Before anyone accuses me of it, I am not blaming Antti Niemi for last night’s loss by the Blackhawks. In fact, I thought he played reasonably well, and he certainly gave his team a good chance to win. No, this is more about the Blackhawks as a team and how after one bad goal they let the game get completely away from them.
At the time of the game-tying goal by J.P. Dumont in the early minutes of the third period, the Blackhawks has been in control of the game for most of the preceding 40 minutes. Then....
At that point in the game, the Chicago Blackhawks had 22 shots on net compared to just 13 for the Predators. It’s a perfect of example of how tremendous goaltending on end of the ice can turn the tables in a game, especially when there’s a fluke, soft goal allowed on the other side.
Yet this isn’t just about the one bad goal. What happened after the goal is the story of the game, as the life was sucked out of the home crowd and the Blackhawks themselves, who managed just four shots on net the rest of the game. The Predators would take control in the third period after Dumont’s goal, taking 13 shots and scoring three goals (two empty-netters).
The Blackhawks cannot allow one bad goal to affect their performance in a game, especially if they have hopes of heading to the Stanley Cup finals and especially if they’ll be riding with Antti Niemi along the way. Perhaps it was just too deflating to have worked so hard against a spectacular effort by Pekka Rinne, only to have the game turnaround on one backhanded flutter puck.