Colliton explains decision to play Quenneville on Blackhawks' top line
The Blackhawks made just one lineup change for Game 5 against Vegas on Tuesday, putting John Quenneville in for Alex Nylander.
The move in and of itself didn't raise that many eyebrows, but placing Quenneville on the top line with Jonathan Toews and Dominik Kubalik certainly did.
After all, the 6-foot-1, 195-pound Quenneville played in just nine regular-season games for the Hawks while appearing in 36 for Rockford.
"Well we liked him during the season," coach Jeremy Colliton said after Vegas eliminated the Hawks with a 4-3 victory. "He had a good stretch of games.
"He went down to Rockford basically because of the roster situation and he got injured and we didn't get a chance to get him up again. Came to camp and got injured again. Took us a while to sort of get him up to speed and available for us."
Colliton went with Quenneville to bulk up the lineup a bit against the hard-hitting Golden Knights. Quenneville ended up with 4 hits, 2 blocked shots and 1 shot on goal in 13:49.
Nylander, who had 10 goals and 16 assists in the regular season, finished without a point in eight playoff games. It remains to be seen if the Hawks can turn him into a consistent 200-foot player.
"He's a young player and he's trying to find consistency in his game," Colliton said Saturday. "He's given us some really solid shifts, some good games, created chances. (The puck) hasn't gone in for him, but he's definitely created some looks. ...
"It's just finding full speed away from the puck as much as possible and making strong, clean plays with it. (He needs to be) enjoying the moment and wanting to be the guy and feeling like he can make the difference, because he's certainly got all the tools to do it."
By the numbers:
Some housecleaning facts about the Blackhawks' postseason:
• Jonathan Toews now has 45 goals in the Stanley Cup playoffs over his career. His first-period goal in Game 5 on Tuesday tied him with Steve Larmer for fifth in franchise history. Toews scored five times in the Hawks' nine playoff games.
• Patrick Kane (2G, 7A) finished with 9 points, tying him with Toews for the team lead, and is third in franchise history with 132. He's fourth in goals (52) and third in assists (80).
• Dominik Kubalik had 8 points (4G, 4A), although 5 of them came in Game 1 vs. the Oilers.
• Olli Maatta (3G, 3A), Alex DeBrincat (2G, 4A) and Kirby Dach (G, 5A) tied for third on the team with 6 points each.
• Duncan Keith had 5 assists and a team-worst minus-7 rating. His average time on ice of 25:27 ranked 11th going into Wednesday's games.
• Connor Murphy finished with 4 assists in the first playoff appearance of his career.
• Alex Nylander and Adam Boqvist were the only Hawks who did not record a point (minimum three games played).
• Corey Crawford finished with a .907 save percentage and career-worst 3.31 goals-against average.
• The Hawks killed off 21 of 27 power plays (77.8 percent). That success rate improves to 87 percent (20 of 23) if you remove Game 1 against Edmonton when the Oilers went 3-for-4.