The Stanley Cup Playoffs are often filled with a series of emotional swings, breathtaking moments, and magnificent finishes. The thought of your favorite team coming out on top is enough to raise hairs on the back of a hockey fan’s neck. While on the other hand, the sheer realization of your team being eliminated can bring tears to one’s eyes.
Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals was no disappointment, whether you were a mere spectator watching on, or a die-hard fan.
With a two-goal lead 38 minutes into Game 2, the Blackhawks looked like a team destined to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup, their third in the last five seasons. The always resilient Los Angeles Kings had other plans. After only scoring one goal in the first 4 1/2 periods of the series, the Kings tallied 15 goals, taking a strangle-hold on the defending champs with a 3-1 advantage.
The beginning of Game 5 looked extremely familiar to Blackhawks fans, as their team came out with an abundance of energy and excitement in front of a sold-out crowd at the United Center. In the process, they scored two goals in the first 3:40 of the opening period. One coming from Brent Seabrook on the powerplay, the other coming off the stick of fellow blueliner Johnny Oduya.
Darryl Sutter‘s club was getting out-worked in every facet of the game, and was struggling to generate any offensive output. For a team having battled themselves out of a 3-0 hole in the opening round of this year’s playoffs against the San Jose Sharks, you expected a push-back from California’s only team remaining in the run for the Stanley Cup.
And that’s exactly what they did.
L.A. found themselves on the scoresheet thanks to Jarret Stoll, whose hard-working effort brought the visitors within one with just under the halfway point of period one. Were the Blackhawks going to allow the Kings to swing momentum once again, in a game that could possibly end their season? Well, of course not.
The Madhouse on Madison was rocking soon after, due to a great effort from the second line of Patrick Kane, Andrew Shaw, and Brandon Saad. Saad banged home Shaw’s rebound past Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick after Kane’s pesky fore-check to regain the two-goal lead eleven minutes into the first.
They say that the worst lead to defend in the National Hockey League on home-ice is by two goals, one that frankly has haunted the Chicago Blackhawks this postseason. In fact, the Hawks have squandered this very same lead three times already in the 2014 Playoffs. Los Angeles applied pressure once again through the three zones, leading to Marian Gaborik firing a puck through the body of Corey Crawford, registering his 11th goal of the postseason, a total that ranks third all-time in Kings franchise history.
As the horn sounded at the end of the thrilling 20 minutes of play, the Hawks managed to hang onto a mere 3-2 lead.
Early in the second period, the Kings would show the hockey world exactly why they have earned the nickname “The Comeback Kids.” Captain Dustin Brown battled his way through the blue paint and struck home a puck that fluttered off the body of Crawford on the initial shot from Gaborik 11:08 into the second frame. Make that four times that the Blackhawks have given up a two-goal lead in the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The game was evened up at 3.
Exactly two minutes later, a shot from Tanner Pearson at the top of the right circle eluded the blocker of Crawford to give the Kings a 4-3 lead. An extremely soft goal allowed by the goaltender that had excelled through the first two rounds of the Playoffs sucked the life out of the United Center. It was do-or-die time for Corey Crawford and the Chicago Blackhawks: they could either feel sorry for themselves or attempt to get back in the game as they headed into the locker room after the second period ended.
25-year-old Ben Smith took matters into his own hands when Quick allowed a juicy rebound to fly off his pads off of a shot from the point, allowing Smith to fire home the rebound just 77 seconds into the third. The 2013 Stanley Cup Champions weren’t ready to have their season ended so abruptly as it was now a 4-4 game. It would remain that way as the remaining minutes of regulation ticked down. Chances at both ends ensued, but to no avail despite two teams doing whatever it took to give their respective club the lead.
Game 5 would require extra time for an eventual outcome.
What transpired in the opening overtime period was twenty minutes filled with passion and determination to its core. End-to-end chances resulted into only nine stoppages of play. It was a hard-working sequence of events, as the referees allowed the players to play, as playoff hockey should be. Quick and Crawford seemed to be at their absolute peak of performance throughout, failing to give in to the excess pressure that is sudden death overtime. The best chance of the first OT came from Gaborik while he was a foot outside the crease, back-handing a shot among several bodies towards the Chicago net but Crawford knocked it away with his mask.
For the second consecutive year, the Blackhawks and Kings found themselves needing double overtime to finish Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals. In 2013, Patrick Kane scored the game-winning goal to complete the hat-trick and clinched a berth to the Stanley Cup for the Hawks.
In 2014, the outcome was similar, but different in many aspects as well.
2 minutes into the fifth period, Brandon Saad took the puck wide in the Kings zone, and twisted a pass towards the opposite side, where 37-year-old Michal Handzus beat Mike Richards to the puck and took it in stride for a mini-breakaway, roofing the puck past Quick’s glove into the top corner. The United Center erupted as the red light flashed, knowing their team lives to fight another day.
Talk about a wild Wednesday night.
The Kings still maintain the lead in the series at 3-2, but the Hawks certainly have the momentum going into Game 6 at the Staples Center, puck drops at 9:00 ET on Friday.
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