Blackhawks center Jonathan Toews understands why he wasn't a finalist for the Hart Trophy despite enjoying a great season.

Toews acknowledges that Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and John Tavares are all worthy candidates for the award and even went as far as to say teammate Patrick Kane would also have been a good choice. "There's another guy across the room that deserves it just as much, probably more," Toews said. "To have two guys in the talks like that, it always shows that you have a great supporting cast. It's nice. It's an honor. But you don't get to that point if your team doesn't have success the way we did this year. So huge credit to those guys."

Jonathan Toews has been struggling offensively in the first three games of the opening round series against the Wild.

Toews has only one assist as he garnered it on the power play in Game 1. The whole line of Toews, Marian Hossa and Brandon Saad has struggled with Hossa scoring on the power play while Saad is pointless. "We have to shoot the puck more, it comes down to that," Toews said. "We're not getting pucks to the net and we're passing up chances and trying to make too many plays. The (Wild) have good sticks (and) there's a lot of obstruction out there. You can't go out there and try to make pretty plays. It's got to be ugly and we're not doing that enough. Once we start doing that, we have the strength, the speed (and) the skill to get on the board and make things happen and take it out of their hands instead of just letting them be the guys that shut us down. It's more up to us than anything." Stay tuned.

Breathe easy, at least for now: Jonathan Toews returned to Sunday's game in the secodn period.

He was shaken up by a David Backes hit, but apparently not enough to keep him out for long. Naturally, with any case like this, things could be worse once the adrenaline wears off.