Blackhawks win third Stanley Cup in six years.
CHICAGO — The guy who seemingly never left the ice in the Stanley Cup playoffs made sure the Chicago Blackhawks didn’t have to play another game.
Duncan Keith, the Winnipeg-born defenceman who is 31 years old and has played about that many minutes a night, scored near the end of the second period to give Chicago a lead in a game of missed opportunities, and the Blackhawks held on for a 2-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning that gave them their third Stanley Cup in just six seasons.
Patrick Kane applied the dagger off a perfect setup from Brad Richards with five minutes left in the game to seal the deal. It was the first time the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on home ice since 1938, and the building exulted in the game’s closing minutes.
“For Duncs to open the scoring, and Kaner to finish it off, I mean you couldn’t write it any better,” said Chicago captain Jonathan Toews, on the ice after the game.
The Blackhawks, who came into the game with a record of 42-14 in Games 4-7 of the playoffs since 2009, added another late-series victory, but it was not for a lack of trying on Tampa Bay’s part.
“Obviously you draw from some of the things that you’ve done before,” said Chicago defenceman Johnny Oduya before the game about his team’s ability to thrive in high-pressure games.
“I think the strength is the mindset where you need to be present, you need to want to win more than having the fear,” he said.
The Lightning, of whom coach Jon Cooper said proved they were also a team of “gamers” already in these playoffs with comeback wins over Detroit and a flawless Game 7 victory over the New York Rangers, hung with the Blackhawks through most of two periods at a predictably raucous United Center, with 22,242 fans in attendance and a good 22,000 of them wearing Chicago jerseys.
Steven Stamkos, the brilliant Tampa captain who entered Game 6 without a goal in the final, promptly rang a shot off the post in the first period. In the second period, he had a chance that was typical of the series: sprung on a potential breakaway by a home-run pass, Stamkos gathered the puck in the slot in front of Chicago goalie Corey Crawford, then slowed, deked right, and was met by Crawford’s outstretched pad.
It was that kind of final for Stamkos: a post here, a puck off the shaft of a defenceman’s stick there. Close, but. Always the but.
“It’s the old cliché of the game of inches,” Cooper said before Game 6. “(But) you make your own breaks. These guys have been gaming games out through this whole playoffs.”
Though the Lightning had been outshot 13-4 in the first period thanks in part to two Chicago power plays, halfway through the second, the Blackhawks had yet to register a shot on goal, though they had some chances, thanks in part to Ben Bishop’s occasional adventures while trying to play the puck.
Chicago had its chances, too, including a Teuvo Teravainen shot at an open net that Bishop just managed to deflect with the toe of his skate. Not long after that, Patrick Kane slipped a pass along the goalmouth to Toews, who lost his balance but still managed to shovel the puck toward the open side of the net. Bishop, again, got a pad in front of it.
As the second period wore on, Chicago ratcheted up the pressure. Trevor van Riemsdyk’s point shot was deflected just wide by Antoine Vermette. Keith fired another shot from the point, saved by Bishop, who almost — but didn’t — spill the rebound.
The United Center crowd roared and moaned, and you could sense the dam about to burst. Keith, such a machine, took another point shot, just wide.
And then, pow. With just under three minutes left in the second, Kane, in the middle of a scoring drought of his own, collected a Richards pass just inside the Tampa blue line.
He waited, beautifully, and flipped the patient pass to an oncoming Keith, who snapped a low shot that Bishop saved. Keith stayed with it and buried the rebound high over the prone goaltender. The building shook. As it does.
“I think we always like to think we get better and better as the series goes along,” Toews had said earlier. “We get into these later games where we have the chance to play these games that are more meaningful, I think that’s when we play our best.”
Kane said on Monday that the Blackhawks, champions now in 2010, 2013 and 2015, have the same goal every year: win a bunch of games and have a chance to be playing late in the playoffs.
“Does it happen every year? No,” he said. But we have a pretty good group in here, a lot of leadership, a lot of experience, a lot of guys that have been around the block once or twice to see a thing or two that has happened in this game.”
That, and a boatload of talent, is tough to overcome.
For the Lightning, they will have to settle for being close in this group’s first extended playoff run under second-year coach Cooper. They will have an excellent chance to be back.
“People can’t sit here and say, ‘(we’re) the inexperienced Lightning,’ ” Cooper said earlier. He said Tampa had learned from all those desperate situations earlier in the playoffs, and as he had said repeatedly through the final, the Lightning were getting their playoff experience on the job. He promised that his team would come out and push against the mighty Hawks. He was not wrong.
It just wasn’t enough. The Blackhawks, with that great late-series record, was about to improve to 12-4 in these playoffs in one-goal games before Kane’s late goal widened the gap. Some luck there, to be sure, but it’s a team that has a hell of a knack for coming out on the right end of close contests.
“You know, you don’t have to worry about as much as a locker-room because you just know everybody’s kind of got their head in the right place,” said Richards, who won the Cup with Tampa in 2004 and joined the Blackhawks last summer.
“They’re just, like I said, used to doing it.”