Slow pace settles in Ducks’ favour after Game 2 marathon
CHICAGO — They skated in mud with ankle weights on, their brains ticking over in slow motion: the tattered remains of two hockey teams who had put on a fabulous, six-period show two nights earlier.
So Thursday’s Game 3 of the Western Conference final had little of the razzledazzle of the first two games in Anaheim.
All it had to offer was great goaltending by the Ducks’ Frederik Andersen, whose glove foiled most of the night’s best scoring chances, and a result: 2-1 Anaheim, in the game and the series.
Simon Despres, the big defenceman stolen at the trade deadline from the Pittsburgh Penguins for Ben Lovejoy, beat Corey Crawford with a one-timer from the right-wing boards in with 55 seconds left in the second period.
The Ducks got it to the house from there, if only barely, giving up a raft of scoring chances as the clock wound down, including Patrick Kane’s shot inside the final 10 seconds that caressed the outside of the post.
Game 4 goes Saturday and shapes up as a near mustwin for the Hawks.
Both teams, understandably feeling the effects of triple-overtime in Game 2, began the evening looking as fuzzy as the ice in United Center, committing egregious giveaways, overskating pucks, neither giving nor receiving passes crisply and spending an inordinate amount of time trying to make the puck lie flat.
The Ducks were first to get some joy out of the proceedings, Patrick Maroon deflecting a Hampus Lindholm point shot under Crawford on the power play at 12:55 in the first period with Marian Hossa in the box.
But after a dispiriting first 19 minutes, during which they had utterly wasted a four-minute power play — Jakob Silfverberg’s doubleminor for high-sticking Jonathan Toews — the Blackhawks equalized on a mixup by the Ducks’ Rickard Rakell and Matt Beleskey in the high slot. Kane pounced on the freebie, spinning and backhanding the puck past Andersen’s blocker with 57 seconds left in the period.
The adrenalin didn’t last and both teams again had long stretches of ennui in the second, but the Ducks had the better of the zone time and finally turned it into a go-ahead goal in the period’s final minute.
Despres’s winning goal came after a crazy sequence in which Corey Perry, racing away on a two-on-one with Maroon, broke his stick at his own blue-line, skated past the Anaheim bench and grabbed a stick swiftly produced by equipment man Doug Shearer, took the pass in full stride crossing the blue-line and fired a shot that Crawford had to save. Seconds later, Getzlaf fed Despres, the big captain’s second point of the night and 14th assist of the postseason, tying his own franchise record set in 2009.
Getzlaf and Perry both have 16 points and are now just two points shy of matching Getzlaf ’s club record for most points in a playoff campaign, set in 2009 when he recorded four goals and 14 assists.