Hawks Dominate in Anaheim, Off to Face Tampa

The Anaheim Ducks had home-ice advantage in Game 7 for all of two minutes and 23 seconds.  With this team's seeming ability to almost score at will, both in the regular season and the playoffs, even when Jonathan Toews opened the scoring before the 3-minute mark of the 1st period, I was still thinking that we were in for a good ol' fashioned street fight, where both teams would come out swinging and scoring.

No, Toews scored again, shortly after the halfway mark of the opening frame and the Ducks were lifeless going into the break, down two goals, in their own rink, in the Conference Finals, in the all-important elimination game of elimination games.

The Blackhawks scored again to open the frame, on a goal by Brandon Saad, which had the combination of a great play to find a winger wide open in space to pot into an open net, and an absolute collapse of defensive ability to mark the men in their zone.  And before the Ducks could make an argument, Marian Hossa scored a somewhat questionable goal, which I thought the officials got the call right, not making a distinct kicking motion for the puck to go into the Anaheim net.

The Ducks show a little bit of life, thanks to their key off-season acquisition, Ryan Kesler, who sniped a great shot along the goal line, which found the space between the post and Corey Crawford's ear and it was 4-1 at the 2nd intermission.

There may have been some level of desperation from the Ducks in the 3rd, but I wasn't convinced of it, like I was earlier in these playoffs or even in this series, when they scored three times in quick succession.  No, between the Blackhawks trying to defend their 3-goal lead and the Ducks lack of a defense-crushing push, trading a few goals in the final frame was all these teams were good for and the game ended in a small cloud of smoke, as the Ducks' engine that could, didn't.

In the end, it was a 5-3 final for Chicago, which played out more like the 4-1 game that it was in the 2nd.  Crawford made 35 stops in the win, including 10 in the 3rd period, and his Chicago team will go on to face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Finals, starting on Wednesday.

Patrick Kane led all players in the game with 3 points, while Duncan Keith, Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa, Brad Richards and Corey Crawford all escaped with 2 points each and there is a mighty fine chance that a lot of teams got out of that game with either 6 or 7 points from the Blackhawks alone.

The second of the Conference Finals eliminations is usually a big deal in the pool and it was again this year, as the Ducks had 78 picks stricken from active duty with the loss last night.  They were not the favourites in this series, but there was a lot of pool scoring from this team, which helped define the pool standings.  Cam Fowler and Frederik Andersen were the top two picks from Anaheim, taken 12 times, while James Wisniewski didn't play a single game, a healthy scratch throughout, was taken 11 times.

Andersen led all Ducks players on the Playoff Pool sheet with 24 points, while both Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf each came away with 20 points each, but snake-bitten in the two games that mattered the most.  Sure, Perry scored in Game 7, but not when it counted.  Just saying.

So Jesse P. got his wish and he has a goalie in the fight for 2nd place in the standings, which means he still has life left to keep swinging.  If the Ducks had won, Thor would have likely ran away with the distinction, as he would have had both goalies in the Cup Finals, instead, they each have one.

This race does continue to stay hot though, as Thor has a 2-point lead over Jesse after the second Game 7 of the Conference Finals, so it will be a matter of who has whom in the Finals, which will make the biggest difference.  Something that I will definitely outline in my Cup Finals preview, likely on Tuesday or early on Wednesday.

Fontanna, our runaway leader, finishes the Conference Finals, with the audit complete, with a 14-point lead, unbeatable by these pool standards, having only six players left and likely some repeats between teams.

Sean L. will get outlined in the Finals preview as well, being the last team with a theoretical shot at the money, but 8 points difference will require some heavy lifting from his unique players, if he has any to speak of.

Game-Winning Goals
I haven't spoken too much about the game-winners of late, as that part of the post was getting to be really dull and drab, especially with only one game a night.

Tyler Johnson finishes the first three rounds of the playoffs as the pool leader in game-winners, ending up with 4 bonus points to his name.  Patrick Kane, Nikita Kucherov and Matt Beleskey were all good, thus far, finishing with 3 each, while seven more players had a pair, three of which are heading to the Cup Finals: Duncan Keith, Marian Hossa and Alex Killorn.

Fontanna also ran away with this race as well, finishing the Conference Finals with a pool-best, 21 GWGs, leaving Sean L. and Tony C. in the dust, back with 16 each.

Stay tuned for more posts about the Cup Finals and also about the Pool Outlooks for our two newly eliminated teams.