The Chicago Blackhawks clinched a playoff spot with Sunday’s wild win over the Colorado Avalanche. It’s fair to say that feat was easier than many expected entering the 2016-17 campaign.

The Blackhawks entered the season in a bizarre spot. They still had an outstanding core that was capable of a Stanley Cup run, but lacked the proven role players necessary to truly consider them title contenders. A revamped defensive group also provided plenty of potential depth, but featured a mixture of age and inexperience.

As the season opened, I foresaw a year much like the 2010-11 season. The newcomers would take time to gel and Chicago would probably have to fight for a playoff berth. It probably wasn’t going to come down to the final day of the season like it did back then, but it was fair to think the Hawks were destined for a second or third-place finish in the division and maybe a wild-card spot in the worst-case scenario.

Somehow, the Blackhawks have played their way into first place in the Central Division with 10 games remaining and certainly look like Stanley Cup contenders.

Somehow, the Chicago Blackhawks found a way to exceed expectations.

Nobody saw the emergences of Nick Schmaltz, Ryan Hartman and Tanner Kero coming. Not this soon, at least. Who would’ve thought Richard Panik would be flirting with a 20-goal season?

Wasn’t Jonathan Toews finished in December? Toews resurrected a season that appeared to be left for dead and had many questioning whether his best years were somehow behind him. Things were looking grim for the captain through the first three months. He had tallied only 18 points in 30 games and missed time with a back injury.

Since then, Toews has produced at a torrid pace. He’s scored 14 goals and tallied 35 points since January, with 11 of those goals and 25 of those points coming in February and March.

Patrick Kane has also caught fire the past two months and is only three points behind Edmonton’s Connor McDavid as he attempts to become the first player since Jaromir Jagr to win back-to-back Art Ross Trophies (Jagr won it four years in a row).

Corey Crawford and Scott Darling have both been tremendous at times in net and have remained steady throughout the season. Both have helped the Hawks steal games they probably had no business winning at the beginning of the season and those points loom large as they look to clinch the division crown.

But the youth movement has been the most encouraging part of this journey. Schmaltz has transformed from a lost puppy on the ice at times into a reputable threat and a reliable top-six player when needed. He’s recorded 15 points in his last 18 games after accumulating only seven points in his first 33 contests.

Hartman has become more than just a bottom-six filler, but is now an important role player who has achieved more than most expected in his first season. He’s seventh on the team with 16 goals and has made people forget about Andrew Shaw rather quickly.

Kero has thrived since getting called up to replace an injured Artem Anisimov at the end of December. He’s scored five goals and has 12 points ever since and forced himself onto the roster upon Anisimov’s return.

Oh, and each of those three players are only 21, 22 and 24 years old respectively. And you can bet they’ll have a say in how far Chicago’s postseason run goes.

And with only a few weeks left in the regular season it’s time to start thinking ahead to the greater goal. This certainly might not be Chicago’s best team during its dynasty, but it’s plenty capable of winning a fourth Stanley Cup since 2010.

At the time I began writing this piece yesterday evening, which was about thirty minutes before the first puck drop of the night between the Maples Leafs and Bruins, Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby, together, occupied a single point lead in the NHL’s scoring race after the latter netted his league-leading 38th, 39th and 40th goals Sunday afternoon against Florida.

Narrowly trailing Crosby and McDavid and their league-leading 80 points were Patrick Kane, who recorded two points Sunday night during the Blackhawks triumphant comeback over Colorado, and Boston’s Brad Marchand, who, like Kane, has seemingly found himself all over the score sheet each night for the past month after, I could only assume, selling his soul to mutate from the glorified Andrew Shaw he has been for the betterment of the past decade into Pavel Bure. Each currently sat at 79 points entering last night’s action.

Art Ross Race Entering Monday Night

1. Connor McDavid- EDM/Sidney Crosby – PIT – 80
2. Patrick Kane – CHI/Brad Marchand- BOS – 79
3. Nikas Backstrom – WSH – 75
4. Evgeni Malkin – PIT – 72
5. Mark Scheifele – WPG/Nikita Kucherov – TB – 71

As testament to how absurdly wild and unpredictable the spinning-out-of-control carousel the NHL scoring race has become, before I had even made it a quarter of the way through this piece, Marchand had tied McDavid and Crosby for tops in league scoring with his 80th point.

By the time I had barely begun updating the numbers and specifics in the very early rough draft of this article, McDavid had countered Marchand with two more helpers of his own – leapfrogging the Bruins winger and Crosby and subsequently taking sole possession of the Art Ross race for himself.

Art Ross Race Entering Tuesday Night

1. Connor McDavid – EDM – 82
2. Sidney Crosby – PIT/Brad Marchand – BOS – 80
3. Patrick Kane – CHI – 79
4. Niklas Backstrom – WSH – 75
5. Evgeni Malkin – PIT – 72

Minutes is all it takes to turn this race on its head. I should have realized this long before I prematurely began writing about it. Leapfrogging chaos and one-upping is essentially an every night occurrence with these finalists so it’s no one’s fault but my own that I virtually had to start from scratch. Metaphorically speaking, this is what I get for attempting to write a game recap before the puck had even dropped.

At the pace the aforementioned names have been frequenting the score sheet, it’s almost expected that my most recent list will become obsolete hours, if not minutes, into tonight’s slate of games, as each finalist listed above aside from McDavid will be in action. Crosby and Malkin will visit Buffalo, Backstrom and his Caps play host to the white hot Calgary Flames, Marchand and the Bruins are at home versus the Senators and Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks will welcome in the Vancouver Canucks to the United Center.

