Hawks can clinch the Cup at home Monday,
In game decided by one mistake, Chicago comes out ahead
TAMPA— We are the stories we tell ourselves, if we’re lucky, if we’re good enough. This Stanley Cup final had jousted back and forth, attacks and counterattack, and nobody could escape the other. Game 5 was going to provide some separation. It had to.
And the Chicago Blackhawks were the ones who got it. These two teams have spent months — or in Chicago’s case, years, telling themselves that they play their best hockey when it matters. The Blackhawks have won two Stanley Cups by going 40-14 in Games 5 through 7 under Joel Quenneville; Tampa has won two Game 7s and an elimination Game 6 against Detroit to get this far.
But in Game 5, the coin flipped Chicago’s way. The Blackhawks made a giant blooper mistake that came up nothing but sunshine for them, and Lightning made a giant blooper mistake that cost them a goal, and that’s the difference in this series, always, in perpetuity. This series is on the way to being the closest Stanley Cup final in history. The little things matter. Every banana peel matters, unless you somehow landed on your feet. The Blackhawks won 2-1 and lead this series three games to two, and can end it in Chicago on Monday night.
In the first seven minutes of the first period, the game flipped coins; in a 49second span of the first period of Game 5, both goalies made bad decisions. First, Chicago’s Corey Crawford played a puck behind his net directly to Nikita Kucherov. Crawford may have played it outside the trapezoid too, but he avoided a penalty. Kucherov tried to play the puck, Crawford slid under him, Kucherov smashed into the far post, collarbonefirst, and it was either that or a shoulder or a neck.
The second-leading scorer in the playoffs was slow and hunched over on the way to the bench, and didn’t come back. Disaster for the Lightning. Crawford got three kinds of lucky.
Less than a minute later Tampa’s Victor Hedman was chasing a puck back in his own zone, and for some reason — he thought Hedman was towering newborn fawn Andrej Sustr?
Now one win away from their third Stanley Cup in six seasons, Chicago never ceases to find a way to turn coin-flip playoff games into victories. Since the franchise’s 2009 renaissance led by Toews and Patrick Kane, the Blackhawks had been tied 2-2 in eight previous series. Saturday’s triumph increased their win-loss record in Games 5 through 7 of those series to 17-1. Going back to 2011, the Lightning are 8-5 in post-season Games 5 through 7.
As Chicago coach Joel Quenneville said of his team on Saturday: “These guys find ways. It’s a fun bunch to coach.”
Saturday’s action was more than fun to watch, even if it was dotted with memorable miscues. The assists on Chicago’s first goal, for instance, were officially bestowed upon Teuvo Teravainen and Toews, but they probably both should have been given to Ben Bishop’s frontal lobe.
That’s the area of the brain responsible for judgement and impulse control. In the frantic opening throes, Bishop’s didn’t appear to be functioning optimally. Precisely why the Lightning goaltender left his net in pursuit of a loose puck is anyone’s guess. Bishop, after all, had missed Game 4 with an undisclosed injury that had clearly limited his mobility in Games 2 and 3. And yet there he was, setting out on a race to a puck that was already being pursued quite competently by Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay’s best defenceman, along with Patrick Sharp, the Blackhawks’ centreman.
Bishop’s ill-thought-out pursuit ended in disaster for the Lightning. Bishop crashed into Hedman, leav- ing both in a helpless heap near the left faceoff circle. Sharp collected the puck and deposited into an empty net for the easiest of goals and a 1-0 lead.
At that point, it was all Blackhawks. They were outshooting the Lightning 11-2.
The Blackhawks had their own brain cramp in the opening period. Crawford nearly gifted the Lightning a goal in the early going, whiffing on a clearing attempt that was intercepted at point-blank range by Nikita Kucherov. Crawford recovered to make a sliding save. Kucherov crashed the left post with his right shoulder and skated off apparently hurt; he didn’t return. To add insult to apparent injury, replays showed Crawford played the puck outside the trapezoid area, which should have been whistled for a minor penalty but was not.
It was, at times, a wide-open, unpredictable game. Also in the first period: Cedric Paquette tried a hit on Hawks defenceman Andrew Desjardin and the door to the penalty box, which was supposed to be latched shut, flew open.
The Blackhawks took back the momentum in the outset of the third period. Kris Versteeg found himself in alone on a partial breakaway. And though his shot attempt was thwarted by a backcheck from Jason Garrison, the puck rolled at Bishop, who coughed up a rebound that landed on the stick of Antoine Vermette. Vermette’s shot from close range made it 2-1, two minutes into the third.
The Blackhawks had late chances to take a two-goal lead. Teravainen, who missed the net on a breakaway earlier in the game, had a shot from the slot in the latter half of the third, shortly after Desjardins missed from in close. And the home team’s late pressure was incessant, the Lightning outshooting the Blackhawks 15-7 in the final frame.
That Chicago held off the charge was huge. Game 5 has come to be known as a swing game, a pivotal moment in a deadlocked series, and it’s true 70 per cent of teams that have won Game 5 of the Cup final have gone on to be champions. Lately, though, there’ve been plenty of teams that have bounced back from a Game 5 setback to hoist the trophy; four of the past seven teams to fall behind three games to two in the Cup final after a loss in Game 5 have come out on top in Game 7.
They’ve needed heroic efforts to do so. The 2001Avalanche had a Hall of Fame goaltender named Patrick Roy, who allowed precisely one goal in Games 6 and 7 combined.
The 2004 Lightning got a doubleovertime winner from Martin St. Louis in Game 6 before eking out a 2-1 win in Game 7. The 2009 Penguins became the first team in 20 years to win Game 7 on the road in any of the major North American pro sports. The 2011 Bruins matched Pittsburgh’s feat and set off a riot.
The road from here, in other words, is rarely easy.
“This is what it’s all about,” Toews said on Saturday. “This is what we’ve been working for. There’s no better time than now to bring your best game forward and try to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”