The immediate fear when playing the Chicago Blackhawks is that they are going to smother you with offensive pressure, beat you with speed, and run up the score.
There is one thing that Kings fans have dreaded for several years now, and that is teams with a ton of speed.
We saw some of that speed on display yesterday afternoon from the Hawks. However, what we also saw was a Los Angeles Kings team that looked fully prepared to deal with it and also utilize some speed of their own in creating chances.
Overall the Kings limited the Blackhawks to just 20 shots, mainly from low scoring areas, AKA outside the slot.
They also out-possessed the Hawks at evens. Which is going to be huge in this series if the Kings want success.
Thanks to Extra Skater for the chart.
Despite the 3-1 loss the Kings played exactly the kind of game they needed to play to beat the Hawks. It was a competitive 60-minute affair, with a few fortunate bounces going both ways. In the end Chicago got the better end of it, but it doesn't mean they were the better team necessarily. The Blackhawks seem to be content with that though. The Kings attempted to hem the Hawks into their own zone as much as possible, taking away their speed with outright possession numbers. Where it fell short was finishing. Chicago was also masterful on the counter attack when they needed to be and got some fantastic goaltending from Corey Crawford, who is going to be a huge X-factor in this series. Los Angeles had numerous outnumbered rushes, exposing the lack of speed from the Blackhawks bottom lines. Kruger, Handzus, Regin, Bollig, Smith and Versteeg all had pretty uneventful and nervy games.
For once it felt like speed was not going to be an issue for the Kings and may in fact be a benefit. Quennville saw the same thing apparently.
I thought we had some that were restricted, but they’re a good off-the-rush team. They create rush chances themselves. Just because you’re going one way doesn’t mean you’re going back the other way. I think we have to respect that knowing we don’t want to get into a complete rush game with them, knowing the quality is going to be higher end with them. It’s all going to be determined by how well we check. We have to do things quick, quick, quick, whether it’s puck movement or indirect play. I think we have to use their speed.
So are you getting a feel for how this series might go?
Speed both ways, counter attacks, odd-man rushes...I think we already saw more scoring chances in a limited number of shots than the entire first half of the Kings/Ducks series.
To me it's the right game for the Kings to play. We saw last year just how badly the Kings were beaten on the rush. They did not have the horses up front or on the blueline to deal with the Hawks counter attack. This year though, it seems a little bit different. Not only are the Kings currently skating with four pretty mobile defenseman, they have new forwards up front who can also play with speed, finish plays off, and counter as well. In particular, the Carter/Toffoli/Pearson line was fantastic. We didn't see the finish yesterday however, but the chances they created were Grade-A. It's only a matter of time. If the Hawks and Corey Crawford can sustain allowing those chances all series and still manage to win, then the better team moves on no doubt. If I'm a Kings fan though I'm okay with the effort overall. It's going to be a series of capitalizing on chances, and when the time comes the hope is that the big money players come through for the Kings.
It's obviously only one game but the overall feel is positive in my eyes. They out chanced the Hawks, they out possessed them, arguably they outplayed them, but what matters is they didn't outscore them. That's fine though, normally if you do 2-3 of those things you will get number four to come through. Hockey is stupid sometimes though. I'm starting to think that this Hawks team is going to go only as far as Corey Crawford takes them, and so far he has been phenomenal. I'm also interested to see how that Toews/Oduya match up on the Kopitar line plays out/ It worked well for Chicago in Game 1. Can they keep it up? We'll see. Can the Kings keep up their style of play and actually finish some chances? We'll see. It's only Game 1 and there is a ton of hockey left to be played. So far though, as a fan of the game in general I like the way this series is shaping up. Should be a good one.
Kings fans do you like the way Game 1 looked? How about you Hawks fans? Are you content with the style and flow that your team played with?
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