Chicago Blackhawks: Time to make some history vs Vegas

The Chicago Blackhawks are in a tough spot being down 3-0 in their playoff series.

The Chicago Blackhawks didn’t capitalize on their opportunity to make Chicago feel better after a pretty horrible sports day. The Chicago White Sox lost both games of a doubleheader to the St. Louis Cardinals who haven’t played in two weeks and the Chicago Cubs blew a lead to the Milwaukee Brewers and lost in extra innings. It was a tough day made complete when the Hawks lost to the Vegas Golden Knights by a final score of 2-1.

The Hawks kept up with Vegas on the shot board as they actually outshot them 27-26. Both Corey Crawford and Marc-Andre Fleury made some nice saves in this one to keep the score tight. It was a tough scene when William Karlson scored a short-handed goal just 4:12 into the first period. Vegas is very hard to keep up with in general but it is really hard to come back when you go down early.

It eventually became 2-0 when Patrick Brown scored later in the second period. The Hawks got it to within one when Olli Maatta scored shortly after the third period started. This loss stings because it is very hard to see any team beat Vegas four times in a row at any point in time. The Hawks need to make some history in order to advance otherwise they will be history.

In the history of the National Hockey League, over 190 teams have ever held a 3-0 series lead and only four of them have come all the way back to move on. The most recent was the first-round series between the San Jose Sharks and Los Angeles Kings in 2014. The Sharks had the all-powerful 3-0 series lead and Los Angeles pretty much dominated every game since and took the series in seven games. Los Angeles went on to defeat the Hawks in the Western Conference Finals and eventually won the Stanley Cup that year.

Before that, the 2010 Philadelphia Flyers came back from being down 3-0 in their series to the Boston Bruins. They were even down in game seven by a score of 3-0 and they stormed all the way back to complete multiple comebacks. Philadelphia would go all the way to the Stanley Cup Final before they were defeated by the Chicago Blackhawks.

It does feel weird that the two most recent teams to come back from a deficit like that ended up playing the Hawks at some point. Before this comeback, it had been 35 years since anyone did that. This is an extremely tall task but it will certainly be fun to see how the core guys on the Hawks handle this type of adversity. They have been here before so maybe some adjustments can be made.