The Chicago Blackhawks managed to outshoot the Los Angeles Kings 17-2 in the first period, but were down 1-0 after conceding a hard to swallow goal.
That had the potential to be a demoralizing and game changing incident, but the Blackhawks didn’t let it get under their skin.
“Obviously it’s not the score we’d like after a first period, but we knew there was a lot of hockey left to be played,” Chicago’s Duncan Keith said. “We were happy with the way we played other than that goal.”
Keith added that he thought they “did a good job just sticking with it, regrouping after that period, knowing that we had a pretty strong period. Just tried to keep going from that, stick with it.”
For a team that didn’t deal with a ton of adversity during the regular season, they certainly are responding ideally to it in the playoffs. They bounced back from a 3-1 series deficit against Detroit in the second round and were able to stay focused after a controversial disallowed goal late in Game 7.
That should be a big asset against the Los Angeles Kings because odds are most of the games in this series are going to go down to the wire.