Playoff primer: Blackhawks, Ducks have been here before

Send a link to a friend  Share

[May 16, 2015]  The Sports Xchange
 
 CHICAGO -- There shouldn't be any complaints about lingering soreness or fatigue for the start of the Western Conference finals between the Blackhawks and Ducks.

By the time the puck is dropped for Game 1 on Sunday at the Honda Center, the Blackhawks will have waited 10 days from their second-round sweep of the Wild. The Ducks will have nearly a week's worth of rest from their triumph against the Flames.

"It's been a long time," Chicago forward Patrick Sharp said prior to the Blackhawks departing for California. "It's been a long week. You take the rest when you can get it, but we're to the point where we're trying to simulate game situations (in practice) and get the body feeling like we can play a game. We'll be ready to go for Game 1."

The Ducks said the same, and that includes right wing Corey Perry, whose 15 points leads all scorers in the playoffs. Perry took a hit to the right leg in the Ducks' series-clinching win in Game 5 against the Flames and missed practices Wednesday and Thursday. Coach Bruce Boudreau expects him to play.

"Like I'd said (Tuesday), we had six days off ... there's no sense rushing him," Boudreau told reporters Thursday. "I'm pretty sure he'll be on the ice (for practice Friday)."

The Blackhawks won't have veteran defenseman Michal Rozsival, for this series or the Stanley Cup Final should Chicago advance, after he broke his left ankle in Game 4 against the Wild.

Rozsival's absence creates an interesting situation for the Blackhawks, who'd already pared the bulk of playing time on the blue line to mainly five defensemen.

Rozsival's 17:26 a game will not be easily replaced. David Rundblad, 23, will make his NHL playoffs debut, but neither he nor 40-year old Kimmo Timonen are expected to handle much of the vacated minutes. Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville is expected to lean heavily on Keith, Brent Seabrook, Johnny Oduya and Niklas Hjalmarsson, his top four defenders.

The Blackhawks are allowing about three more shots a game than they're putting on net themselves, so it's a situation that should be watched closely.

It didn't hinder Chicago against Minnesota, though. The Blackhawks swept a hot team by staying patient, getting great goaltending from Corey Crawford and scoring opportunistic goals. They'll need more of the same against the Ducks, whom they beat two out of three times in the regular season.

"We played them a long time ago, so they're probably a totally different team," said Blackhawks right wing Patrick Kane, who only trails Perry by two points for the lead in the postseason scoring race. "You can take some notes from those games, other things like power play, penalty kill, some tendencies here and there. I think we'll scout what they did more recently in the playoffs and try to build off that."

[to top of second column]

MATCHUPS TO WATCH

ANAHEIM'S FORECHECK AGAINST CHICAGO'S DEFENSEMEN: The Blackhawks' defense corps is razor thin after the loss of Rozsival for the rest of the playoffs. They're going to have the top four soak up the bulk of minutes, which means Keith will likely play even more than the 30:37 he averaged through the first two rounds. Seabrook, Oduya and Hjalmarsson will also get higher workloads and they'll all be exposed to more hits and physical play. The Ducks are a much bigger team than the Blackhawks and they know how damaging it could be if Chicago loses even one of those top four defensemen to an injury. Anaheim will likely try to chip pucks behind the Blackhawks' defensemen and become heat-seeking missiles afterward, looking for any kind of contact they can get. The only problem with that strategy is the Blackhawks see it all season long from teams like the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets, so they know how to exploit it to create odd-man rushes the other direction.

COREY CRAWFORD VS. FREDERIK ANDERSEN: The goalies don't get shot attempts against each other, but their performances will be stacked side-to-side for comparison. Each team has high-end talent and is capable of producing good scoring chances off rushes, so the series could easily come down to goaltending. Whichever goalie is best at thwarting those odd-man rushes might just be the winning goalie at the end of it all. Andersen's been solid through the first two series for the Ducks, going 8-1 with a 1.96 goals-against average, while Crawford had to rebound from a shaky start in the first round. After allowing nine goals in his first four periods of action against Nashville and getting benched for the final four games of that series, Crawford allowed just seven total goals in the Blackhawks' second-round sweep of the Wild.

-----------------------------------------------

[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Back to top