Jonathan Toews Almost Single Handedly Saves Game 5

Jonathan Toews is one of my favorite players.  He can do it all and is deserving of his captains “C.”

And last night in the third period he almost performed well enough to help earn Chicago a win in Game 5.

He scored twice in less than 3 minutes to send the game into overtime.  But the Ducks won quickly with Beleskey’s goal just 45 seconds into OT.

The Hockey Writers think the Ducks have the edge moving forward:

The Ducks certainly look to be the better team in this series, in terms of depth. They’re able to score goals with ease. And although they let their foot off the gas in last night’s game and allowed the Hawks to come back, they still managed to get it done in the end. I’m one of those people who picked the Blackhawks to win this series, because how can you argue against the talent they have? And I felt that goaltending was a wash. But what we’ve learned in these playoffs is that Chicago has no depth on defence, a problem that went largely unnoticed, before these playoffs, but one that could cause them the Cup.

When the Hawks traded for Kimmo Timonen, it was baffling on a number of levels. He hadn’t played all season because of blood clot issues, he’s 40 years old which pretty much guarantees this was a rental situation, and they gave up too much for him. (A second round pick and a conditional forth rounder). It was a good deed on their part, trying to give an old guy one more chance to win a Championship. And it would be a nice story if they can do it. But no doubt most people believed he would be used sparingly because they were deep enough on the blueline. Oh how wrong that was.

Image courtesy of David Kindler.