Hours before the puck dropped on Sunday, Blues coach Ken Hitchcock — who implied after Game 2 that the officiating was favoring the defending Stanley Cup champions in their first-round series — said his team had to stay out of the penalty box in order to have a chance.
“We need the playing field to be a little bit more equal,” he said. “That’s on us, too. We can’t allow them to have more power plays. It’s not a good formula for success for us. We’ve got to have everything as equal as we can to have success against this team.”
The Blues didn’t listen. Fortunately for them, though, neither did the Blackhawks.
St. Louis scored two power-play goals — including Jaden Schwartz’s game-winner at 13:22 of the third period after Patrick Kane took a double-minor for high-sticking Alex Pietrangelo — and rallied for a 3-2 victory in Game 3 of their first-round series.
“I was trying to lift the guy’s stick there and got it up. You see there’s blood there, you know it’s not a good thing. Just gotta be smarter in that situation. Obviously can’t take a penalty at that time of the game, especially when the score is 2-2. I’ll take responsibility on that one, for sure.”
The Blues didn’t listen to their coach, either, as they went out and took three consecutive penalties in the first six minutes of the game. The Hawks only capitalized on the first one, as Brent Seabrook’s blast from the blue line got through Troy Brouwer’s stick and Andrew Ladd’s screen for a 1-0 lead on their first shot of the game. Consecutive foolish Jay Bouwmeester penalties resulted in two strong power plays, but no goals for the Hawks.
St. Louis tied the game on its first power play of the game, seven seconds after Viktor Svedberg took a high-sticking minor.
The Blues, now 2-for-8 on the power play in the series, survived their ill-timed penalties. The Hawks, now 2-for-12, did not.
“[Kane] has been very disciplined; our team’s very disciplined,” Joel Quenneville said. “The timing, you try to get through it. Things can change quickly.”
Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com
Twitter: @marklazerus
