Rookie goaltender flummoxes Hawks
In a struggle between inept teams, L.A. goalie Petersen comes up big in shootout
There were familiar faces all over the ice. Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford, among others, for the Blackhawks. Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty, Jeff Carter and Dustin Brown, among others, for the Kings.
If only the hockey were better — make that a lot better — it could’ve been 2013, when the Hawks beat the Kings in the Western Conference final en route to a Stanley Cup championship. Or it could’ve been 2014, when the Kings turned the tables on the Hawks, winning in double overtime in Game 7 to get back to the Stanley Cup Final themselves.
Yes, it could’ve been big-time.
But, no, it just had to be 2018. The struggling Hawks’ 2-1 shootout loss to the worstin-the-NHL Kings drove that harsh dose of reality home and then some.
“Development doesn’t go in a straight line,” said Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton, all of five games into his NHL career. “There are going to be ups and downs. Hopefully, we continue to take steps forward as a team.”
It would be nice if, for example, the Hawks get to a point where they can beat a bad opponent’s No. 4 option in goal. But it was a new face — completely, totally, strangely new — that ended up stealing the show at the United Center. And that belonged to rookie Cal Petersen, a name that might lead just about anyone to ask with complete sincerity: Who?
Jonathan Quick is the Kings’ No. 1 goalie. Jack Campbell is their No. 2. Peter Budaj is the first guy they called up from their AHL affiliate when injuries began to take hold at the position.
But with Quick and Campbell on injured reserve — and with Budaj having underwhelmed in two games to date — it was Petersen, the second AHL call-up, who made his first career start and flummoxed the Hawks.
He stopped 34 of 35 shots, allowing only a shot by Brandon Saad early in the third period to get through. Saad dove to the front of the net to finish a perfect pass from behind the goal by Toews that left Petersen all but defenseless. It tied the game 1-1 after Tyler Toffoli had opened the scoring in a second period that included three more fruitless power plays for the Hawks.
Petersen recovered, even as the Hawks fired 14 shots in all — several of them highly dangerous — at him in the third, and he held down the fort through the end of the fiveminute overtime.
And all he did in the shootout was turn away Toews and Kane back-to-back. Something tells us he’d heard of those two before.
“He was good, yeah,” Colliton said of the newcomer. “The third period was more like it. If we’d had 60 minutes [like that], maybe we break him down eventually. But he did well. He did a good job.”
Ilya Kovalchuk and Kopitar beat Crawford in the first two shootout rounds for the Kings, who came in with the fewest victories (five), points (11) and goals per game (2.00) in the NHL. For the Hawks, it was loss No. 9 in the last 10 games, the only exception a 1-0 decision over the Blues for Colliton’s first NHL win.
“When it comes down to a shootout, it can be anyone’s game,” Saad said. “But the message for us is to play a full 60 because when we play well, you can see that we have opportunities, and we can have a better chance to win.”