Last night is why I watch hockey--why my love for the game hasn't waned in 25 years.
I often describe the NHL playoffs as a kind of holy season, where normal activities are briefly suspended for nightly devotions to hockey. In ritualistic fashion, like Christmas or Hanukkah, gifts are given, and no matter how much you shake the box, each game is a surprise. Only instead of one morning or eight nights, it lasts for eight weeks.
Two incredible first round games last night. The first, a must win for the Chicago Blackhawks who, down 3 games to none to the President's Trophy-winning Vancouver Canucks, could have seen the Stanley Cup evicted from the United Center. The second, an early rubber match for the lead in a series between #2 seed San Jose Sharks and the #7 Los Angeles Kings. Both perfect examples of why changing the channel, despite grotesque leads, is unwise.
Chicago will visit Canada for at least one more game. After a 7-2 win, they deserve it. The Hawks dripped swagger from the opening faceoff, exerting the attitude and physical dominance that led to series wins over Vancouver the previous two years. Forfeiting the Cup, tonight anyway, would be postponed. So supreme were the Hawks that no player on their roster finished with a negative plus/minus rating; Vancouver had none above even. And while Chicago's big guns finally fired--Patrick Sharp with two goals, Patrick Kane a pair of helpers, and Jonathon Toews and Marian Hossa each with an assist--success centered on two vital elements: the Hawks defense and the unexpected brilliance of Dave Bolland.
Game 4 was the Bolland's first appearance in the lineup since suffering a concussion on March 9th. On Tuesday he was without equal. The center-iceman wasn't expected to do much, besides shutdown the prolific Sedin brothers--a challenging enough task for players already in postseason rhythm. Not only did Bolland smother the Sedin twins, who combined for one goal and a -7, he added a goal and three assists. He was +4. His lousiest stat was that he lost five of 11 faceoffs. Bolland's play reminded Vancouver that his was the team that had won everything.
He had plenty of support too. Leading into the first round--which Chicago made only after the Dallas Stars dropped their last game of the season that would've leapfrogged them into a match-up with the Canucks--the Hawks relied precariously on their defense for offense. In their final three games (vs. St. Louis then Detroit, twice), the Hawks' defense factored into nine of 11 goals, posting five goals and seven assists. The spirit of Bobby Orr is alive in Chicago.
Brian Campbell, once expected to be the premier blueliner in the Windy City, smoked goalie Roberto Luongo in the second stanza. Seventeen seconds later, actual premier blueliner Duncan Keith did the same, taking a pass from Kane through the slot, winding up, and burying a slapshot. The characteristically reserved Keith exploded, screamed to the crowd, celebrated with a sliding windmill. His went down as the game-winner. Chris Campoli and Niklas Hjalmarsson found the scoresheet with assists. The absence of stalwart defenseman Brent Seabrook, who was leveled by the Canucks' Raffi Torres in game 3, impaired no one.
A game 5 encore by the Hawks in Vancouver is not guaranteed. But for one night, for one game, there was no question who still reigned as Lord Stanley's defenders.
The late game Tuesday evening was the third between San Jose and Los Angeles, having moved to southern California after splitting the first two in San Jose. Sharks coach Todd Mclellan was justifiably angered by his team's game 2 flop. Following a squeaker in the opening game that the Sharks took in overtime, the Kings abused them 4-0 to even the series. "I thought they were a much more competitive team than we were, " he told reporters. "We can talk about systems and what we did well or did not do well on the power play, penalty kill, faceoffs, but it has to start with the competitiveness."
Game 3 started no better, arousing thoughts of prior Sharks playoff collapses. The Kings took a 2-0 lead in the first five minutes and Michal Handzus scored a third with under two minutes left in the period. The Sharks were flat, off the mark; the Kings commanding and syncopated. Their gap widened to 4-0 early in the second period. Goalie Antti Niemi's night was over. (Niemi, who backstopped the Hawks' Cup victory last year, came to SJ in the off season.) Backup Antero Nittymaki filled the pipes with a change of fortune.
The Sharks soon scored one. A second. Then a third. Momentum had abandoned the Kings. The attack relented, briefly, when Ryan Smythe put the Kings up 5-3 on a quick feed from Jarret Stoll. So defensively brain dead on the play was Nic Wallin that the Sharks coaching staff may have wondered if the defenseman had, in fact, been playing in the NHL for the last decade. The shift was short-lived.
Ryan Clowe posted his second goal of the game for San Jose. Minutes later, game 1 overtime hero Joe Pavelski capped what was only the fourth comeback of such magnitude in the history of the NHL postseason. In a fit of cruel coincidence, the most recent had been by the Kings, who in 1982 rallied from a 5-0 deficit to beat the Edmonton Oilers 6-5.
Neither club found the back of the net in the third period. Momentum abandoned them both. To overtime they went.
And just 3:09 into the extra frame, Patrick Marleau, tearing down the left wing, bodies descending upon the net, fed Devon Setoguchi, who ripped a wrist shot past Kings goalie Jonathan Quick. The comeback was complete. The secondary assist that set up the game winning breakout left the stick of Nic Wallin--a fitting reparation.
Two games, two teams, illustrating that things are truly different in the playoffs. That cliches originate from reality. That parity lives. That the intangibles of the game--momentum, desire, urgency, luck--are as hard to quantify as they are to overstate. But they are exactly the reason none of these teams will depend on their last game as an indicator of what's to come. Because it is, after all, still the playoffs.
No comments:
Post a Comment