In the Wake of the News

Roughing call riles Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville

Claims late first-period call 'destroyed' game

May 25, 2009|By Rick Morrissey

Unless you're willing to advance the Red Wings-are-gods theory, what happened Sunday would seem to be very hard to explain.

But not for Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville, who settled for the we-wuz-robbed-by-the-mean-officials approach.

"We witnessed probably the worst call in the history of sports today at the end of the [first] period there," he said. "A nothing play and they scored and it was 3-0. [The officials] ruined a good hockey game. They absolutely destroyed what was going on on the ice and whatever happened after that."

Detroit beat the Hawks 6-1 in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, and to hear Quenneville tell it, the end of the world arrived when one of his defensemen, Matt Walker, was called for roughing. It led to a power-play goal by Valtteri Filppula at the beginning of the second period and a three-goal lead for the Red Wings.

"They ruined the whole game," repeated Quenneville, for those who missed his earlier point.

If his team is so weak-willed that it can't bounce back from a two-minute penalty, you have to wonder how it got this far in the first place. If one call reduced the Hawks to a puddle of tears at the United Center, the rest of this series is a formality. Detroit leads three games to one.

I think Quenneville knows the alternative and doesn't want to verbalize it: The Red Wings simply are too good. Better to concentrate on a roughing penalty than admit to that.

The Hawks spent too much time trying to stir up trouble after they got down three goals, and the result was two more Detroit power-play goals.

If you don't believe the defending Stanley Cup champions are all that great and if you don't subscribe to the idea that the officials ripped off the home team, then you're left with some unpleasant options, at least if you're a Hawks fan.

One option is that the Blackhawks were way too preoccupied with getting even for Niklas Kronwall's crushing hit on the Hawks' Martin Havlat in Game 3. The result was a lot of undisciplined play Sunday, which Detroit exploited.

Another is that the Hawks were inexplicably listless. How else to explain Marian Hossa's short-handed goal to give the Red Wings a 1-0 lead in the first period? Unacceptable in a huge game at home for the Hawks.

They had a lot going for them Sunday. They had the momentum of their overtime victory in Game 3. The sight of Havlat skating during warm-ups, his head actually attached to his body, was a good sign. He had been knocked out, literally, on Kronwall's hit Friday. So when Havlat was announced as a starter before Game 4, the UC crowd roared.

Detroit superstar Nicklas Lidstrom was a pregame scratch due to a vague lower-body injury. He joined another Wings star, Pavel Datsyuk, in street clothes.

OK, the Hawks were without goalie Nikolai Khabibulin because of, yes, a lower-body injury, but his replacement, Cristobal Huet, is no slouch, having played 41 games this season.

So, advantage, Hawks, right?

By the time the second period was about four minutes old, Huet was on the bench, replaced by Corey Crawford.

Havlat got hit hard again and was done after playing 1 minute 2 seconds in the second period.

The Hawks saw a brief flash of sunlight when Jonathan Toews scored on a rebound to cut the Wings' lead to 3-1. You thought, well, if the Wings could come back from a 3-0 deficit in Game 3, why couldn't the Blackhawks?

Mostly because Hossa scored 12 seconds later, blowing past the Hawks' defense for the goal.

And so any momentum the Hawks had hoped to take advantage of was gone. The roar that had been restored was gone again, just like that.

At times Sunday, the Hawks seemed not all there, which is hard to understand in the conference finals, but maybe some of it is the Wings, who can do that to an opponent. Maybe a lot of that is the Wings, a relentless and extremely skilled team.

"Every mistake we make is going to be amplified," said Toews, the Hawks' captain.

That's it. Not the officiating.

Game 5 is Wednesday in Detroit. For the Blackhawks, a season rides on it.

"We need a desperate effort," forward Patrick Sharp said.

Or some people with whistles who see things Quenneville's way.