Chicago Blackhawks: Can Corey Crawford win a playoff series?

The Chicago Blackhawks would need Corey Crawford to stand on his head in order to win a playoff series so can he do that for them?

The Chicago Blackhawks are one of those teams that many people believe don’t deserve to make the playoffs. They ended the season at 32-30-8 for 72 points. They were in the last place of the Central Division, trailing the Minnesota Wild by five points. With that, every team in the Central is in the playoffs with this 24 team format. They are the only division that can say that in these weird times.

So with that said, can the Blackhawks pull an upset and win the first series? It would be a five-game play-in series with the Edmonton Oilers who were a significantly better team in the regular season. In order for Chicago to do this, they would need Corey Crawford to be as good as he has been in the past during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

In the 2010s, Corey Crawford was one of the best goalies in the world. He won the Cup twice to go along with two Jennings Trophies. In 2019-20, he split a lot of time with Robin Lehner but his numbers were still very good. They traded Lehner to the Vegas Golden Knights at the trade deadline with the knowledge that they were probably not going to go to the playoffs.

Crawford took back the net as the true number one and was still very good. In 40 games this year he had a .917 save percentage to go with a 2.77 goals-against average. The Blackhawks clearly didn’t take advantage of his good stats as they were only 16-20-3 in the games that he was the goalie fo record.  With that said, Crawford is one of the reasons they have a chance to win the play-in series. It would be interesting to see how he would fare against the Dallas Stars in the second-round but Crawford has proved that he can do it in the past.

Of course, goaltending is important for everyone but for a team like the Blackhawks it feels just a little bit more important. The Montreal Canadiens, the lowest-seeded team in the Eastern Conference, are in the same spot with Carey Price. Neither of these two teams but their goalies are capable of stealing a series based on their resumes. Some people might not like it, but Crawford and the Hawks didn’t ask for any of this to happen. They have to like their chances better than some teams in this situation.