Blackhawks lean heavily on veteran defenceman Keith
Ducks know to try and wear out Chicago’s star blue-liner, who is putting up huge minutes
ANAHEIM— In the hours before Tuesday’s Game 2 of the Western Conference final, Duncan Keith was immersed in a ritual with echoes of yesteryear.
Keith, the club’s defence-corps workhorse, was happily ensconced at a work bench. He fired up a power saw to cut down a couple of his Bauer-brand composite sticks. He warmed up a heat gun to make the blades more pliable, bent both to his liking and dipped them in a bucket of water to cool.
Such pre-game noodling was once a league-wide passion, back when sticks were made of finicky wood and fibreglass. Today’s sticks, crafted of high-priced carbon fibre by aerospace engineers, are customized to be game-ready out of the box. Most players simply add tape and play.
Chicago’s brain-trust probably wishes Keith was among them. What good can come of pre-game noodling with power tools? Keith’s fingers, let alone his world-class legs, aren’t exactly replaceable commodities.
That’s never been more evident than in these Stanley Cup playoffs, wherein Keith is logging an astounding amount of ice time. He’s averaging 30 minutes and 25 seconds a night — nearly three minutes more than his career playoff average of 27:42. As thoroughbreds go, maybe only Triple Crown hopeful American Pharoah is being pushed harder in May.
“Some guys have different metabolisms, how they can deal with heavy workloads,” Joel Quenneville, the Chicago coach, said of Keith before the series began. “He has no problem playing 30 minutes . . . doesn’t change at all.”
“Doesn’t show any effects during or after.”
Maybe not. But Keith, who’ll turn 32 in July, isn’t a young athlete. And the minutes he’s currently logging might not even be in a young athlete’s best interest.
Only a handful of defencemen have averaged more than 30 minutes a game in a deep playoff run (and keep in mind that time-on-ice data only became available in 199899). Chris Pronger, for instance, did it a handful of times. But when Drew Doughty played 26 games for the Cup-winning L.A. Kings last spring, he averaged about 1:40 less a game than Keith is currently putting in. When Zdeno Chara was the foundational blueliner for the Cup-winning 2011 Bruins, he averaged nearly three minutes fewer than Keith’s current pace.
All that ice time — Keith logged more than 46 minutes in a tripleovertime win in a first-round series with the Predators — is coming on the heels of an 82-game schedule in which Keith wasn’t exactly lightly used. Only one player in his 30s logged more minutes than Keith during the regular season — he was 30-year-old Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild.
“I’ve always played a lot of minutes, even when I was a kid,” Keith told reporters earlier in the playoffs. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve been smarter in researching and learning ways to take care of the body. I feel the same way I did when I was 22.” The Ducks, who won Game 1 by the score of 4-1, would like to test that assertion. They know that leavening Keith’s load won’t be easy for Quenneville; that given the season-ending ankle fracture to fifth defenceman Michal Rozsival each of Chicago’s top-four defenders — the other three are Brent Seabrook, Johnny Oduya and Niklas Hjalmarsson — is being asked to do more than usual.
They know the Blackhawks are searching for depth pieces, and so far fruitlessly. Rozsival’s replacement in Game 1, David Rundblad, hadn’t played in more than a month and looked plenty rusty; two of Anaheim’s goals came with him in the midst of a miscue. The Blackhawks were expected to replace Rundblad with Kyle Cuminskey in Game 2; Cuminskey hadn’t played in a playoff game since 2010. Chicago’s sixth defenceman, 40-year-old Kimmo Timonen, played about five minutes in Game 1.
The Ducks, though they can’t match Chicago’s high-end experience on the back end, have a far more balanced defence group. All six members are making considerable contributions. Anaheim’s No. 1 defenceman, Francois Beauchemin, is averaging about six fewer minutes of ice time a game than Keith. Its No. 6, Clayton Stoner, is averaging 17:42 a night — nearly twice as much as Timonen is putting in.
With backend manpower an issue for the Blackhawks, Anaheim came into Game 2 talking about the importance of forechecking ruthlessly, of punishing Chicago’s defencemen when they go back to get pucks.
“You know, I mean, it’s not just those top four defencemen, it’s whoever we play,” said Bruce Boudeau, the Anaheim coach. “That’s our goal, is to finish checks, finish checks, make it tough on them. Whether it’s Duncan Keith or Hjalmarsson or any of them — I mean, it doesn’t matter. Whoever’s back there, it’s our job to make it tough for them to get into the play. So we’re going to do what we do.”
Punishing Keith, of course, isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“I think because he’s so fast,” Corey Crawford, the Blackhawks goalie, said of Keith. “The first couple of strides — I don’t know if there’s a guy faster than him. The first couple of strides, he gets away. He gets to pucks quicker than other guys. He gets to the corner and he gets out of situations quicker than almost anybody on the back end. In and out of corners, in and out of plays — he gets to offence really quick.”
How long he’ll be able to continue his duelling display of skill and endurance is anyone’s guess — it also figures to be roughly equivalent to Chicago’s expected lifespan in these playoffs. So ditch the hardware-store tools and get this man a hyperbaric chamber.
Never mind staying busy; Keith needs all the rest he can get.