In Chicago Sunday night, the Duncan Keith scored the game-winner for the Blackhawks at 1:23 of extra time to send the, past the visiting Colorado Avalanche, 2-1.
The game was a match of desperate teams with varying degrees of desperation.
“Yeah, obviously they were a desperate club,” Avalanche defenseman Tyson Barrie said. “I don’t think they wanted to have it go to overtime, and that was a big point for us. It’s disappointing we didn’t get the two, but it still puts us in a position where we control our own destiny. [Grubauer] was great tonight. We just have to move on. We have some big games coming up.”
Well, true, but the Avs hold a slim two-point clearance for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference.
Chicago is five points back of the playoff position so yes their desperation was greater.
“I don’t score too many overtime goals, but [Nathan MacKinnon] was coming down and I’m just trying to not get embarrassed there, because he’s a pretty good player,” Keith said. “And he kind of fell and I had the jump on him, and I was thinking he might try to poke it in my back end, but I saw that he wasn’t going to have enough room, so I just tried to slam at the net it as hard as I could. It hit the net and luckily it went in.”
Corey Crawford made 19 saves to help the Hawks get the win.
“That would have been really big to try and get a late one there and get two on them, but you know, we’ll take the extra one and keep going,” Crawford said. “We’re playing well. The third period was great, didn’t give them anything. We were aggressive the whole period. That was great hockey, we got to bring that into the next game.”
Alexander Kerfoot struck for the Avs who dropped to 34-29-13.
“We knew we were going to face a desperate hockey team, there’s no question,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “We had a couple of areas we wanted to improve on from last night’s game, and then we had some things we did really well yesterday that we wanted to build on. We just didn’t get it done tonight. It was a tough game for our group, no question.”
Artem Anisimov knotted the game at 1-1 early in the third period for Chicago.
“It’s important to keep playing. Keep playing, maintain a high level, and this is a team that can go on a run and win a bunch in a row. But you just got to get one first and that’s what we’ve done,” Blackhawks head coach Jeremy Colliton said after the win.
[WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Blackhawks highlights]
Philipp Grubauer made 40 saves in the loss.
“I don’t think we played really good today,” Grubauer said. “They came out in the first period, they came out in the last period. Back-to-back, those are huge points, important points. We need to make better execution on some plays. We were fine, but I think we got lucky we walked away with one point here.”
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