If indeed that loathsome and despicable traitor, Dr. Louis Kolb, slipped classified information to the Colorado Avalanche, it’s not working. Those stupid pills he gave the Blackhawks last week in Denver seem to be wearing off too.
Yes, despite all those quack physicians and blind referees, regardless of the injuries and conspiracies that threaten their very existence, the Hawks are alive and well at a time when they were scheduled to be dead and gone.
It was one thing for the Hawks to come up big for Sunday’s marathon victory, because that was the season. It was then or never, but Tuesday night surely would be different.
Which it was. The Hawks were even sharper, mentally and physically, in winning Game 4 of this Stanley Cup tournament by 6-3. The series is tied 2-2. It was supposed to be over, but it might just be starting. Go figure.
The Hawks are doing this without their regular centers, and their erstwhile team doctor too. Why, they even scored a power-play goal during a four-goal second-period burst Tuesday night against Patrick Roy. The Hawks had been 0-for-the-playoffs with a man advantage. It didn’t seem they could score with an extra puck, let alone an extra skater.
But then Bob Probert clicked on a bull rush for his second tally in five minutes off a terrific feed from Jeff Shantz for a 4-2 lead and, strange but true, this became a rout in progress. After Ethan Moreau and Eric Daze both clanked metal behind Roy, the suddenly vulnerable masked marvel yielded yet another goal to Steve Dubinsky, hardly playing like a replacement part on emergency recall.
This devotion to duty is spreading throughout the Hawks, still underdogs but really barking and biting now. Forwards are backchecking rabidly and, at the other end, they are crashing the net in waves. Roy, who likes to play all the angles, can’t see the puck through the bodies and he appears as puzzled as his mates seem rattled.
The series between these two adversaries was also tied 2-2 last spring before Colorado took over. The Hawks were deeper then, and the Avalanche was still hungry for that Stanley Cup parade. This is not to suggest that the Colorados have lost their zeal, but they know now about what an endurance the playoffs are. And if the Avalanche imagined advancing through the first round with minimal difficulty, the Hawks have altered those plans.
Probert exemplifies this work of art that is the art of work. On his first goal, he started the play by bumping until he got the puck, then passed off, then finished it off with willpower on a rebound at Roy’s doorstep. Your basic, one-dimensional, garden-variety goon can’t do all these things.
“He’s got lots of skills,” said Hawks goalie Jeff Hackett, “and he’s got that look. It’s that playoff look. Ugly. Even uglier than his February look.”
Whatever happens next, it will happen without Kolb, who quit after allegedly mishandling the injury to Alexei Zhamnov and costing team owner Bill Wirtz millions of dollars.
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“I’m just reading your paper,” Kolb said Tuesday morning. “Next to the story about me is one about how Dominik Hasek is out of the Buffalo series because of a sprained right knee.
“If Hasek were still in Chicago, you know what I’d have to call that? An earache. Everything is a big secret with the Blackhawks. By not giving out any information, or telling the truth, they think they’re going to fool everybody.”
Late in Game 4, Adam Deadmarsh, a 33-goal scorer, hobbled to the visitors’ bench after a collision with Eric Weinrich. There was no immediate bulletin on Deadmarsh’s condition, for it’s open treason season on team doctors.