Chicago rises to occasion yet again in Game 5
Blackhawks continue to show they are prime-time performers
TAMPA— As Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final approached on Saturday night, laying a bet on the ultimate champion was something of a fool’s errand.
Heading into Saturday, the series was about as close as statistically possible. Both teams had scored nine goals apiece. Chicago had registered 107 shots on goal; Tampa Bay 104.
Every game had been decided by one goal, the first time that had happened since 1968. Neither team had taken so much as a two-goal lead in any one of the contests.
To consider all that and still claim knowledge of the superior team — it’s a big reason why the Las Vegas books don’t do NFL-sized business on hockey nights.
“You know, I think it’s going to be close the whole way here, just like it has been,” said Jonathan Toews, the Chicago captain.
Indeed, the margins remained slim on Saturday, the Blackhawks winning another one-goal game, this one 2-1 to take a 3-2 series lead. The only other time the Stanley Cup final has seen five straight games decided by a single goal was 1951, when Bill Barilko won the Leafs the Cup in Game 5 overtime.
Still, as historically tight as it’s been, the Blackhawks continued to separate themselves as prime-time performers.
His injured knee needed to be stretched out? — Bishop chased the puck, smashed into Hedman, and Patrick Sharp scored on the empty net. Bishop got unlucky, but earned it.
So in the first the Lightning lost a star, their goalie was hurt (though not debilitated) their No. 1 centre was hurt (Tyler Johnson is playing with what is believed to be an injured wrist), and the game was spinning away from them. The Lightning were playing with fire at the gas station next to the old fireworks factory, surrounded on all sides by tinder-dry forest, and some oil wells.
Chicago, though, couldn’t find enough shovels to bury the thing early. Bishop looked less limited than he did in Game 3 after four days of treatment, and his occasional forays into the street to chase a ball aside, he wasn’t falling over anymore. If you really wanted to look at the bright side, whatever is bothering him felt good enough for him to go for a skate, more than once. He didn’t leave the crease an awful lot in Game 3.
But maybe this series is destined to stay on the tightrope, somehow. The first four games were decided by the smallest things; nothing bigger than a one-goal lead, nothing other than one-goal games, and a chance to be the first and only Cup final since 1951 to start with five straight onegoal results. These two teams are falling together, and they can’t get clear of one another’s arms, and there’s only one parachute.
So whatever sermon or adjustments Tampa coach Jon Cooper offered in intermission, the Lightning came back. They shuffled their lines, playing Jonathan Drouin or Steven Stamkos with the remaining Kucherov-less triplet line. Cooper refused to ride his biggest horses too hard, again — Hedman played less at even strength through two periods than Braydon Coburn, who is like a statue of Hedman, and was matched against Jonathan Toews — and Bishop hung in there.
Somehow, they pushed back. Midway through the second Stamkos and Valtteri Filppula took a puck from Duncan Keith, and when it got all the way around the horn Jason Garrison — the giant-bearded guy who, when asked if he grew up trying to dangle and go top shelf, said with a self-deprecating smile, “I still do” — whipped a beautiful cross-ice pass to Filppula, who tied the game.
But sometimes we’re the stories we tell ourselves, and sometimes we lose control of the stories. The Hawks took the lead back with Tampa’s lesser lights on the ice — Brenden Morrow, Brian Boyle, Drouin, Sustr and Garrison — on a pinball rush finished by Antoine Vermette, and the first-period coin flip mattered again. Cooper kept playing his depth guys, his lesser guys. He threw J.T. Brown and Cedric Paquette and Boyle out in the last three minutes. Cooper made strange decisions. It cost him.
Now the Lightning have to prove they are what they tell themselves. Chicago, too. There are no more extra days off. There are only games, and travel days between games. Or maybe one travel day, and one game.
The end may not be here yet, but you can see it from your seat.