Two years ago, the Blackhawks lost game 2 of their first round playoff series versus Nashville. In that game, Chicago was essentially blitzkrieged by Nashville’s speed and aggression up the ice.
Last night, the Blackhawks lost Game 1 of the 2017 first round to the same team—and the glass half full crowd will emphasize “just barely…—due to a smothering defense and a Nashville strategy of sitting back, jamming up the neutral zone and covering the Hawks like glue.
After the game, one Chicago beat reporter tweeted that if it weren’t for Pekka Rinne playing that well, Chicago would have won and it bodes well for the rest of the series. I responded, and I still believe, that is inaccurate: Rinne didn’t have to work very hard at all. It was Nashville’s smothering defense that made the difference.
And here’s the deal on this series, the fact that the Hawks are down 1-0 after losing a game like last night’s is not that big of a deal. Nashville’s strategy, if they continue it, is playing with fire. But Nashville, by laying in front of everything the Hawks tried to put on net, doggedly defending every man and contesting every puck, and jamming up the neutral zone, is going to force the Hawks to play a game they don’t like to.
More dump and chase, cycling down low, bodies to the net. Grind, grind, grind. It’s that simple.
Nashville is not going to try to get into a track meet with the Hawks, at least not early on in the series (if they get the Hawks tired, discouraged or taking lots of penalties, they will).
Nashville and their fans should feel good this morning. They went up a game, and for now have wrested home ice advantage. And Peter Laviolette, a good NHL coach, applied the perfect game plan for a road playoff win in Chicago.
I’ve been saying this all year here: regular season hockey, and therefore regular season success, is not a completely accurate barometer of playoff hockey and playoff success. Laviolette recognizes, like a few other NHL coaches do (at minimum), the Hawks have some weaknesses. Most notably, they don’t have a lot of big, all-terrain forwards—and as a result, they prefer to rely on the pretty passing play, speed and transition. So he took that away from them.
I give full marks to the Hawks, with the team they iced last night, for taking it hard to Nashville after the first period. They came close and Nashville knows it. And that is how this series is going to go.
What options does that leave Joel Quenneville with? Hard to say. You might see the insertion of an Andrew Desjardins or a Dennis Rasmussen in place of say Nick Schmaltz, and that might help. You might see a little line juggling involving the first and third lines.
But the likely game plan is going to be: get ready to go to war from the opening horn, as opposed to 20 minutes in.
Game 2 is as close as a must win as you’re going to get to before a Game 7. The Hawks have been here many times before and they are on home ice. But the opponent isn’t exactly rolling over because the Great Chicago Blackhawks are on the ice either.
I’ll preview tomorrow.
JJ