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2015 STANLEY CUP FINALS GAME 1
Chicago Blackhawks at Tampa Bay Lightning 8PM Eastern/7 Central NBC/CBC/TVA
Projected Lineup (Chicago)
Saad-Toews-Kane Bickell-Richards-Hossa Sharp-Vermette-Teravainen Desjardins-Kruger-Shaw
Keith-Hjalmarsson Oduya-Seabrook
The above pairings will play the bulk of the game. When Kyle Cumiskey and David Rundblad play, typically they will partner as follows:
Cumiskey-Seabrook Oduya-Rundblad
Crawford
THE BUZZ
It's always funny how the tone and narratives of a series will change from Game 1 to Game 6 or 7, often more than once.
This series is being set up by the media as a match of speed versus speed, the legitimate best of the west versus the beast of the east. And all that is somewhat valid.
I would expect the typical game 1 home team advantage, an electric (pardon the pun) crowd, a lot of adrenaline. The Hawks have been here before many times, sometimes with good results and sometimes not so good. But the prescription is: weather the storm, take care of business, assert yourselves when the other team comes off the adrenaline high.
The Blackhawk forward lines from practice yesterday perhaps provide some insight on Joel Quenneville's plans in this series.
THE MATCHUPS
All of this could be off, due to other decisions the coaches might make. But the following are my hunches based on how the lines were at practice yesterday and how Joel Quenneville typically likes to use various players, lines and pairings.
Patrick Kane remains on the top line with Jonathan Toews and Brandon Saad. You can pretty much guarantee that Viktor Hedman and Anton Stralman will be out against this line much of the night.
As far as forwards, I'm not sure who Jon Cooper will send out, but I think it has to be Val Fillipula and Steve Stamkos, as Toews will have a dramatic faceoff advantage against any other Lightning center, except the glacial Brian Boyle, which would be a huge speed mismatch favoring Chicago.
But that is the forward matchup Joel Quenneville wants, as he definitely wants Stamkos to always have the speed of his opposing wing, Brandon Saad, on his mind. Saad repeatedly burned Corey Perry in games 6 and 7 of the WCF with breakaways and odd-man rushes coming the other way.
I think you will see Brent Seabrook and Johnny Oduya playing often against Fillipula, Alex Killorn and Stamkos.
Personally, I can see these lines and pairings cancelling eachother out to a large degree, a real chess match. The Hawks will try, as Detroit did with great success, to push Stamkos out from the net, and increase the average distance of his shots, and Joel Quenneville has the players in this matchup to do it. Further, with Saad and Kane on the wings, a far cry from Kevin Hayes and Rick Nash, Killorn and Stamkos will have to constantly think defense.
I suspect you will see either Cedric Paquette's third line or Brian Boyle's fourth line out against Brad Richards, Marian Hossa and Bryan Bickell. My hunch is more Boyle than Paquette. The question is, does Cooper try to counter the speed of Hossa with Paquette's line, or the size of Hossa and Bickell with Boyle's. This is a "new" line for Chicago, just cobbled together for Game 6 and 7 of the WCF. One thing this line was able to do against the Ducks was maintain offensive zone pressure and cycle. And Richards is the kind of crafty lefty centerman needed to get Hossa the puck in shooting position.
I think Joel Quenneville is going to try primarily to counter the Triplets with Marcus Kruger, Andrew Shaw and Andrew Desjardins. If the Hawks have a pure shutdown line, this is it. Tampa will have a slight speed advantage, but Shaw and Kruger are above average skaters. The thinking here is the best way to defend Johnson, Palat and Kucherov is force them to defend as much as possible.
To me, the real X factor in this series, and really in many Blackhawk series, is . . . Kruger. By games 5-7 of the Anaheim series, Kruger was clearly driving Perry and Ryan Kesler insane. Look at the line that Quenneville had out in all the pressure defensive situations, and defending leads at the end of games in the WCF, it was Kruger's.
This is a great forechecking line, miserable to play against, and they are very effective on the cycle. But I think you will see Kruger's line against Fillipula and Stamkos. And I think you will see Antoine Vermette's line out against the Triplets some—especially in the Chicago zone where Quenneville will want to leverage a significant faceoff advantage with Vermette vs. Johnson.
And that, to me, is Quenneville's plan in this series: keep Tampa bottled up as much as possible in their end. I said this in the Minnesota preview, and there are parallels here. Keeping Minnesota stuck defending in their end was the key to that series for Chicago. It is the same thing here, with Tampa having a similar puck-moving defense and speed forwards.
The perfunctory (and mostly incorrect) diagnosis of this series is it's purely speed on speed. It's not. The Hawks can play a speed game, but they beat speed teams by stopping their transition before it starts, and wearing them down with line after line that can effectively cycle, defensemen who know how and when to pinch and forwards who rotate back appropriately.
Can they pull it off against the Lightning? We'll see.
Recap tomorrow.
JJ