For 20 minutes, they hit with all the force of a single feather fluttering in the breeze. For the first period of their fifth playoff game with the Blackhawks, they were about as offensive as the robed Morman Tabernacle Choir.
Back on Tuesday, at home in their Met Center, they had swirled through these opening minutes as violently as a cyclone, but here, on Thursday night at the Stadium, they weren`t stirring enough to disturb a leaf.
”It was a horrible effort. There`s no excuse for it at all,” said North Star wing Brian Bellows.
”We did exactly what we didn`t want to do,” added their captain, Basil McRae.
”Our young guys,” concluded their coach, Pierre Page, ”didn`t understand that these guys (the Hawks) weren`t going to give us anything. We looked like we hadn`t been in a playoffs for a long time. We didn`t understand that just because we beat them 4-0 (as they had on Tuesday) they weren`t going to quit. We didn`t realize they wouldn`t quit just because we slapped them in the face once, that we had to knock them out.”
The North Stars were not yet knocked out after those opening 20 minutes on Thursday, yet they were down 2-0 and reeling. Then, less than five minutes into the second period, their hole was 3-0, and only now, on the edge of stark embarrassment, did they arouse themselves.
The first to announce himself was their tough guy, Shane Churla, and he did it (surprisingly) by exhibiting more brains than brawn. On Tuesday, during his team`s rout of the Hawks, he had bloodied Steve Konroyd, but now, when jumped by Wayne Van Dorp, he curled up and used his fists to cover his head.
Van Dorp hit him once, twice, a third time without retaliation, and when he was finally pulled away, Churla mocked him by tapping his own temple, and Van Dorp was on his way to the penalty box with a five-minute major.
”There`s a time and place to fight, and a time and place not to,” said Churla. ”In the regular season, that would never have happened. If we were ahead, it would have been different, then it would have been me on him. But these are the playoffs, and if it takes turtling, that`s what you`ve got to do. And it got us a goal.”
Bellows got credit for that goal even though it slid by Greg Millen off the stick of Hawk center Troy Murray, and then the North Stars tried to steal a few more with more than a little chippiness. McRae jostled Hawk defenseman Bob McGill as they awaited a faceoff, and McGill returned the greeting as McRae tried to set up shop in front of Millen.
McRae then fussed with Doug Wilson, and Bellows executed a perfect takedown of Denis Savard, and Minnesota`s Dave Gagner grappled with Trent Yawney just outside the crease. But no penalites were called, and no more North Star goals were produced, and in the end they headed home for Saturday`s game six 5-1 losers and facing elimination.
”Believe it or not, I`m comfortable with that,” Bellows would proclaim. ”I think we learned a lesson tonight.”
”But,” concluded Page, ”the odds are stacked against us. If you`ve got money to bet, money to waste, where`d you put it? But psychologists say never say never, have to, or must. Chicago found a way to bounce back tonight. Now we have to find a way to do the same.”
