This drama had a do-or-die feel for Hawks

You sort of had to be in the United Center to appreciate Monday night's 4-2 Blackhawks victory over the Canucks.

We're talking end-to-end action from beginning to end, creating suspense, drama, tension and friction.

We're also talking the Hawks insisting on increasing their degree of difficulty on the way to what they hope culminates in a Stanley Cup championship.

"That's not the way we want to approach it, always fighting from behind," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said.

This Game 2 of an NHL West semifinal series wasn't an elimination game, but it had that kind of feel. If the Hawks had lost, they would have trailed 2-0 in games in the best-of-seven series.

Quenneville made major changes after a terrible 5-1 loss in Game 1. He added and subtracted players from his active roster. He juggled his lines. He moved Dustin Byfuglien from wing back to defense and during the game back to wing.

"We definitely weren't happy with the first game," Quenneville said.

Unfortunately for the Hawks, their most significant change was coming out slowly in the first period as opposed to fast before losing Game 1.

That change wasn't planned, but it almost cost the Hawks the game and possibly the series. Only a Madhouse-on-Madison comeback averted disaster.

The Canucks took a 2-0 lead just 5 minutes, 2 seconds in. That looked as bad as it sounded.

Ah, but then Brent Seabrook scored to cut Vancouver's lead in half and make it a next-goal-wins situation. The sense was that if the Hawks tied the score at 2-2, chances were good that momentum would carry them to victory.

That's an oversimplification, of course, especially for two teams that look more and more like they're evenly matched.

"Obviously," Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault said, "we're two good hockey teams battling real hard."

The Hawks did tie the game on Patrick Sharp's short-handed goal with 13:11 left in regulation, and the momentum actually did carry them to victory.

Kris Versteeg scored a go-ahead goal with a mere 1:30 left in regulation and Patrick Kane's empty-netter in the final minute made Vancouver's early 2-0 lead seem like a couple of lifetimes ago.

Desperation verged on panic all night for the Hawks. Trailing 2-0 set off all sorts of sirens for a team considered one of the primary favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

They weren't silenced until Kane scored.

The Hawks were on edge all the way because Vancouver matched them speed for speed, pass for pass and hit for hit.

Neither of these teams is bashful about attacking and, as Quenneville said, "The game was played at a pace both teams like to play at."

If each goalie - Vancouver's Roberto Luongo and the Hawks' Antti Niemi - wasn't on his game the score could have been something like 7-6.

The breakneck pace, the electricity in the air, the passion of the fans, the urgency of the players - well, you really did have to be there.

"The building was alive," is the way Quenneville put it.

GM Place in Vancouver will be, too, but going there tied in the series sure is a lot more comfortable than being down 2-0.

mimrem@dailyherald.com