While the Blackhawks were reveling in a road playoff victory Friday night, a 3-2 win over the Blues that came after two replay challenges went in the Hawks’ favor, the Blues were a few feet away under the stands at the Scottrade Center trying to explain what happened and how they felt about officials overturning Vladimir Tarasenko’s goal because of offsides on center Jari Lehtera and upholding Andrew Shaw’s power-play goal in the third period after the Blues challenged contending interference.
How they felt depended on whom you asked. Coach Ken Hitchcock had one of the strongest statements:
"When you play the defending Cup champions you’re going to have to fight through a lot of stuff," Hitchcock said. "Calls aren’t going to go your way. It’s always going to seem one-sided. … Big deal. Fight through it. If we expect to beat Chicago we're going to have to fight through more than just Chicago. They're a hell of a hockey club. They've got a lot of information on how to win. If we expect to beat them we're going to have to be better in a lot of elements and know we're going to get calls that aren't going to go our way."
Hitchcock is implying that because the Hawks are defending champions, they may be getting the benefit of the doubt on some goals. Anybody that saw Hawks coach Joel Quenneville’s 14-seconds replay system diatribe from February would know the Hawks probably disagree with Hitchcock’s sentiments.
Goaltender Brian Elliott said that the reviews and their results in and of themselves did not cost the Blues the game.
“We've got to put ourselves in a position where those calls don't make or break the game,” Elliott said. “I don’t know what the rules are any more, every play is so different.”
Winger Ryan Reaves said he wasn’t sure whether Lehtera was offsides but thought officials should have waved off Shaw’s goal.
“The goalie interference I thought it was interference. I thought the pad was getting pushed before the puck was going toward the net. The refs see it differently.”
Reaves, however, was not bemoaning the replay system after the game.
“Every sport has their reviews,” Reaves said. “Just because it’s a new thing -- we’ve got to get used to it. There’s human error in the game. You’ve got to try and get the calls right.”
Captain David Backes stopped short of criticizing the offsides call.
“I've seen that offsides a million times and ... we'll bite our tongues on it,” Backes said “It's a play where it's a critical time in a game and you hope that they're 100 percent sure with what they saw, they saw.”
As they say, there’s two sides to every story -- the Hawks just were on the jubilant side Friday.
Shaw comes up big
Lost in all the commotion Friday night was the game Shaw had for the Hawks. Not only did he fight his way through traffic in front of the net to score the go-ahead goal in the third, he screened Elliott on Keith’s goal to allow the Hawks to tie the game with 4.4 seconds remaining. It was quite the night for Shaw, who has had big moment for the Hawks in the playoffs (shin pads, anyone?).
“(Keith’s goal) doesn’t happen if ‘Shawzy’ doesn’t go to the net. Couple big plays by ‘Shawzy,’ ” winger Patrick Kane said. “Just standing in front he gets rewarded with a goal and screens the goalie on the other one. We need more of that as the series goes on.”
Shaw said he wasn’t sure if his goal was going to stand or not.
“I didn’t know if they were going to look at goalie interference or not but I knew I was crosschecked from behind,” Shaw said. “I was confident it was a goal but obviously there was some doubt there as well.”
Blue line breakdown
With Duncan Keith fresh after missing six games, it should come as no surprise that the minutes-gobbling defenseman played a team high 30 minutes, 59 seconds on Friday. Quenneville relied heavy on his top four defensemen – Niklas Hjalmarsson played 23:36, Brent Seabrook 21:14 and Trevor van Riemsdyk 21:11. Michal Rozsival played 13:02 while Viktor Svedberg played 6:46. It appears Quenneville is going heavy on four defensemen again in the playoffs.
Corsi look – top line stands out
Overall shot attempts were even 58-58. In 5-on-5 play, the Blues out-shot the Hawks 49-43 with the Hawks’ best line being the top line of Andrew Ladd, Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa. That came after Quenneville put the line out there for five defensive zone starts (though Ladd was only on the ice for four). Hossa and Ladd didn’t get on the score sheet (Toews did with an assist on Keith’s goal) but they were certainly active. Ladd ended the game with eight hits as well. The Hawks’ worst line was the Richard Panik-Teuvo Teravainen-Tomas Fleischmann third line. Perhaps that’s one reason why Teravainen had just 7:24 of ice time. The Blues’ most productive line was the line of Patrik Berglund-Alexander Steen-David Backes.
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