It's Teuvo Time again for the Hawks

One of Joel Quenneville's favorite lines when talking about making lineup changes is that his staff loves to "make tough decisions."

The Hawks' impressive depth affords Quenneville the luxury of pulling an ineffective goalie or sitting ineffective players such as Bryan Bickell, Antoine Vermette or Kris Versteeg.

When the Blackhawks start their second-round series against the Wild at the United Center on Friday, it's Versteeg - unless something drastic changes - who will be sitting in favor of 20-year-old rookie Teuvo Teravainen.

In all honesty, this is a move I was wondering if Quenneville would make going into Game 6 against Nashville. Teravainen, despite being a minus-2 versus the Predators in Game 2, didn't look at all out of place in his first postseason games. Versteeg, meanwhile, has struggled for a while with just 2 goals in his last 26 games, 1 of which came late in Game 5 on a spin-o-rama pass from Patrick Kane that was just about impossible to miss. This has happened to Versteeg before as Quenneville sat him for Game 6 of the Western Conference finals last season after a bad turnover in Game 5 led to a goal by the Kings' Dustin Brown.

Don't expect the stage to be too big for Teravainen, who will be skating with Vermette and Patrick Sharp on the third line.

"He's very creative. Good hands. Good player, skill player obviously," Vermette said. "I thought we played well together when we played together at points during the season, and I think he was going to bring an offensive dimension for sure."

Teravainen will be on the ice with a pair of 30-somethings in Vermette and Sharp who have a combined 174 playoff games on their resumes.

"He's got two experienced guys out there," Quenneville said. "But I like his presence, as well. I think he's going to add some speed and I think that predictability on both sides of the puck is something that he can bring to that line … We'll see how it plays itself out. Potentially, it could really be a good line for us."

Teravainen, 20, is the same age as Nashville's Filip Forsberg and Seth Jones, both of whom played massive minutes against the Hawks in Round 1. The Hawks' rookie played in 34 regular-season games and scored 4 goals. He's hoping it won't be a "tough decision" to leave him in the lineup after Game 1 vs. Minnesota.

"I know I can play," he said. "I know I can help the team. So I just have to find my game and play smart, simple hockey."

Wild card:

Minnesota's penalty kill was the best in the NHL during the regular season (86.3 percent) and the Wild also had the ninth-fewest penalty minutes. This trend didn't change much in the first round against St. Louis, either, as the Blues had just 11 power-play opportunities in 6 games.

Joel Quenneville addressed the subject after a practice Wednesday in which the Hawks committed a decent amount of time to working with the man advantage.

"They had the best PK in the league so it's going to be a challenge," Quenneville said. "It's kind of like our team game, 5-on-5, it's tough to generate. (We've got to stay) with it, not getting frustrated, being patient throughout and take advantage of it."

He said it:

"It would be great if we won 12 games in a row and Corey (Crawford) had shutouts every game and we won a Stanley Cup. That would be perfect. I would not complain one bit."

- goalie Scott Darling on what he'd like to see transpire the rest of the postseason.

jdietz@dailyherald.com