Setting off the usual litany of wailing cats in the blogosphere, Coach Joel Quenneville altered his lineup for Game 3 and pretty much fixed what ailed the Blackhawks in Game 2.
You can pick apart the play of Michal Rozsival or Kris Versteeg or Brad Richards, but at the end of the day, the Hawks lost Game 2 because they weren’t very hard to play against and their goalie had a very bad night.
So Quenneville extracted rookies Joakim Nordstrom and Teuvo Teravainen from his forward lines, and inserted Antoine Vermette and Andrew Desjardins.
And he replaced Corey Crawford with Scott Darling.
You definitely have to attribute some of the 4-2 win to the Hawks being back on home ice, and Nashville being without captain and top defenseman Shea Weber. Still, Desjardins was more than noticeable, scoring the Hawks’ first goal, and making plays all game.
Desjardins formed a really effective fourth line with Andrew Shaw and Marcus Kruger. Really effective, as in tough as nails to play against, keeping Nashville pinned in their end for long stretches—exactly what the Hawks need to do to take control of this series.
This, in turn, was made possible by playing Vermette between Bryan Bickell and Patrick Sharp. No Vermette, in his typical low-maintenance style, did not light up the scoresheet. But he helped Joel Quenneville leverage a growing mismatch at center—especially with Mike Fisher out of the Nashville lineup. And he allowed Shaw to flop to a wing, where he can be much more effective forechecking and agitating.
By the end of the game, the Preds were tired and frustrated and incessantly chirping at the refs and the Hawks. Exactly where the Hawks want them going in to Game 4. For sure, Preds Coach Peter LaViolette will address these issues, and he might even have some approximation of Fisher in the lineup as well. But the Hawks worked the formula they needed to in Game 3 about to perfection.
Timely goals, big hits, solid goaltending and really good defense up and down the ice. The backchecking was tremendous. Defensive zone play was overall solid—including Rozsival and Kimmo Timonen for the most part.
The Hawks (mostly in the person of Bickell) also delivered some more big hits on Nashville defensemen, a fact that, especially in the absence of Weber, may only add to the Preds’ fatigue and frustration.
Darling was very good. Only Mike Ribeiro’s point blank goal could be called remotely soft—and that’s a stretch. The Chicago rookie’s overall body of work in these playoffs speaks for itself. 7 periods, 2 goals. And that’s under a fairly significant barrage of shots. It’s probably safe to say, the net is Darling’s until he has a bad outing, at which point, titular #1 Corey Crawford will definitely get another shot.
And that’s the bottom line: the playoffs are a long slog, and with the roster options Quenneville has, he is going to tweak and adjust more than once.
Maybe it’s time fans and bloggers (especially) lightened up a bit. The guy kinda knows what he’s doing. Yep, Versteeg will make some incredibly beef-headed plays. Rozsival’s running on fumes. But these guys also aren’t learning on the job and both can be tough to play against at times. And both were yesterday.
The results speak for themselves.
I’ll be back with a Game 4 preview tomorrow.
JJ
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