The View From Chicago

Just a brief quote to direct you to this Chicago Tribune piece by David Haugh on last night's game:

Clearly, the Flyers have no plans to abort this mission. For the second straight game, they dominated the third period and established the desired tempo. For the third straight game, the difference was one goal.

Any time the Hawks want to start acting like the favorites in this series again, fine by me. Any time the Hawks want to focus on attacking the Flyers more than answering their attacks, nobody will complain.

Yup.  What he said.  Yesterday I read another column in the Chicago press that said the Blackhawks have only brought their "C" game to this series so far, and that's the frickin' truth.  The Flyers aggressive forechecking last night seemed to leave the Hawks shell-shocked and I'm being kind here.  Philadelphia also won most of those critical battles in the corners and on the boards... in both the offensive and defensive zones... to the point where it really looked like the Hawks were intimidated.  I don't think that was my imagination, not when I saw any number of Hawks hesitate to get to the puck before the Flyers did (with the possible exception of Byfuglien)... it just happened too many times.  You can't win games if you're gonna play like that, to say the VERY least.

This series is getting more and more interesting as time moves on and tomorrow night is gonna be some kinda FUN.  This doesn't mean I'm backing off on my "Chicago in six" prediction.  I'm thinkin' Quenneville and his boyz might have received the message last night... but we'll see what we see, eh?