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Old friend Troy Brouwer seals Chicago Blackhawks' 3-2 loss

ST. LOUIS — Moments after the Chicago Blackhawks dropped a gut-wrenching, series-ending game to the St. Louis Blues on Monday night, a stunned Duncan Keith stood at his locker trying to explain what had just happened to the defending champs.

“Well, it's tough,” Keith said, his voice barely audible and shaking. “You take it to seven games. You crawl back in the series and you put it to the last period, and it comes down to one goal.”

And a goal scored by an old friend, no less.

Yes, Troy Brouwer — who was part of the 2010 Stanley Cup champs — swept in the game-winner with 11:29 remaining to give St. Louis a 3-2 victory in Game 7 of this first-round series.

Just more than eight minutes later, the thousands of Hawks fans in attendance erupted when it appeared Brent Seabrook — one of Brouwer's best friends — had knotted the score at 3-3 with a 50-foot blast.

The shot never went in, though, as it hit the left post, then caromed over to the right and somehow stayed out of the net with 4:06 to go.

St. Louis then staved off a furious rally and advanced to the Western Conference semis vs. Dallas.

“There were a lot of tough battles out there against a lot of guys that I've known for a long time,” Brouwer said. “Hopefully we can have a beer and laugh about it in the summer.”

The Hawks certainly weren't laughing in the locker room, and a terse coach Joel Quenneville was utterly disgusted with how Brouwer was able to give St. Louis the lead.

“Tough way to go out,” Quenneville said. “We had the perfect setup there, and we did exactly what we're not supposed to do or not accustomed to doing. And it's game, set, match.”

The winning play started when Robbi Fabbri ran into Hawks defenseman Erik Gustafsson as Gustafsson took the puck over the St. Louis blue line. Paul Stastny chased the puck down, fed a hustling Fabbri in front of the net, and Fabrri then sent a pass to Brouwer in front of Corey Crawford.

The initial shot hit the right post, but Brouwer managed to sweep the puck in as he was falling to the ice.

Gustafsson's inability to get deep enough into the defensive zone after the hit by Fabbri left Seabrook alone and facing a 2-on-1 that he couldn't stop.

So the defending champs are no more.

Gone. Eliminated. Vanquished.

“You play in a series like this, you see why that team has won three Cups,” said Blues coach Ken Hitchcock.

The Blues certainly shocked most of the hockey world, and in doing so sent a Quenneville-coached Blackhawks squad home in the first round for the first time since 2012. It also was the ninth time in the last 13 seasons that a defending champ either missed the playoffs or failed to advance out of the opening series.

“It's obviously weird,” Jonathan Toews said. “At the end of the day, a lot people recognize these two teams are two teams that had the potential to go far. Obviously someone had to go home.

“It's unfortunate that we didn't give ourselves a chance to go deeper.”

After the Blues went up 2-0 on first-period goals by Jori Lehtera and Colton Parayko, Marian Hossa injected life into the Hawks by scoring his third goal of the series with 90 seconds left in the first.

Andrew Shaw then scored on a power play when his pass attempt to Patrick Kane deflected off Jay Bouwmeester and past Brian Elliott. It was Shaw's fourth goal of the series.

And the Blackhawks' last.

“They're a good hockey team,” Kane said. “I know they were looking for it for a long time to break through and get past the first round.

“I mean, we were kind of worried about what we were going to do in here and no matter who we were playing we thought we had a good chance to win. It's just a disappointing, weird feeling right now.”

In the end, this was a series to remember. It was amazing hockey played by teams that combined for 96 regular-season victories and 210 points.

“That felt like the conference finals,” Quenneville said.

When fans look back, they'll remember plenty of missed chances by the Hawks — none bigger than Seabrook's in the waning moments of Game 7. They'll also remember that Toews and Kane combined for 1 goal — a stunning number when you consider they had a combined 74 in the regular season.

Kane, for one, would give plenty of them back if it meant eliminating the Blues.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Nothing like winning a Cup and going far in the playoffs and being part of a championship team. Absolutely you'd trade it all in.”

In the handshake line afterward, Brouwer had some words for Seabrook.

“Sorry for that one hit there,” he said of the cross-check he nailed his buddy with in Game 2. “He knows that it's business and I'm trying to finish my checks, play through guys all series long — whether it was him, Toews, Kane, Dunc.”

In the end, he wound up sending his former team home for an early summer and the Blues into the second round for the first time since 2012.

“Huge disappointment for me,” Quenneville said.

And for millions of Hawks fans as well.

• Follow John's Hawks reports on Twitter @johndietzdh.

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