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 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."
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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.
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