Blackhawks vs Preds Game 5 Recap: Hawks in 6
The Blackhawks had a chance to close out the Preds last night and they couldn’t take advantage. Instead of sitting back this weekend and watching the Blues and Wild murder each other, the Blackhawks will have to play Game 6 at home because they didn’t take care of business in Nashville. Credit to the Preds, they staved off elimination and won their last home game of the year.
A few quick notes:
–There is no goalie controversy after last night. I got a lot of tweets asking if the Hawks should go back to Crawford and the answer is no. Darling played well. Can’t really put any of the goals on him. Definitely deserves to be back in there for Game 6.
–Rozsival was not good last night. Much harder to get him on the ice in favorable situations on the road and it has shown. He’s struggled in all three games in Nashville.
–Timonen, another game with under 10 mins of ice time. I feel like I am just beating a dead horse here, but I can’t figure this out. He’s been relatively solid when on the ice, but his ice time is severely restricted. Are his 8-10 mins more valuable than the 12-15 you could get from Cumiskey or Rundblad? Is Kimmo so good in the room and on the bench that he has value that can’t be measured? The Hawks are asking a lot of Keith-Seabrook-Oduya-Hjalmarsson and maybe they’d be more effective with a couple extra minutes of rest.
–Patrick Kane finally did something that looked like Patrick Kane
Hopefully this is something that gets him going because the Bickell-Richards-Kane line, despite their two goals, was pretty ineffective. Same goes for the Sharp-Vermette-Versteeg. The Hawks are going to need more from those guys if they want to make a run at the Cup.
–Carrie Underwood finally made an appearance
Body shaming a guy for going TOFTB. Pretty stuck up, imo.
Ok, I forgive you.
The Hawks let one slip away last night, but there’s no reason to be worried. The Hawks will close out this series on home-ice Saturday night. Nice little effort from the Preds, but they’re at least a year away from being a real contender in the Central Division. I tried hard to hate them and even after Ribeiro running around and Seth Jones flopping hard at the end of the game last night I still think they’re a cute little team and a silly franchise. Hawks in 6.