vs. 
FACEOFF: 8pm Central
TV/RADIO: NBCSN, CBC, WGN Radio 720
CELLULOID HEROES: The Royal Half, Jewels From The Crown, Surly and Scribe
Well, we’re getting a fair bit of preamble now. Richards’s injury, Keith’s suspension, Kane’s lack of scoring…these games seem to have more and more theater as we go along. I guess that’s how the playoffs work.
Well, it’s come down now. The Hawks will be without their best player this spring (at least since Game 4 the previous round) for Game 4 against L.A. tomorrow night.
We could sit here and wail about the inconsistency of the NHL and their discipline system. It’s an easy target. Keith earned a suspension and even a hearing that neither Dave Bolland or Matt Cooke got. You go back a year and you have Shea Weber and his Gruesome-with-Bugs-Bunny routine on Henrik Zetterberg’s dome not even getting that much either. Obviously, there’s not consistency or even reason. It seems that Keith got punished for the optics of his play, in that it was wide out in the open and not anywhere near the puck where it could be cluttered by whatever else was going on.
But that’s on the petty side.
Well, sometimes that’s gonna go happen.
I can’t decide what’s the more obnoxious trend after losses like this. The people actually losing their mind or the people so eager to make fun of the people losing their mind that they haven’t actually bothered to notice that no one is losing their mind. I’ll let you all debate that.
While the Hawks weren’t near the top of their game and the Kings certainly upped theirs, we’re talking about a broken-stick goal and some pretty nifty Quick saves in the 3rd leading to a one-goal loss in a building where the hosts haven’t lost in two months. Excuse me while I set my hair on fire. Oh wait, I don’t have any hair. So I guess we’ll just calm ourselves down with the notion that it was highly unlikely that the Hawks were going to get both of these games and move on to Thursday night. Deal?
Nice little break today from the playoffs with some other news happening. So let’s look at it.
The Hawks today signed Antti Raanta, the MVP of the Finnish Elite League season and playoffs. Raanta was pursued by a lot of NHL teams, with Minnesota, Edmonton, and Columbus mentioned as the hottest after him.
Raanta’s numbers this year in Finland are pretty eye-popping. He has a .943 save-percentage in the regular season, and .955 in the playoffs. His goals-against was 1.85 in the season and then a ridiculous 1.33 in the playoffs. Raanta then backstopped Finland in the World Championships, and he was excellent there as well with a save-percentage .928.
In all the visions I’ve had of this series in my own mind, not one of them contained Jonathan Quick getting pulled from a game. Hasn’t happened in the playoffs since 2010 (that’s nice symmetry), and though I don’t think it marks some sort of landmark or sea change more than just a quirky note, it does feel good. But then again, this is why The Fifth Feather is simply a manly man among just men, because he said the floodgates would open at some point if the Hawks maintained this kind of pressure. He knows so much, and is so handsome. He really doesn’t belong on this planet.
It’s a funny old game though, because it was the reverse of Game 1’s 1st period in that it ended with a false scoreline. While the Hawks were up 2-0, they really didn’t deserve to be based on balance of play. Just like the Kings had no business being up 1-0 after 20 in Game 1. But thanks to a couple handy saves from Crow, some wayward finishing from the Kings, and utter ruthlessness from the Hawks, they were already halfway home. To me, a two goal lead is nearing the horizon for this Kings team (especially without Richards), and a three-goal one requires a team from NASA. They just don’t generate that much.
Once again, the Hawks speed didn’t have an answer from L.A., and now they face all the questions going into Game 3.
Bullets after the jump.
No rest for the wicked. The Hawks, and worse yet ourselves, will only have two days of recovery. Which means we must immediately turn our eyes to the next item on the docket, the small matter of the defending champs.
I think both sets of fans have been eying this series since the opening game of the season, if not a lot longer than that. I know Hawks fans have had this team circled as by far the biggest obstacle in the West, and I’m pretty sure Kings fans have targeted the Hawks since The Streak. It also feels that with how realignment will shake the league out, this probably is not the last time these two will tango to see who plays for the Chalice.
I think we’re destined to do this…..forever.
Numb.
That’s how I’ve felt since it all ended. I’m not sure where my feet are. I only have a loose grasp of where my hands are occupying. I’m sure you get it.
Maybe it’s fitting. Maybe this is how it had to be. To rip the hearts out of your most loathed rival they way they’ve been doing in various fashions for so long I think I just want to hurl and cry at the same time. And I can’t afford to lose that many liquids out of my face. Maybe that’s the ultimate justice.
Does it erase all the scar tissue? No, of course not. Is it pretty fucking sweet that the end of the Hawks-Wings Western Conference rivalry will forever be known on Brent Fucking Seabrook mind-shifting one home? Yeah. Yeah it is. There’s no other way to say it.
I’ll admit it. I lost the faith last night. During the 2nd intermission. I felt the sweet embrace of the end growing within me. I’ve seen it before. I didn’t tweet it, or text my brother or Kills as I might normally do. It felt like last year’s Game 6 again. A brief opening flurry, watching the second period drift away. I was sure it would be followed by a brief spasm of a death rattle, before Scum cleanly and efficiently took the game, season, rivalry, bragging rights, and seemingly everything else away with them.
I should have known better. This team is made of sterner stuff. And Brendan Smith and Carlo Colaiacovo were going to be on the ice. Always a chance with that.
Not today. Or yesterday. Whatever.
I wasn’t sure what the invasion of Jesus freaks outside the UC meant for the Hawks before yesterday’s game. Was God coming to help? Was he coming to condemn? One thing is for sure, I and all my readers are going to hell. Dude on the megaphone told me so. So you’ve got that going for you. (Sidenote, I love when these nutjobs get one of their kids to preach on the megaphone. Like that kid’s belief system doesn’t have a great chance of altering forever the first time he sees a pair of boobs.)
Anyway, the Hawks finally found some power play goals (you can score two in a game?), and pretty effortlessly closed out a 3rd period lead to keep breathing in these playoffs. What’s funny is that aside from the power play, and the lineup shuffle, I don’t know that all that much changed in this series.
Yeah, I know. The light out of the darkness is looking awfully faint, if it can be seen at all. There’s an overwhelming urge to start declaring who takes the fall, who doesn’t, what changes need to be made going forward, what went wrong, all that.
But really, this is not over. Maybe it feels like that to you, but the margins of this 3-1 deficit just aren’t all that large. To overturn it, a massive transformation doesn’t have to be engineered. In fact, a lot of the Hawks are doing already is all that needs to be done. It just can’t be interrupted.
Last night, aren’t we essentially talking about the difference in Leddy and Kindl taking the exact same shot from the same place, both hitting the inside of the post, one going in and one going out? That’s pretty much what separated teams last night.
You can’t win all three games tomorrow night. You can only win the one. So how do the Hawks go about doing that?
