It’s not the altitude, it’s the attitude.
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When the Blackhawks began this Stanley Cup tournament, they played like chickens without heads and wound up with Denver omelets on their faces. Sunday begged for something different, bordering on desperate.
So the Hawks put their pants on one leg at a time, lined up with backs against the wall, dug deep as if there were no tomorrow, went to the drawing board and came up with a truly novel approach. Voila! Smart hockey, would you believe?
Amazing, what wondrous results ensued from actually playing according to a plan instead of without a clue. The Hawks stunned the Colorado Avalanche 4-3 at the United Center on Sergei Krivokrasov’s score at 11:03 of the fifth period against Patrick Roy, the league’s big-money goalie.
Next thing you know, the Cubs will win a game.
These weren’t even the same Hawks who shot themselves in the blades and incurred all those brain cramps during the series opener. These Hawks were so depleted that they went with Savard, Shantz, Miller & Dubinsky, not exactly the ideal law firm to defend against the champions’ mighty middle.
But all four centers were more than serviceable, and their mates were just as willing to join the fun, and what an entertaining four-hour marathon it was. Too bad it occurred before hundreds of empty seats, one of them not warmed by Tiger Woods, who was scheduled to attend between visits to two local institutions–Bulls on Saturday, Oprah on Monday.
“Met him here last night,” said Hawks captain Chris Chelios, “and I think Michael took him golfing instead of here.”
There was idle discussion, if he showed, of putting the young genius with the Masters’ degree in the intermission puck shoot. Or, better yet, suit him up. The Hawks need all the hand-eye coordination they can muster against Roy.
This problem reared again early in the second period, when the Hawks were outplaying, even outworking, Colorado. Yet there was Patrick stoning James Black, who fired on net despite being hooked with Chicago shorthanded. But not for long. On the power play, Tony Amonte bore in alone, fanned as Roy went thataway, and still the world’s greatest goalie extended his stick to halt Amonte’s second crack.
In other words, it could have been 5-1 or 6-1 Hawks instead of just 3-1 before the Avalanche stormed to tie 3-3 with two goals in the last 6 minutes of regulation. The Hawks at long last realize it will take a near-perfect game to beat Colorado, they were working on one, and that doesn’t mean it has to be a no-hitter.
When delusional, the Hawks imagine that the Colorado players don’t like being bumped. Well, who does? Furthermore, the Avalanche didn’t win it all last June by skating figure 8s. By way of proving as much, the Colorados did some heavy grunt work to forge a tie, and you’d have bet that Roy would swallow rubber until Tuesday rather than yield.
But Patrick, the king of overtime, was in fact solved by the Hawks again in sudden death. They played Colorado 77 extra minutes plus in last year’s postseason, and nailed him twice, one by Krivokrasov, the other by Jeremy Roenick.
Only when half the Hawks landed in the locker room Sunday did they discover that referee Bill McCreary was on the phone, reviewing the winner. What is this? Why us? Every time we score, the referee has to call for a pizza?
“If we’d have had to come back out,” said coach Craig Hartsburg, “we’d have just had to score again.”
Remarkable how the confidence soars when a team ignores its wounds, forgets this tiresome persecution complex with officials, and just plays hard.