Regardless of who the Blackhawks are playing, you pretty much know what you’re going to get night-in and night-out with Patrick Kane – highlight reel exploits and a boatload of points. In fact, the only player in the NHL who has scored at higher pace than the reigning Art Ross and Hart Trophy winner over the past month has been Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.

Since January 1st, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the NHL hotter or more consistent than the Buffalo, NY native. Since the dawn of the New Year, Kane has posted 21 goals and 21 assists in 34 games. In that span, Kane has contributed 14 multi-point games and has been held scoreless only a handful of times – catapulting him from barely in the top 15 in the NHL in scoring to the top-3 in what felt like overnight. As we saw for much of 2015-2016 when Kane ran away with the Art Ross race after posting 106 points – Jamie Benn’s 89 points was his closest threat – the Blackhawks winger is seemingly locked in after a good, but underwhelming in Kane standards, start to the year.

All we can do now is wait and see how Kane responds to Marchand and McDavid’s slight step ahead in the race tonight. I guess the more viable question at this point would be, does the winger post a single point or multi-point game?

Follow me on Twitter @BForanNHL for live updates on the NHL scoring race. I’ll be keeping tabs on each player in action throughout the night.

To be honest, I’m still in a bit of a daze from the borderline cinematic conclusion to last night’s Blackhawks and Avalanche game. I’ve sort of just been sitting here, in the same spot on my couch from which I watched the action unfold for the betterment of the past 12 hours motionless, partially comatose and shell-shocked – you could call it – wondering just what the hell happened – how last night’s whirlwind of frustrating and anger-fueled emotions somehow concluded on such an explosive and positive note.

How is it that the Blackhawks’ worst performance of the 2016/2017 season was coincidentally their proclamation of preeminence to the rest of the league? How did the Blackhawks, during a game in which they trailed the NHL’s version of the Cleveland Browns – who some describe as being one of the worst hockey teams of our generation – for the betterment 3 periods, weave such a burlesque and embarrassing performance into a declaration of might?

Well, for one, if you followed me live tweeting the action you’d know I sold my tickets to last night’s game. Let’s call it divine intervention from the Hockey Gods sticking it in my ear for choosing greed over loyalty. But on a more serious note, it’s almost as if the Blackhawks went into last night’s game with the same, stubborn mindset I did – one that figured the Blackhawks could play on their knees with mini sticks and still come out victorious over a team that hardly qualifies as NHL competition.

It seemed that everyone aside from rookie sparkplug Ryan Hartman and starting netminder Scott Darling shared this mindset and subsequently learned the hard way that even the worst NHL team since the 2014 Edmonton Oilers is still very much an NHL team.

After taking a quick and easy 1-0 lead over household name Jeremy Smith and the Colorado Avalanche just 4:33 into the opening period, the Blackhawks – seemingly doing their best impression of me coming home from work on a hot Friday afternoon – kicked up their feet, grabbed a beer and set their tempo to cruise control.

The ensuing two periods were among the more frustrating sequences I have experienced in my days covering the team. “Inexcusable” was the reoccurring word bouncing through my head. Tonight is the night the Blackhawks could become the first team in the Western Conference to clinch a playoff spot while simultaneously taking a commanding 7 point lead over the floundering Minnesota Wild, I thought, rather they’re clinging to the finger tips of lady luck on home ice under the boot heel of a team 54 points below them in the standings. And fortunate the Blackhawks were. If not for the exploits of Scott Darling, you’d need a mathematician specializing in chaos theory to calculate just how ugly the game could have gotten.

Exacerbating the situation was the Blackhawks refusal to shoot the freakin’ puck. Now it’s only fair I go on record to declare my absolute, undying loathing for fans who continuously yell “shoot!” when their favorite team has offensive zone control. I honestly detest these individuals with every fiber of my being as much as I abhor grownups who block-out children in order to get on television during Chevy Blackhawks Pregame Live segments.

Last night’s performance was so frustratingly despicable for the better part of two periods it reduced me into what I hate most in this world, a loathsome and obnoxious “shoot the puck!” person. Only, in this rare instance was there rationality behind my, what likely sounded like, banshee-esque pleas. The Blackhawks, in particular Nick Schmaltz, were being too cute and passing up far too many high quality, grade-A scoring chances.

In net for Colorado was Jeremy Smith, a 27-year old rookie who started the season third on the Avs depth chart and was only flung into action after a season-ending injury to starter Semyon Varlamov. If the generically underwhelming name Jeremy Smith wasn’t enough to send tremors of terror crawling down your spine, perhaps his numbers this season will. In 7 games played, including last night’s, Smith has posted a 1-5 record, a save percentage of .890 and a goals against average of 3.44. In other words, Jeremy Smith is the archetype of someone you’d want to bombard with shots – something that took the cutsie, pass-happy, through-the-motions Blackhawks 2 1/2 periods to figure out.

The moment the Blackhawks collectively settled on the reality that their counterparts were indeed Jeremy Smith and the 2016-2017 Colorado Avalanche and not Dominik Hasek and the 2002 Detroit Red Wings is when the bombardment and ensuing carnage commenced.

Trading in the extra pass and cute play for the simple, when-in-doubt, good ole-fashioned strategy of just getting the puck on net is what ultimately opened the flood gates for the five goal, third period explosion that announced to the rest of the NHL that there exists an extra, previously unknown gear the already dangerous Blackhawks can kick into when desperate and cornered.