Blackhawks prevail with 4-3 win over Preds, advance to next round

It seems like the "experience" question has been asked 1,000 times over the past week.

The prevailing thought has been that, while extremely talented, the Predators didn't have enough graybeards on their roster to win a best-of-seven series against a team like Blackhawks.

In the end, that proved to be the case Saturday as Joel Quenneville's squad showed the poise that's led them to two Stanley Cup titles and three Western Conference finals in the last five years.

The Hawks, despite falling behind 2-0 and 3-1 in the early going, stormed back to tie the game before that first-period horn even sounded and went on to take Game 6 and the series with a 4-3 victory thanks to Duncan Keith's goal with 3:48 left in the game. The Blackhawks will now face the winner of the St. Louis-Minnesota series in the second round. The Wild is up 3-2 with Game 6 Sunday in Minnesota.

Scott Darling, who let up 3 goals on the 12 shots he saw, was pulled for Corey Crawford. Crawford, who hadn't played since Game 2, was asked before the game if he was handling the demotion better than he would have earlier in his career.

"Yeah, I think so," said Crawford, who didn't allow a single shot past him in relief. "A little more mature and experienced. It's still tough. I wanna play, but our guys are doing well, we're winning (and) Scott's doing well. (I'll) just work hard in practice and wait for the call."

James Neal scored the first 2 goals as Nashville roared to a 2-0 lead just 8:09 into the game.

Patrick Sharp made it 2-1 shortly after Neal's second goal, but Nashville grabbed the 2-goal lead right back as Matt Cullen beat Darling on a wrist shot 39 seconds after Sharp scored.

That's when Crawford got the call he was talking about. Darling went to the bench having allowed 6 goals on the last 19 shots he'd faced, his save percentage dropping from .950 before the game to .936 afterwards.

Less than a minute after Cullen made it 3-1, Jonathan Toews scored on the power-play goal when the puck went in off his skate on a shot by Sharp. It was the first time the Hawks scored with the man advantage since the series' first game.

"We're going to need our power play to have success," Quenneville said before the game. "We're going to need it for a lot of ways. Score timely goals. It can help the guys 5-on-5 with their confidence with the puck as well. We went down the stretch there at the end of the year, where our power play was not as effective as we've seen, and I think that you need the power play to at least generate."

Then, late in the first period, Brad Richards won a faceoff in the Nashville zone, Keith proceeded to feed Patrick Kane, and Kane ripped a 40-foot blast past Pekka Rinne to tie the game at 3-3. The clock showed 6.0 seconds left after the puck got past Rinne.

After the 6 goals in the first period, both teams went scoreless until Keith nothced his second game-winner of the series, propelling the Hawks into the next round.