BLACKHAWKS STRIKE BACK
Chicago’s championship pedigree on display throughout solid 2-1 home victory.
CHICAGO— In the morning, some poor confused souls in the media asked whether Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final was a must-win, despite it not being anything of the sort. It was an important game in the series, of course, a hinge. It mattered. But it wasn’t necessary.
That didn’t mean, for the Chicago Blackhawks, that it wasn’t oxygen. In a careful game, with Tampa trying to protect 20-year-old rookie goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy in goal, Chicago looked heavy. Maybe they were finally feeling the punishment Anaheim delivered for seven games; maybe the Lightning were just faster. But the Blackhawks looked tired, and the Blackhawks looked slow.
But they are a championship core for a reason, and they will not leave quietly. With under six minutes left in a tie game, the 40-year-old Kimmo Timonen hit the crossbar with 13:45 left; off the ensuing faceoff a man nearly half his age, Brandon Saad, powered out of the corner, away from Anton Stralman, and chopped the puck back past Vasilevskiy. The kid was scrambling and full of holes, and that’s where Tampa missed their missing giant, Ben Bishop.
Steven Stamkos had a chance to tie it in the final two minutes; others did, too. But this series is tied 2-2, and after four one-goal margins, it probably deserves to be.
Bishop, Tampa’s starting goaltender, had played Game 3 all but one-legged, and the Lightning gave no indication of a chance in his status, since injuries are state secrets. But Bishop didn’t skate out for warm-ups — Vasilevskiy did, followed by third-stringer Kristers Gudlevskis, the semi-mythical Latvian goaltender who nearly toppled Team Canada in Sochi. Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, and Tampa was rolling with a 20year-old rookie who hadn’t started a game in over almost 2 1⁄ months.
2 The Siberian-born son of a goaltender, Vasilevskiy is known as a devout worker, as an athletic freak, as the kind of goalie prospect who looms, waiting to become a star. But to give you a sense how long it had been since Vasilevskiy started an NHL game, the last time it was against Toronto. He had played 54 minutes in three relief appearances nine games since the beginning of March, and had told team officials that all the time off was a struggle for him. Apparently, the work alone was not enough, the solitary life was not enough. He needed to play.
Well, here you go, kid. But a funny thing happened, to start: He didn’t really have to play. This Lightning team has shown the capacity to protect their goaltender — see Game 7 against the New York Rangers — and they played like mother bears, protective of their Russian cub.
“We know they’re going to get some chances,” said Stamkos before the game. “It’s just about limiting them. You go through spurts in games, and I think we’ve seen where they control the puck and can hammer that in our zone a little bit. It’s all about just minimizing.
“For us, I think we’ve learned in Game 1 if we give them too much time and space, if we sit back a little too much, they’re going to make us pay, so I think our game plan hasn’t changed. It’s just to continue to put pressure on them, and we’re a pretty good skilled team ourselves.”
The puck moved in one direction for much of the first period, and when it didn’t, Tampa nipped and tucked Chicago’s slow-moving attempts to create shooting lanes. Other than a Patrick Sharp slapshot that he could see, and a Duncan Keith wrist shot from 35 feet away, nothing got through. Tampa couldn’t score either, but they were doing a better job of creating chances, and stifling the Blackhawks. It was scoreless, but one of these teams looked more precisely desperate than the other, and it wasn’t the one trailing in the series.
But peacetime didn’t last. Johnny Oduya’s deflected shot hit a post six minutes into second period; Sharp hit a post on a breakaway a little after that; and finally, a Marian Hossa point shot got through, Vasilevskiy spit the rebound back into the slot — which he had done on the first two shots he faced, harmlessly — and after Sharp knocked it, Jonathan Toews got a stick on it, and Vasilevskiy knocked it in by jabbing his pad across his crease. It was Chicago’s fifth shot on goal, and it was 1-0.
But that didn’t mean the Blackhawks were in control; it just meant they led. Tampa went after Trevor van Riemsdyk, one of the two extra defencemen Chicago employs after its workhorse top four, and pinned him out there for nearly two minutes before Valtteri Filppula found Alex Killorn sneaking around with a diagonal pass against the traffic. Corey Crawford was looking the other way, and the score was tied.
It took Tampa a little over five minutes to erase the lead, and meanwhile Vasilevskiy was making some saves, and looking a little more comfortable. Chicago pushed harder, and actually had more shot attempts at even strength through two periods. But through 40 minutes the Lightning were even, with a 20-year-old rookie in goal. Hard to ask for much more.
Then came the third, and now we’re heading back to Tampa, and nothing is resolved. It will be, though.