Murray: Blackhawks must play with more urgency

Q: On a four-minute power play (like the Hawks had in the first period of Game 3), can there sometimes be a sense of, 'Oh, we've got plenty of time to take advantage of this'?

A: I actually made that point on the radio that the one thing the Blackhawks can't afford to do is know that it's a four-minute power play and not have that urgency right off the bat. The situation in my mind was if you had urgency and had the drive, you were in a position to score a couple of power-play goals.

"It just didn't seem that there was a sense of urgency ... at the beginning of that power play. Give a lot of credit to Anaheim - they won the battles and they won faceoffs, blocked shots. They did the little things that they needed to do. But I warned about that ... don't just assume that you've got lots of time to take advantage of the man advantage.

Q: Brandon Saad said the Hawks spent too much time on the perimeter and hesitated too much in Game 3. Do you agree?

A: Well, if you're not scoring 5-on-5 goals (the Hawks have 3 in the series), you're obviously not getting to the middle of the ice the way that you would like to. Any team, and it's not just the Blackhawks, when they struggle to score goals, what does the coaching staff and the players say? We need more traffic, we need to go to the front of the net, we need to be grittier, score those greasy goals.

And that's what you have right now. Anaheim's done an excellent job of boxing out. You look at some of the big saves that (Frederik) Andersen has been able to make in this series - like the shot he saved on Saad in Game 3 - it was a clean 1-on-1 shot, but he was able to focus on it, the defense did a nice job that sight lines were available and he made the save.

You look at (in Game 2) Andrew Shaw's tip-in goal, Bryan Bickell being in front of the net on Marian Hossa's power-play goal, and Marcus Kruger going to the front of the net. Those are the type of goals that you need to score on a consistent basis in the playoffs.

Q: Are you surprised that the stars of both teams have been basically shut down so far?

A: Bottom line: any time you go into a series, you love to have depth. You've seen that in the first three games where some of the "depth players" have been scoring the big goals. But at the end of the series, your best players have to be better than the other team's best players. Who breaks out first could be the determining factor.

There's a frustration and a disappointment factor on Jonathan Toews' side as well as the other two players for the Blackhawks up front that they haven't been able to get the offense generating so far in this series. But the Ducks have done an excellent job in all areas. If you look at Game 1 and Game 3, with the Ducks being in position of controlling the scoreboard, they just completely shut down the Blackhawks with what they were doing in the neutral zone. I mean, they (the Ducks) weren't even trying to create offensive chances. ...

The Blackhawks time and time again ran into that wall in the neutral zone and were unable to figure out what they needed to do to create scoring chances. Really until the end, (when) that sense of urgency or quality chances were becoming available.

• Murray is in his 15th year as a member of the Blackhawks broadcast team and his eighth as the color analyst for the team's radio broadcasts. The Selke Award winner was a five-time 20-goal scorer who played 15 years in the NHL. Follow him on Twitter@muzz19.