Los Angeles v Chicago 3-4 - Game 5 - Corey
Crawford sat deep in his stall inside the Chicago
Blackhawks dressing room minutes before midnight local time. His
pads were still strapped onto his legs, his back, slightly slouched,
nevertheless pressed against the wall. This was the picture of
exhaustion, of relief and of elation. This was a picture of a goalie
who mere moments ago finished playing nearly 92 minutes of non-stop,
high-energy, intense Stanley Cup Playoff hockey only to finally, at
the end of a long-awaited celebration, come to the realization that
he's going someplace special. The Stanley Cup Final. Patrick
Kane had the first hat trick in a conference
championship-clinching game since Wayne Gretzky did it 20 years ago,
and Crawford made 33 saves, including 13 in the overtimes, as the
Blackhawks fended off the resilient Los
Angeles Kings to punch their ticket to the championship round
with a 4-3 double-overtime win in Game 5 of the Western Conference
Final at United Center. The last obstacle standing in the way of
Chicago's second Stanley Cup championship in four seasons are the
red-hot Boston Bruins, who have to make travel arrangements to get to
the Windy City in time for the start of the Final on Wednesday at
United Center (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, RDS). It'll be the first time the
Bruins and Blackhawks, two of the NHL's oldest franchises, have met
with the Stanley Cup on the line, and the first time two Original Six
teams have played in a Final since 1979. Kane scored the winner 11:40
into the second overtime when he completed a 2-on-1 with captain
Jonathan Toews
by one-timing a shot high over Kings goalie Jonathan
Quick's glove. Kane went seven straight games without a goal
before scoring in Game 4 on Thursday at Staples Center. He lit the
lamp three times Saturday: 5:59 into the first period to give Chicago
a 2-0 lead; 16:08 into the third period to give the Blackhawks a
short-lived 3-2 lead; and again in double overtime. Kane and the
Blackhawks thought they had the Kings finished in regulation. They
were wrong. Mike
Richards scored a deflection goal with 9.4 seconds remaining to
send the game into overtime. Bryan
Bickell had iced the puck five seconds earlier, setting up a
faceoff to the right of Crawford that Kings center Jarret
Stoll won. Jeff
Carter got the puck to Slava
Voynov, who moved it to Anze
Kopitar for a shot that Richards got a piece of after
establishing position in front of the crease.
The goal let the air out of a capacity crowd of
22,237 that was ready to celebrate, and out of the home team as well.
Neither team could find the finishing touch in what was an
up-and-down first overtime that included several chances on both
sides, but Kane and Toews appeared to have more energy than anyone
else on the ice in the second overtime and their jump had a lot to do
with the winning goal. They had a scoring chance 21 seconds before
the 2-on-1, but Kane was slashed twice by Kings forward Justin
Williams as he tried to shoot from the left side, roughly 10 feet
away from Quick. Los Angeles got the puck back down deep into
Chicago's defensive zone, but Bickell chipped it out, past a pinching
Slava Voynov,
to create the 2-on-1 against Rob
Scuderi. The Blackhawks came with speed and Kane made it a
no-doubter and a tough one for the 2012 champions to swallow. Chicago
came out strong and got goals from Duncan
Keith and Kane within the first six minutes of the game, but Los
Angeles came back with a shorthanded goal from Dwight
King 9:28 into the second period and a power-play goal from
Kopitar early in the third. Kopitar's goal was his first of the
series and snapped a six-game drought. King's shorthanded goal made
him Los Angeles' all-time leading scorer in the conference final with
six, including four last year against the Phoenix Coyotes. He passed
Gretzky, who had five goals in the 1993 Campbell Conference final
against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
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