Blackhawks done in by two posts and one very bad period

ST. LOUIS – The goal light briefly flashed in all its red glory, and then it went dark. The puck had hit not one post, but two, as if to let everyone know that whatever it was that had been haunting the Blues was officially no more.

The shot off the stick of Blackhawks defenseman Brent Seabrook had come with four minutes, five seconds left in the game and the Blues leading 3-2. If there was ever a time for the Hawks to give St. Louis a permanent complex about not being able to get out of the first round of the playoffs, this was it. But, no. The puck played bumper pool on the posts behind Blues goalie Brian Elliott and skittered away.

And with it went the Hawks’ season. The Blues grabbed Game 7 Monday night, the winning goal coming minutes earlier from former Hawk Troy Brouwer, who had taken a swipe or two at the puck before finally jamming it in as he fell over backward.

That’s how it was in a great game in a great series featuring two great teams. Before this descends into the inevitable open season on all that is wrong with a team that once again had championship aspirations, we might want to remember that.

“We had the toughest matchup we could have in the first round,’’ Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said.

“The disappointing thing for fans on both sides is that one of these teams has to go home,’’ Hawks captain Jonathan Toews said. “You’ve got to think that with the confidence they’re going to have coming out of this Game 7 that there’s no reason why they can’t contend all the way to the end. We felt with the way things were trending in our direction toward the end of the series, we obviously felt the same.’’

The loss was shocking nonetheless. We’ve grown accustomed to spending May and June occupied with the Hawks. We’ve grown accustomed to the Hawks going deep and their playoff beards going deeper. Not this time.

The Blues had been knocked out in the first round the previous three seasons, and they seemed intent on writing Chapter 3 Monday. The Hawks had come back from a 2-0 deficit to tie it on goals by Marian Hossa, off a power play in the first period, and by Andrew Shaw in the second.

And even when Brouwer beat Corey Crawford off a scramble in front of the net 8:31 into the third period, you could predict without any self-consciousness that both teams would revert to form. They did not.

Tip your helmet to the Blues, who found a way.

The Hawks lost this game in the first period. It’s true that they had won three Stanley Cups in the previous six seasons because they possessed an uncanny ability to come back from the worst kind of peril. And they did come back in this game with another strong second period.

But they couldn’t have been worse for the first 18:30 of the game. If they had skated with guards on their blades, they wouldn’t have been worse. Their defense looked so out of sorts that the blade-guard possibility seemed to be in play.

They couldn’t get the puck out of their zone promptly in the first period, and the result was a shot deflected past Crawford by Jori Lehtera and a howitzer of a shot by Colton Parayko from near the blue line. A 2-0 deficit is what happens when your defensemen are chasing the other team and the puck.

Sometimes hockey is indecipherable. Monday was one of those times. How do you explain the Hawks looking so sluggish and the Blues looking so invincible in the first period? How do you explain the complete role reversal in the second period?

You don’t. You just say, “That’s hockey,’’ and it will suffice. Two great teams playing hard and momentum wildly swinging back and forth.

There were a lot of compliments flowing afterward.

“You find yourself on bench just in awe of some of the things they can do,’’ Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said of the Hawks.

For the Hawks, it was win and advance, or lose and listen to the sort of analysis normally reserved for geopolitics. The three Stanley Cup titles in six years will be forgotten temporarily as people scream about the team getting older, about Quenneville losing his touch, about the roster lacking depth, about Toews going scoreless against the Blues.

Sometimes the easiest answer is the right one. This wasn’t about what was wrong with the Hawks. This was about everything that was right with the Blues.