With a few minor exceptions, the only thing the Blackhawks plan to change for Sunday’s Game 2 of their Stanley Cup Western Conference final series is the result.
“The reason we’re still playing is we haven’t changed our game,” coach Darryl Sutter said Saturday. “All we have to do is get a little better at it than we were in Game 1.”
They may have to get a lot better at it. The Detroit Red Wings won that game 2-1 in overtime Thursday night, but it really wasn’t that close.
“The bottom line is we didn’t deserve to win,” said Hawks forward Brent Sutter. “We played terrible. They deserved to win and we didn’t.”
Sutter, normally a center, was playing right wing on a line with Denis Savard at center and Dirk Graham at the other wing, and it probably was the team’s best line. Certainly it was the hardest-working. But one subtle change Darryl Sutter apparently intends for Sunday is to move Graham up to Jeremy Roenick’s line with Tony Amonte and drop Patrick Poulin to the Savard-Sutter line.
One thing that will do is break up the Roenick-Poulin-Amonte line that Darryl Sutter found wanting in Game 1. Sutter said Saturday he wasn’t intending to “challenge” Roenick with the criticism.
“You don’t have to challenge Jeremy Roenick,” he said. “You think I was challenging him because I said he didn’t play well. I said Jeremy’s line didn’t play well. Jeremy was a heck of a lot better than his two wingers, I’ll tell you that.”
The other changes will have to come from within.
“I gave them the same message I gave them after the first game with Toronto ,” said Sutter. “There’s a style of play that’s conducive to our team winning. If you’ve got a handful of players who aren’t willing to play that style, you’re not going to win. We’re not asking them to do anything they can’t do. Like (Detroit’s) Paul Coffey said, goal-scoring is a skill, everything else is a commitment.”
“I think Detroit will play better and we obviously have to step our game up another notch,” said Joe Murphy, who leads the team with seven playoff goals.
The Hawks’ problems in the first game were twofold. They couldn’t get the puck out of their own end, and when they finally did they couldn’t get it through the neutral zone. They took only 14 shots at goalie Mike Vernon, nine in the first period, when Murphy scored their only goal.
Bernie Nicholls, who is beyond worrying about the personal goal-scoring drought that has now reached 28 games, was among several Hawks who were almost invisible offensively Thursday night.
“You’ve got to give them credit for the way they played defense,” Nicholls said. “Everybody thinks of them as an offensive team, but the reason they ended up first in the league was the way they play defense. They always have a third guy high. If you try to get too fancy at their blue line, you’re playing into their hands. We’ve got to get the puck in low and try to make plays that way.”
“The key is to get quick puck movement out of the zone and get it out in a hurry,” said Murphy. “We’ve got to put the puck on the net and go to the net and create havoc.”
Defenseman Chris Chelios’ solution is simple: “Forecheck harder and make them cough up the puck.”
