While I might have been calling for everyone to calm down about their respective baseball teams slow start, I'm doing the complete opposite regarding the Blackhawks right now. I'm officially uncomfortable to panicky right now.
It wasn't so much that they dropped Game 3 tonight in Nashville, it's not even so much as how they dropped it by being outplayed in every phase of the game. It's much worse than that for me. I'm taking this loss particularly hard because of how the Hawks played Game 2. They not only achieved their first playoff shutout since 1996, but you could tell they had gotten under the Predators skin. It was evidenced by the dumb crosscheck by Shea Weber and a roughing penalty by Francis Bouillon after the Hawks took a 2-0 lead late in the 3rd period. Those are the kind of things stupid teams do when they know they're not good enough to beat the team across from them straight up.
All that went out the window tonight. The Hawks had a huge opportunity to step on the Predators collective throat tonight with a victory. Instead they allowed the Predators to reopen the window of possibly winning this series, and have shifted the pressure on the Hawks. So now it will be up to the Blackhawks to grab their nuts, and play much better hockey the rest of the way. If that means crisper passing, cleaner forechecking, anticipating that no rebounds will come off of goalie Pekka Rinne, or whatever else they need to come up with, then that's what it will mean.
Do I still believe the Blackhawks still win this series? Absolutely. The pressure is now on though. The tricky part about pressure is, winners focus in the face of it, losers wilt.
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