Hawks have a knack for staying alive when all seems lost. Cox,
NOT. DEAD. YET.
Creepy, in a way, are these Chicago Blackhawks. The NHL’s parity-first system chops away at their talent, the St. Louis Blues shove them rudely to the precipice of playoff extinction, and still they won’t accept the fate seemingly assigned to them.
They refuse to tumble helplessly over the edge. And who would stand up now and say for sure the Hawks won’t advance beyond this first round of these Stanley Cup playoffs, or even that they won’t win it all again?
They should have gone down Thursday night in Missouri. They’d lost two straight games at home, lost forward Andrew Shaw to Offensive Mouth Syndrome, were down 3-1 going into Game 5 and then, after an explosive second period, frittered away a two-goal lead in the third period and found themselves in double OT against the Blues. And won. Of course they won. This is not new, people. The Hawks did this to Anaheim last year in the conference final. They love to give teams a little bit of a lead, then yank hard on the chain.
With Joel Quenneville barking out orders, Chicago has faced elimination 16 times, and won 12 of those games. The Hawks are 10-1 in playoff series over the last three springs, and even in that series they lost, to L.A. in the 2014 Western Conference final, the Hawks fought back from a 3-1 deficit before losing in Game 7.
The really scary part is that it’s not the same team doing it over and over. Only 10 players — albeit the most important ones — are left over from the 2013 Cup winners. This team just keeps growing new parts, or perhaps more accurately keeps sifting through hockey garbage bins around the world to make gems out of other people’s junk.
When Patrick Kane scored the winner in Game 5, he started the play by taking a pass from Richard Panik.
This is the same Richard Panik who couldn’t crack the Maple Leafs lineup earlier this season, and then wasn’t even useful enough for the Marlies to keep around. The Leafs traded Panik to the Hawks for Jeremy Morin, then included Morin in the James Reimer trade with San Jose in which they acquired other players they didn’t want.
It was like being dealt for the player never to be named later.
On Thursday in St. Louis, Panik not only helped organize the gamewinning goal, he played more than 21 minutes. In fact, he played only 19 seconds less than St. Louis sniper Vladimir Tarasenko.
This isn’t to exaggerate Panik’s role in that remarkable victory. It’s to emphasize both the resourcefulness of the Hawks as they deal with their annual cap crunch issues, but also the ability of the core group to instill this zombie-like, “we may look dead, but we’re really not” attitude among those who suit up in a Chicago uniform.
Now, for Game 6 on Saturday night back at the United Center, they’ll get Shaw back — who, incidentally, based on the bonuses the club has to pay hotshot rookie Artemi Panarin, may be the next in the long line of veterans Chicago has to let go in order to get under the cap. And what of the Blues? It’s strange, but despite leading the series 3-2, you get the feeling that it’s desperation time for Ken Hitchcock’s team, that the Blues are anything but in the driver’s seat here. If you can be ahead but have your backs against the wall, this is them.
This is a franchise that has been patiently building a very good team for more than a decade, a franchise that is the poster child for how long it takes to create a quality hockey club, but also how all that patience, possibly, may never result in anything.
Take notice all you tankers out there. You know who you are.
The Blues, like the Washington Capitals in the East, are a team that’s trying to convince everyone they’re not the same as they’ve been in other years when excellent seasons were followed by disappointing playoffs. But they don’t have that dominant, Cup ring-wearing goalie, and they do have players who were very much part of those disappointments.
Still, it’s not like the Blues keep losing to the Hawks year after year. They’ve only played twice in the playoffs in the past 20 years, the first round in the ’14 post-season and the first round in ’02, so this isn’t about Bum Phillips’ Oilers just trying to get past Chuck Noll’s Steelers.
That said, to be the best you’ve often got to beat the best. We don’t know if this year’s Hawks really are still the best, but we do know they’re awfully hard to knock down.
And they never seem to stay down, do they? Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column appears here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.