Chicago Blackhawks down but far from out – still a lot of life in Stanley Cup finals

Rob McKenzie breaks down how the NHL's Stanley Cup finals have played out so far, and finds there's little to separate the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks after three contests.

Jonathan Toews, left, speaks with Patrick Kane during the Chicago Blackhawks' Game 3 loss in the Stanley Cup finals on Monday night. Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images / AFP / June 8, 2015

It is all about resilience now.

Four minutes into the third period of Monday night’s Game 3 of the Stanley Cup final, the Chicago Blackhawks had taken a 2-1 lead on a Brandon Saad goal at the end of a dazzling shift.

The Hawks had held the puck in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s zone for 44 seconds – shooting, capturing rebounds, winning the puck along the boards – before Marian Hossa passed to Saad in the high slot and he fired the puck over Ben Bishop’s glove.

The inevitable seemed to be happening. Chicago was squeezing the life out of Tampa just as it had out of Nashville, Minnesota and Anaheim in prior rounds: The Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger” was playing as it does after every Hawks home goal; the fans were exultant; and a third Stanley Cup in six years seemed almost ready for engraving.

But even as the Chicago crowd was enjoying the replay of Saad’s goal on the scoreboard, Tampa struck. After the face-off, the Lightning won the puck in the neutral zone, Nikita Kucherov took a shot, and Ondrej Palat jabbed home the rebound.

And with barely three minutes left to play, the Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman – perhaps the best player of the NHL championship series so far – carried the puck up the ice, skated towards the corner and then sliced a pass to Cedric Paquette in front of the net for the tap-in.

A 3-2 win for Tampa, and a 2-1 series lead.

Chicago, a team renowned for its ability to bounce back, appears to have met a younger version of itself in the Lightning.

And now, going into Wednesday night’s Game 4 in Chicago, the Hawks’ resilience will be tested once more. Entering Game 3, the team had a perfect 5-0 record for these play-offs in games that followed a defeat; but now that mark is 5-1. (Tampa’s record in games after a defeat is 4-1.)

If there is a risk for Tampa, it is in net. Game 2 had taken an odd turn when Bishop left the ice in the third period. Presumably, he was hurt, though after the game the team kept mum. Bishop’s replacement, the rookie Andrei Vasilevskiy, saved five of five shots and got the win.

Bishop started Monday night’s game, but goalies go up and down a lot and he often appeared to have difficulty getting up. Chicago will want to test his mobility on Wednesday night with lots of lateral movement.

The wild card for Chicago is the play of their two biggest stars, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. Through the first three games the duo, despite generating many scoring chances, between them had one assist and no goals.

Only a fool would expect these two to remain silenced. They have continued to create scoring chances and find open space; the goals will surely come, as they have in the past.

More worrisome for Chicago is the state of their defence. The Hawks continue to lean heavily on a big four of Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Johnny Oduya. But these men cannot play all the time and when they are gone there is a sharp drop-off. On Monday night’s decisive goal, one of the lesser defencemen, Kyle Cumiskey, was not guarding Paquette tightly enough. That could be the last we see of Cumiskey for a while.

Tampa has the lead. But the lead is slight: through three games of these finals, no team has led a game by more than a single goal. This series still has a lot of life in it.

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