When a goalie gives up 13 goals on 82 shots over a three-game stretch, as Corey Crawford has done for the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference Final, it's a pretty accurate statement to say that he isn't playing well.
Corey Crawford is struggling but he’s not getting much help
The Blackhawks are one game away from elimination and even though starting goaltender Corey Crawford hasn’t played well, it’s not all his fault.
Harry How
And Crawford most certainly is not.
But it’s also unfair to put all of it on him, at least as far as Chicago’s 5-2 Game 4 loss in Los Angeles is concerned.
Just as it was in the third period of Game 2 and much of Game 3, it was the perfect storm of a goaltender not playing his best hockey and the team in front of him of suffering a seemingly never-ending run of defensive breakdowns, giveaways and, at times, even some bad luck.
All of that was on display on each of Los Angeles' four goals on Monday with Crawford in net (the fifth goal was an empty-net goal for Tanner Pearson).
On the first goal, a power-play strike from defenseman Jake Muzzin, Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews failed to clear the zone and after some nifty passing from Drew Doughty, Muzzin was allowed to stroll in through the middle of the ice and get off an uncontested shot from between the faceoff dots.
The only thing Crawford saw on the play was Jeff Carter’s butt.
The second goal, which came just two minutes later, featured a different kind of breakdown as Los Angeles' Anze Kopitar ripped the puck away from Duncan Keith and fired it at the net where Marian Gaborik was able to beat Brent Seabrook and deflect it in for his league-leading 10th goal of the playoffs.
Things didn't get much better for Seabrook and the Chicago defense just a few minutes later when a wide-open Dustin Brown was able to take advantage of a bounce off Justin Williams' skate (after some more slick passing by the Kings' power play) and deposit the puck into an empty net. For the second time in the first period, Seabrook had a great front-row seat for a Kings goal.
And once again, on the fourth goal, Crawford was stuck trying to look through a crowd of players in front of the net as Drew Doughty fired a shot from the point that seemed to get redirected. Again, not much a goalie can do about that.
The beauty of the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup win a year ago was that they played such a dominant team game that they didn't really rely on their goaltender to carry them or put him in difficult situations. They controlled the puck better than any team in the league and they were always in position and able to regain possession when they didn't have it.
That hasn’t really happened this year, especially over the past two rounds where odd-man rushes, defensive breakdowns and giveaways seem to be a much bigger problem than they were a year ago.
Combine that with a goalie who’s had his struggles recently and you have a team that’s given up 15 goals in three games (only the third time this season Chicago had a three-game stretch where it’s allowed that many goals) and is on the brink of elimination.
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