Rozner: Breaks go wrong way for hungry Hawks
Some would call it irony.
Others might see it as the absolute random nature of postseason hockey.
Either way, it was odd to see the Blackhawks shuffle off the ice Sunday afternoon, dragging behind them a 3-2 defeat and trailing 2-1 in the opening round of the playoffs.
For perhaps the first time since they danced with Lord Stanley's bowl last June, the Hawks looked Sunday like a team capable of capturing the big prize again.
They were hungry, hard on the puck and strong in all three zones, playing a complete game worthy of a postseason victory, but instead the Blues reclaimed home ice going into Game 4 at the UC Tuesday night.
The star for the Hawks - again - was Corey Crawford, yet he will undoubtedly take the blame for a couple of soft goals on ridiculously bad breaks.
With the Hawks ahead 1-0 in the first after an early power-play goal from Brent Seabrook - and when they could have been up several if not for the play of Blues goalie Brian Elliott - St. Louis scored on the man advantage when Tomas Fleischmann was late getting to his point man and then tipped a long by Colton Parayko past Crawford to tie the game.
"Just a terrible bounce there," Crawford said. "You don't dwell on it. You move on."
The Hawks went back in front early in the second off a weak shot from Artem Anisimov that fooled Elliott after a great play by Artemi Panarin, who took the puck away from the 6-foot-6, 230-pound Parayko.
But 5:15 into the third, Michal Rozsival turned the puck over and, as the Blues stormed the Hawks' blueline, Patrik Berglund shot one off Rozsival's shin guard and it skipped once before beating Crawford to tie the game at 2-2.
"Some wicked bounces," Crawford said. "Those things happen in a hockey game. You have to find a way to overcome them."
The Hawks couldn't overcome a Patrick Kane high stick with 8:09 remaining that drew blood and cost the Hawks a 4-minute penalty kill in a tie game.
The tie lasted less than 2 minutes and the Blues scored the go-ahead goal with Kane watching from the box on a brilliant tic-tac-toe from Vlad Tarasenko to David Backes to Jaden Schwartz, who fired it past Crawford from the slot for a 3-2 St. Louis lead.
"I have to be smarter in that situation," Kane said, taking responsibility. "I have to be more careful with my stick."
After all the breaks went the Hawks' way in Game 2, the Blues got a few of their own Sunday afternoon.
"You hope it works that way," said St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock. "We're gonna need a few - and we're gonna need everybody on board the rest of this series."
As strange as Sunday's game unfolded, equally stunning is the Hawks had been a staggering 70-0-4 since the start of the 2014-15 season when leading after 40 minutes.
"I thought we played pretty good," Kane said. "They got some favorable bounces and our PP probably could have been better.
"But we've been through this before and it's not a big deal for this group. We've been down in a lot of series.
"Game 4 is big now. It's usually the swing game in a series and we know it's a game we have to have. They responded and now we have to respond."
In a very close series in which every game has been a coin flip, and in which the better team has not won every game, it feels like it could go the distance.
"What it says is it's going to be a really long series," Hitchcock said. "It feels very much like a (Stanley Cup) Final. It's been that tough and that emotional already."
It's about the details in the postseason and the Hawks have some issues to clean up, but it's not easy when your best defensemen are playing heavy minutes and depth on the back end is not what it once was in Chicago.
"All that's important now is the next game," Crawford said. "We had so many good plays and good looks for our guys, and there's a lot to like about how we played.
"We just have to carry that into the next game."
And maybe in the next one, the best team will win. Though in this series, that hardly seems likely.
brozner@dailyherald.com
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