Hockey is just weird sometimes. You can’t really ask the Hawks to do much more than they did tonight. From the opening bell, the Avs were pretty much rolled up in a rug and dumped in the snowy woods. But like the occasional Russian gangster who claims to wash his balls in ice water, even though he’s been shot in the head he escapes the mobsters (layered reference!). The Hawks don’t even have packs of mustard to keep them sane.
Sure, they could have cashed in on a power play. But it’s not as if the PP was totally helpless. It created enough chances, it just didn’t cash in. Sure, they’ll tell you they could have gotten more traffic in front of Semyon Varlamov, but that would just be covering up. The Hawks were there plenty of times, it just felt like the rebounds kept bouncing away from Hawks’ sticks aside from Shaw’s goal. Yeah, the penalty kill could have come up better than leaving Ryan O’Reilly enough space in front he would have died of exposure. But in OT, Hjalmarsson’s rushed clear could have taken any bounce off the glass. It just went to Matt Duchene.
The Hawks did everything but win tonight, and that happens from time to time during the season. Hockey is a cruel enough mistress to torture you by having luck play a role, and a big one. It just didn’t go the Hawks way tonight. Move on, and know that more efforts like that will result in pairs of points far more often than they’ll result in a solitary, lonely one.
