'The waiter' serves one up

It's been the opinion here for months that Team Canada won in spite of Roberto Luongo, not because of him.

That judgment hasn't been very popular among our neighbors to the North, but as was pointed out before the Blackhawks took on the Canucks in this series, Luongo has been dishing out rebounds going all the way back to the Olympics, when he got much more credit than he deserved for Canada's gold medal victory.

"The waiter" was terrible in the Los Angeles series, and he was even worse Wednesday night in Game 3, serving up a Chicago victory on a blue and green platter.

The Hawks scored their first 4 goals on juicy rebounds, three of which your grandmother wouldn't have given up, and Luongo gift-wrapped for them a 5-2 victory and a 2-1 series lead.

While Antti Niemi was good, Luongo was brutal and this series will be over quickly if he doesn't figure out how to catch a puck or smother a rebound, and right now all the Hawks have to do is just keep throwing it at him - because he can't stop a beach ball.

Confidence can come and go quickly, and it's hard to hold onto for any team this time of year, but the looks on the Canucks' faces said it all as their goalie gave away puck after puck Wednesday.

No amount of defense can clear every loose puck in front of a goalie, and this guy gives out free tastes like he's hawking pastry in the middle of a grocery store.

The Canucks don't believe in him anymore, and the Hawks' 2 games to 1 lead feels much larger than that today for both teams.

Between Luongo's wretched play and the Canucks' inability for the second straight playoff season to get control of Dustin Byfuglien, the Canucks are completely lost right now.

They took bad penalties, they were frustrated, and they allowed the Hawks to repeatedly run over Luongo without doing anything about it until the game was over.

In Mites they teach you to protect your goalie and make anyone who gets near him pay a price, but the Canucks apparently skipped that level of hockey.

And that would be a good excuse for Luongo's miserable failure except he was forking over the puck even before the Hawks started beating on him.

It didn't matter that Vancouver was the better team Wednesday night, carrying the play most of the evening, because Luongo was in his own personal boxing match, punching at pucks, fumbling saves and giving up fat rebounds.

It was a dream come true for any forward going hard to the net.

Mostly, that was Byfuglien, who collected the hat trick crashing the net and crashing into Luongo every chance he got.

On the Hawks' first goal, Luongo failed to control a weak shot from Brent Sopel, and with the puck bouncing behind the goaltender, Kris Versteeg got credit as the Canucks knocked it into their own net.

The second was even worse, with Luongo failing to catch a 40-shot by Duncan Keith when no one was within several feet of him.

He saw it clean, went down and fed it right out to Byfuglien, who backhanded it home for a 2-0 lead.

After Vancouver closed to 2-1, Byfuglien fired in another rebound on the power play after Alex Burrows took a stupid penalty trying to goad Brian Campbell into a scuffle.

Down 3-2 early in the third, the Canucks carried the play and swarmed Niemi, but he stood tall and once again the Vancouver goaltender let down his teammates.

After a soft shot by Patrick Sharp, Marian Hossa quietly found the rebound in front of Luongo and easily converted the 2-foot putt for a 4-2 lead and that was the game - and maybe the series.

Late in the game, Byfuglien got his hat trick when he simply pushed the puck and Luongo into the net, something Byfuglien had no problem doing most of the night.

The Hawks didn't always look like the better team Wednesday, but they sure had the better goalie, they were much more physical and they used their heads while the Canucks lost theirs.

In the playoffs, the formula for victory doesn't get any simpler than that.

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.