For the last 10 years or so, Rule No. 1 in the NHL has been that you can’t make mistakes against the Red Wings. Once you do, only the IRS has more effective methods of making you pay.
There were any number of ways for the Blackhawks to lose Sunday, but it never occurred to me that one of them would involve blunders by Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith.
Seabrook mishandled a puck in the first period, leading to a goal and a very palpable feeling that everything had changed in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. The Red Wings went on to a 5-2 victory that was a seminar on how to pounce on unforced errors.
In the second period, Keith lost the puck along the boards to Johan Franzen, who skated behind the net and beat Nikolai Khabibulin on a wraparound to make it 2-1. It looked as if Keith thought Seabrook would be there to pick up the loose puck. He wasn’t.
It’s hard to overstate how good the two defensemen had been in the playoffs. But if they don’t return to their normal steady selves, the Hawks have no chance against defending NHL champion Detroit. None.
“You can’t take shifts off,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “You can’t have loose plays or critical turnovers like we did. I think we lost a lot of momentum in the second period losing the puck.”
Seabrook and Keith weren’t the only reason the Hawks lost Sunday. Patrick Kane, who didn’t take a shot, apparently was wearing an invisibility cloak. He and Jonathan Toews each had a plus-minus rating of minus-three. The Red Wings took 43 shots on goal, which is almost obscene by playoff standards.
But when the rock-solid Seabrook lost the puck near the blue line, leading to Dan Cleary’s first goal of the game, two words and a hyphen came to mind: uh-oh. Those sails that had been so full of wind after the Hawks had taken a medium-rare 1-0 lead suddenly went slack.
Afterward, everyone was trying to figure out why the Hawks seemed to fall apart so dramatically after Cleary’s goal. Was it youthful nerves? Playoff inexperience? The greenhouse effect?
“I don’t think we were overaggressive, I think we were not smart out there,” defenseman Brian Campbell said. “You feel a guy on you, you’ve got to find a way to get it deep and skate harder and move your feet more. You can’t be standing around.”
As explanations go, “not smart” is as good as any.
The Red Wings like to make nifty plays and then hope their opponents try to attempt the same. They don’t make many mistakes and figure that, eventually, the other team will. It happened over and over Sunday.
The score might seem to indicate otherwise, but Khabibulin played well. It’s hard to win when the other team is buzzing around the net like flies at a picnic. Mikael Samuelsson encountered very little defensive resistance in the third period and scored on a wrist shot to make it 3-2. Cleary made it 4-2 by redirecting a Franzen shot. It was too easy.
Still searching for an explanation for the Game 1 disappointment? Maybe the Hawks were simply overmatched.
“I don’t think we looked overmatched at all,” Seabrook said. “I think they’re a great team, and they come with a lot of speed. We had our chances too.”
Speed is supposed to be the Hawks’ advantage, and we’ll take it on faith that it eventually will show itself in this series. But speed doesn’t mean anything if you cough up the puck.
The Red Wings looked tired in Game 7 of their conference semifinal against Anaheim. But on Sunday, as Seabrook put it, “they kept coming, they kept coming and kept coming.”
They did indeed, and let it be a lesson to these baby-faced Hawks that the great teams know how and when to turn it on.
They also know how to dismiss fatigue.
Now the Hawks have to show that they truly belong in this series. Game 2 is Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena.
“We’re not just happy to be here,” Hawks forward Kris Versteeg insisted. “It is a learning experience, but we’re not taking it as a learning experience. We’re taking it as we want to win the Stanley Cup. That’s the only thing on our mind right now.”
So what did the Blackhawks learn Sunday? That they need to grow up? That they need to avoid falling into the trap of playing Detroit’s game?
All of that and more.
“We gotta do way better,” Quenneville said.
We can all agree on that.
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rmorrissey@tribune.com
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