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.