Long, long opening act ends in win for Hawks

Andrew Shaw seemed to be everywhere Wednesday night in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Shaw sure was in the right place at the right time in front of the net in triple overtime, when he deflected a shot by Michal Rozsival shot past goalie Tuukka Rask to give the Blackhawks a 4-3 win over Boston.

The clock in the United Center had just struck midnight when Shaw ended the third-longest game in team history at 12:08 of the third OT. The longest game in team history took place in 1931, when Cy Wentworth scored at 13:50 of the third OT to beat Montreal.

Rozsival's shot was tipped first by Dave Bolland before Shaw got a piece of it.

The Hawks got third-period goals from Bolland and Johnny Oduya to force overtime.

Hawks goalie Corey Crawford was sensational with 51 saves, coming up big on two Bruins power plays in overtime. Both penalties were for the Hawks having too many men on the ice.

“It's what we've come to expect from him,” Patrick Sharp said.

“Crow was great. He kept us in there,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “He made several all-alone plays and saves. He was great. There were a lot of pucks at the net, a lot of bouncing pucks with traffic, and a big penalty kill as well.”

Crawford stopped Shawn Thornton on a 2-on-1 in the first overtime and later stood tall on Boston's first power play.

“You just have to stick with it, no matter if you miss or if they come close,” Crawford said. “You have to keep going until you win.”

The Hawks got another penalty for too many men on the ice at 19:03 of the second overtime and got lucky when a Jaromir Jagr deflected a Zdeno Chara shot off the right post.

In the third OT moments before Shaw scored, Kaspars Daugavins had a chance all alone in front only to be pulled down by Oduya just as he was getting ready to pull the trigger on a backhander in a wide-open net.

“I don't really know what happened,” Oduya said. “I was trying to put my stick there and try to force him to do something. I got lucky on that play, I think, getting my stick in so he couldn't get the shot off.”

The Hawks outshot Boston 39-25 through regulation and scored 2 goals in the last 12 minutes to send the game to overtime.

After Patrice Bergeron scored on a power play at 6:09 to give the Bruins a 3-1 lead, Bolland and Oduya answered with goals less than five minutes apart and the comeback was on.

Bolland got his first of the playoffs at the eight-minute mark on a feed from Shaw after a Torey Krug turnover. Shaw spotted Bolland streaking down the left side and found him with a sweet pass through traffic.

Oduya got the Hawks their first tie of the night at 12:14, when his shot hit the skate of defenseman Andrew Ference and trickled by Rask.

Boston scored the only goal of the first period at 13:11 when Milan Lucic beat Crawford on a pass from Nathan Horton.

Bruins 6-foot-9, 255-pound defenseman Zdeno Chara played 45:05 and was a guy the Hawks appeared to be ready for. Duncan Keith played more than 48 minutes.

“He's definitely a factor,” Quenneville said of Chara. “Not too many guys you're going to go down inside and expect to beat him 1-on-1.

“We want to make it challenging for him. At the same time, that could be easier said than done. But he does play big minutes. You try to wear him down, work him in his own zone. He's a special defenseman.”

Shaw, all of 5-10, 180 pounds, went right at Chara on several occasions.

“He's a competitor,” Quenneville said of Shaw. “He does things game in, game out. The bigger the stage, the bigger the challenge; he rises to the occasion. He's a warrior.”

Niklas Hjalmarsson went for a hit on David Krejci behind the net and missed. Krejci came away with the puck and fed Horton, whose touch pass to Lucic caught Crawford out of position to make the stop.

Another poor read by Hjalmarsson led to Lucic's second goal 51 seconds into the second period.

The Hawks got a goal from Saad a short time later to make it 2-1. It was Saad's first goal of the playoffs in his 18th game. Saad had 6 of the Hawks' 39 shots through regulation and Marian Hossa 8.

The Hawks had a chance to make it 2-2, but they failed to cash in on 1:17 of a 5-on-3 near the midpoint of the second period.

“It's never easy to lose a game when you're in the third overtime period,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “I thought that in overtime we got better. We got a little stronger.

“We had some great looks, some great opportunities and just didn't bury them. Eventually somebody is going to score a goal as fatigue sets in.”

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