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Rozner: Summer comes early for Chicago Blackhawks

It has been customary in recent years to expect two months of postseason hockey in Chicago.

This one lasted 13 days.

The Blackhawks won't have to worry about another short summer as they fell to the Blues 3-2 in Game 7 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, losing the deciding game after an inspiring comeback from down 3-1 to tie the series.

All that's left now is to clean out their lockers and begin making tee times - and wonder what went so wrong.

It's the first time the Hawks have gone out in the first round since 2012, when they lost in six games to the Coyotes. They also lost in seven games in the first round to the Canucks in 2011.

Every other series since 2009 has resulted in a Stanley Cup victory (3) or a loss in the conference finals (2).

And it is certainly not what they wanted.

"This is the best time of the season," said Brent Seabrook. "We don't want to go home yet."

The Hawks' ability to get back in series they appear to be out of is legendary at this point, and their track record with backs against the wall is remarkable, but the reality in this case is they let a series get away from them early and the task became more than they could handle.

Through six games, you could have argued the Hawks were the better team in four of them, but they also won two games in which the Blues were clearly the better team.

That's postseason hockey. Skip a shift here or there, miss a pass or letdown for a moment, and you can get eliminated rather quickly.

The Hawks have played in and won so many games like this one during an amazing decade of hockey that you really can't be surprised anymore when they extend a series or complete a comeback.

And to most it will be shocking that they are done for the season.

But it was also far too simplistic to suggest that this is just what they do, that they stave off elimination or win the crucial swing game because they are the Hawks and it had to go their way.

Players still have to skate and bleed and sweat and fight through the incomprehensible fatigue, expressing their desire to keep playing despite everything in their bodies telling them to let go of the rope and call it a season.

That is the part they can never properly express, the pain they must endure to climb only small steps up this mountain, but they do it for a reason.

Playing in their 15th elimination in the last seven years, the Hawks fell to 11-4 when facing the end of their season.

That number doesn't even include the ridiculous amount of times they were down 2-1 in a series and had to win Game 4, as they did against Tampa and Boston in the Stanley Cup Final of 2015 and 2013.

But these are all just numbers and they can't possibly explain the heart and character it takes to push through the burning in your quads, when your body implores you to go take a seat, but the mind insists you block one more shot.

This agonizing defeat will be boiled down into numbers and simplified into sound bites, but it doesn't properly credit the mettle of men who fight for one another and a sweater that means much more to them than jersey sales.

That this is now the 18th year without a repeat champion should tell you all you need to know about how difficult it is, and it shouldn't be at all surprising that it didn't happen again.

So the defending champs are no more, exhausted and beat up and desperate to go on holiday for an extended vacation.

They played this series like a team that needs it.

The champs are no more. Long live the champs.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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

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