Blackhawks squeak by Lightning in Game 4
Chicago overcomes slow start to beat Tampa’s rookie goalie twice, enough to earn the win
CHICAGO— For a while it looked as if the Blackhawks wouldn’t even shoot, let alone score, on Tampa rookie goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. But Brandon Saad powered through the surprise starter’s crease, and backhanded one past him to give the Blackhawks new life in the Stanley Cup final.
Chicago skated off with a perhaps undeserved 2-1Game 4 win Wednesday night over the Tampa Bay Lightning, who raised eyebrows by not dressing starting goalie Ben Bishop. Bishop had laboured through a win in Game 3 even as Tampa had refused to acknowledge their top goalie was hurt.
Now the series returns to Tampa for Game 5 all tied at two games apiece.
Resting Bishop created quite the stir. He didn’t even dress. Kristers Gudlevskis dressed as the backup.
But now, Bishop will have had four days’ rest if he starts Game 5 on Saturday. If you’d have asked Tampa coach Jon Cooper last October if he’d have taken the Lightning’s current status in the Stanley Cup final, essentially a best two-out-of-three with home-ice advantage, he’d have taken it.
No matter what, the Lightning are a confident bunch.
“We’ve talked a lot about other players and other teams throughout this playoffs, but in the room, we have a belief in the person sitting next to you,” Steven Stamkos said before the game.
“We’ve had that since the beginning of training camp. It’s just snowballed throughout the season. I said it before — I think we’re playing our most consistent hockey, obviously, at the right time of the year and we want to continue that trend.”
The second period was far more entertaining than the first, and ended in a 1-1 tie.
Chicago had more life and scored first. Jonathan Toews ended his Cup-goalless drought with a shot that went off Vasilevskiy’s right skate. It was easily Chicago’s best shift of the first 40 minutes, when they used their skill and speed to control the puck. It was Toews’ 10th goal of the playoffs, a career high.
For most of the first two periods, the Blackhawks seemed lost on their own ice. They were frustrated at every turn, usually with Tampa hemming them in their own zone. That kind of aggressive play resulted in Tampa’s tying goal, with Alex Killorn scoring off a beauty of a pass from Valtteri Filppula, who beat Trevor van Riemsdyk in a puck battle and skated behind Corey Crawford. Filppula dished the puck the other way and an unchallenged Killorn had an empty net.
The only good news for Chicago was that the 5:07 between Toews’ and Killorn’s goals was the longest the Blackhawks had held the lead in the first four games. They’ve had a knack for giving up goals almost as soon as they score them.
“We’ve been talking about that,” Toews said between games. “We’ll improve in that area.”
Beyond Tampa’s goalie situation, there was also the saga of Jonathan Drouin. The highly touted scoring winger keeps getting told he’s going to play only to be pulled from the starting lineup, usually for a seventh defenceman Nikita Nestorov.
“With the way the playoffs have been going, you have to be ready for anything,” said Drouin. “Ask any player, you are always disappointed, you want to be in there.”
Drouin’s status and Cooper telling the world Bishop was healthy was widely viewed not so much as deception as gamesmanship, designed to keep Blackhawks coach Joel Quen- neville guessing.
But Quenneville had his own lineup issues. Kyle Cumiskey, the goat on Tampa’s winning goal in Game 3, was benched with Kimmo Timonen inserted. And Kris Versteeg was back in the lineup, replacing Bryan Bickell, whose 2015 playoffs pale in comparison with his standout 2013 performance.
“They switch the lineup for a reason, to get a spark from somebody or some line,” said Bickell. “It’s disappointing. I’ve been off for a week, play one game, thought it went pretty well. But there are still more games to go. I just have to make a big impact when I get back in.”