way, then I'm doing pretty good. He's a really humble, down-to-earth person and teammate. It's pretty cool to recognize him like that."

After a back-and-forth start to the first, Keith got a standalone recognition of his own on the video board, bringing the crowd to its feet for minutes on end, applauding one of the team's all-time greatest defenseman so long he took a curtain call spin off the bench to salute his biggest fans back.
"It was good to catch up with him," Toews said. "A little bit strange to see a guy like him who was a pillar of this team and a Hall of Famer and just the career that he had, coming into the United Center playing for a different team."

LONG ROAD BACK

Thursday was an important night for the Blackhawks roster, but no return carried the same magnitude as that of Johnson, who returned for the first time since Oct. 29. He'd been out of the lineup so long that interim head coach Derek King -- who took over after Johnson was injured -- often joked, "I can't wait to see this kid."
Johnson left that late October road game almost immediately after taking a hit up high and for a long stretch was out of the lineup without much update. As it turns out, he knew the pain right away as a lingering neck issue and was trying option after option to get back.
"I think because I've injured it so many times before, I just had to get it fixed," Johnson explained on
a recent episode
of the Blackhawks Insider Podcast. "We were hoping the rest was going to heal it, we were hoping -- I had a couple shots in it that we were hoping that was going to heal it or at least do something, but unfortunately nothing was working. This was kind of the last resort. It was either do the ADR, which Jack Eichel did and I ended up doing, or it would've been doing a fusion. I tried to get a lot of different opinions with a lot of different doctors."
The fusion option has been a route of players in the past, but as Johnson explained, still wouldn't return him to the same level of pre-surgery function and would've likely required another procedure later in life. The artificial disk replacement surgery hadn't been done on an active NHL player until Eichel did it three weeks before Johnson, a right he fought for months to get clearance to have.
"With the disk replacements, there's a chance or an opportunity that I'll never have to deal with it again. That, to me, was a big selling point," he said. "The rehab process is awesome. If I had done a fusion, I would've been out this year for sure and even into the summer, I still would've been trying to get everything back. There's no chance I would've been back skating like I am right now or feeling the way I do, being able to move and everything. I'm extremely happy with what I did.
"I have to thank -- I spoke with Jack, he gave me a lot of info on it too -- all the doctors and surgeons that I spoke to. I was spending a lot of time with those guys, they probably got sick of talking to me, but I just had to get all the info and I'm really, really happy with everything that's been going on. The organization in Chicago here was unbelievable, they just basically said, 'Hey, whatever you think is best for your body, do.'… They were so supportive."
Johnson had the surgery on Dec. 3 and by the end of December was already on the ice skating again. He returned to practice in full on Feb. 8 and was cleared for full contact soon after. The immediate difference from before the procedure to after was undeniable for the forward, who found himself able to turn his head and look back over his shoulder in ways he hasn't been able to in years.
Thursday night was just the beginning, but at 31 years old, it's not out of the realm of possibility to think the procedure could add years to Johnson's career.
"When I went in to get the surgery, when I was talking to the surgeon, he was doing all these tests and stuff and he made me aware of a lot of problems that I had that I was playing through that I was just like, 'Oh, you know what, I just have to move a little differently,'" Johnson explained. "You change what you do. But now that that's healed and I'm coming back and I can feel my movement and everything, everything is just much more fluid and I don't have a hitch in the way that I do things. It does feel different. I haven't felt like this in years. It's cool to be able to do that. At first when I started skating, I'd get sore in all these muscles I wouldn't get sore in before, but it's because I haven't used those muscles in years because I wasn't able to do some of the movements. I'm excited to see what will happen."
He logged only 11:10 in his return, with a shot on goal and 1:05 of power play time. It was a planned small step back into action, but a good one regardless.
"I watched his ice time," King said after the game. "I didn't want to kill him right off the first game and I thought he played a nice, responsible game."