It’s one of the oldest cliches in sport, one that has been written a thousand times. But it’s as true as it ever was. A good defense will beat a good offense.
The Blackhawks proved it again Thursday night when they grounded the Pittsburgh Penguins and their Incredible Flying Circus in a 5-1 victory before a charged up capacity crowd of 21,359 in the United Center.
Goalie Ed Belfour, who was burned for five goals in less than half a game in his previous start, was at his spectacular best, stopping hockey’s most explosive team cold except for a short-handed goal by Mario Lemieux after the outcome had been decided.
“Eddie played the best I’ve seen him play since I’ve been here,” said coach Craig Hartsburg. “He’d been OK, but I thought he was fighting it a bit. Tonight he was excellent.”
“I didn’t make the saves I normally do in Los Angeles” in the Hawks’ 6-5 overtime loss, said Belfour. “I was angry at myself, and I wanted to play better. I felt real confident tonight, and I felt stronger as the game went along. This definitely shows we can play defense against a great offensive club like that. They call us a lunch-box crew, and that’s what we are. We’re hard workers.”
Nobody worked harder than the Blackhawks’ penalty killers, who had to contend with the league’s most dangerous power play. With Lemieux and his fellow megastar, Jaromir Jagr, on the ice at the same time, the Penguins are, in the words of Hawk defenseman Gary Suter, “an explosion waiting to happen.”
The Penguins had scored eight goals in 15 power-play opportunities in their first two games. It took the Blackhawks just nine seconds to not only defuse the Penguins’ megaton bomb but explode it in their faces.
That’s how long it took Jeff Shantz to score a short-handed goal and give the Hawks a 1-0 lead on Pittsburgh’s first power play. “That was a great goal, an unbelievable shot by Shantz,” said Belfour.
“He picked the top corner. Any time you pick the top corner like that on Tom Barrasso, you’ve made a great shot.”
“That obviously was a big goal,” said Bernie Nicholls. “He made a heckuva shot.”
“If I were Bernie or Jeremy Roenick I’d probably say, `Yeah, I wanted to put it there,’ ” said the modest Shantz. “But what really happened was I watched the defenseman to see what he was going to do, and when I realized I couldn’t get a pass across , I put my head down and shot it.”
“That goal put them back on their heels,” said Hartsburg, “and our bench was very excited. We drew some energy from that.”
They used that energy to generate four more goals, two by Patrick Poulin and one each by Suter and Nicholls.
Suter’s power-play goal made it 2-0 in the first period. It came on a play started by Denis Savard when he dug the puck off the boards behind Barrasso’s net.
Nicholls made it 3-0 with his first goal of the year when he banged in his own rebound while Barrasso was watching teammate Chris Tamer mash Joe Murphy into one of his goal posts.
Poulin reaped the reward from his own hustle when he kept the puck in the offensive zone along the boards and eventually got it back from Roenick to make it 4-0.
There was nothing Belfour could do about Lemieux’s goal that made it 4-1. “There was a shot, I made the save and he got the rebound,” said Belfour.
It was the first time the Blackhawks had played an Eastern Conference team in more than a year, and the Penguins figure to be one of the elite teams in the East. But Hartsburg didn’t consider the victory any kind of measuring stick for his team.
“There are going to be a lot of measuring sticks,” he said. “We’ve got 79 measuring sticks left. It’s a good win, and now we’re off to Hartford to get prepared for that game.”
