Chicago 365 Stanley Cup Central: We Have Met The Enemy, and He is No Slouch(for most of the game anyway)

     Last night was Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, and for the first two periods, it really looked like the Bolts had us on the run. They fired one in past Crawford 4 minutes in, and then spent the next two Periods out-skating and out-playing the Blackhawks. Finally the Hawks broke through 13 minutes into the 3rd Period when Teuvo Teravainen shot one past Ben Bishop. 1:58 later, the Hawks would strike again with Antoine Vermette scoring on a goal set up by Teravainen. Crawford once again defended the net from a flurry of last minute shots, and the Hawks won to take a 1-0 lead in the series. In the lead up to the Final, much had been said about the Lightning's advantages, and that their dispatching of 3 Original Six teams served notice on the Hawks. And I will tell you, for the first 2 periods, I saw what they were talking about. In short:

     (Thank you Dennis Green). But then the craziest thing happened at the end of the game. All of a sudden the Hawks started finding opportunities. I've heard some comments attribute that to Tampa merely trying to hold on to the victory instead of putting the team away. If that's true, it's not good. If you're playing a team, you've gotta play to win. You've gotta play to kill EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. You can't let up for one minute, even if you're nursing a 3 goal lead.

     All week I've been eschewing talk of this being a short series, but if Tampa continues to let up while they're only nursing a 1 goal lead, this is going to be a 4-game sweep and we'll be having a parade next week. If the Lightning find their tenacity from the beginning of the game, this Final could easily go 7 games with many overtimes in between. What kind of series will we get? I guess we'll have to wait till the puck drops on Game 2(6:15 on Saturday) to find out.

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