Hockey season is over!
In a way, I'm actually happy to say that because there almost wasn't a season. At the same time, I'm gutted because it was such a fun year, especially for my beloved Blackhawks! They were clearly the best team in the entire NHL, going 21-0-3 to start the season. That's 24 games without a regulation loss! Half the fucking season, for Pete's sake! It was only fitting my beloved Hawks would be the ones that lifted the Stanley Cup in the end.
It's how they did it, however, that was difficult.
After an easy first-round series against the Mini-sod-ia Wild, the Hawks had to come back from 3-1--games, not goals--to beat the hated Red Wings, then beat a tough LA Kings team in the Conference Finals (speaking of which, I got to go to game 2 of that series. It was awesome!) to face off against the Boston Bruins, who were on a roll and an emotional high.
Oh, dear, was this series exhausting.
I think the only thing anyone could expect from this series was to expect the unexpected and the inevitable boo-birds that would come out as soon as Gary Bettman showed up (the fact that he did after not helping his cause one bit is just as surprising as this entire series). We were treated (or tortured) to a triple-overtime game 1 where the Hawks showed their penchant for coming back after being down two blasted goals.
Unfortunately, that was only game 1. Game two saw the Bruins come back from down a goal to steal home ice from the Hawks. Things looked even worse when they lost game 3 in Bah-stin behind an energized Causeway crowd. All of a sudden, the media was declaring the Hawks dead and--wait, didn't we go through this before?
Ah, yes, remember that 3-1 comeback? Well, Coach Quenneville got a little desperate and put Toews, Kane and Bickell on the first line. After being held scoreless by the Bruins defense, the line exploded for a total of 6 goals in the final three games. It didn't have to be so fucking hard, though! Game 4 was another hard-fought see-saw battle with the B's matching the Hawks' goals again and again until it went into ANOTHER OVERTIME tied at four.
And that was when Mr. Overtime, Brent Seabrook, struck again, giving the Hawks a 6-5 series lead.
After a (relatively) easy game 5 victory where Kaner scored 2 goals, it was on to game 6 with a desperate Bruins team and crowd, and two injured superstars.
The Bruins got the first goal on an open-netter by David Kelly. However, the Hawks stormed back and tied it on the last second of a Bruins power play on behalf of Captain Serious. Then the Bruins went ahead again, with Milan Lucic beating Crawford with less than 8 minutes to go.
At that point, I guess the players had all resigned themselves to a game 7... sort of.
With less than 2 minutes to go, the Hawks pulled Crawford for the extra attacker. It was a true desperation move and the Hawks went for it. The puck went into the corner off to Boston goalie Tuuka Rask's right. Even with the extra attacker, it looked like the Bruins were gonna win the game and send it to game 7--BICKELL!!!!
The Hawks had life! Bryan Bickell, who'd stepped up his game in the playoffs, scored after stuffing Rask's net. Now it looked like things were going into overtime and--holy shit, BOLLAND!? AGAIN!? It's 2-1 Hawks! Just 17 (game) seconds after scoring the equalizer, the Hawks scored the go-ahead! You honestly cannot script this shit, people!
The Hawks killed the final 57 seconds to win Lord Stanley's Cup for the second time. Now LET'S PARTY AND DO IT AGAIN!!!!
