While winning the Stanley Cup is never easy, the first goal is making the playoffs. The Chicago Blackhawks began a nine-year postseason streak in 2009 and went on to win three Stanley Cups in six years, becoming the first team in the salary cap era to be labeled a modern-era dynasty. <\/p>\n
To win three Stanley Cups over that stretch, there had to be some memorable goals scored at timely moments. And the Blackhawks delivered plenty of them. <\/p>\n
Who could forget Patrick Kane\u2019s hat trick in Game 6 against the Vancouver Canucks at the United Center, a performance that announced the Blackhawks\u2019 arrival as legitimate contenders? <\/p>\n
The following year, with the Blackhawks entering the Stanley Cup Playoffs as one of the favorites, they drew All-Star goaltender Pekka Rinne and the Nashville Predators in the opening round. It didn\u2019t go as planned.<\/p>\n
The Predators won two of the first four games to tie the series before a crucial Game 5 at the United Center. Nashville grabbed a 4-3 lead late in the third period, and Marian Hossa was called for a five-minute major boarding penalty with 63 seconds remaining in regulation. <\/p>\n
“I tried to go for the puck,” Hossa said after the game. “The guy turned his back to me. You don’t want to hit a player that way, but I couldn’t stop my motion.”<\/p>\n
The Blackhawks were in trouble. Joel Quenneville pulled his goaltender for an extra attacker to make it a 5-on-5 situation, and Kane \u2014 who had rarely killed penalties before \u2014 was on the ice as Chicago searched for the tying goal. <\/p>\n
“Sometimes you catch a break,” Kane said. “Five-on-five with the goalie pulled you’re trying to do everything you can to score a goal.” <\/p>\n
With 13.6 seconds left, he did just that. Bedlam ensued at the United Center after what is widely regarded as perhaps the most important goal of the Blackhawks\u2019 dynasty era. <\/p>\n
“Nothing tops it,” Kane said. “Thirteen seconds left to tie and keep us in the series, probably. Going to Nashville down 3-2, that would be a tough game to win.” <\/p>\n
Andrew Ladd recalled the moment years later to the Chicago Sun-Times: “Being down, being in the box with no time remaining in the game, we didn\u2019t think we really had much of a shot to even get an opportunity to tie it. Ninety-nine times out of 100, you\u2019re not scoring shorthanded with a minute left in a playoff game to take the game to overtime. But we did it.\u201d <\/p>\n
But the job wasn\u2019t finished. The Blackhawks still had to kill the remainder of Hossa\u2019s major penalty in overtime. <\/p>\n
\u201cI feel shame,\u201d Hossa reminisced 10 years later. “I\u2019m sweating bullets for five minutes. It\u2019s 4-4, we go to the dressing room and I\u2019m sitting quiet in the corner of the dressing room and I\u2019m hoping we can kill another four minutes of my penalties.” <\/p>\n
Well, they did, and as soon as the penalty expired, Hossa jumped out of the box, went straight to the net and tapped in the game-winning goal to give the Blackhawks a 3-2 series lead. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see me there in the corner coming from the penalty box [to be] in front of the net,” Hossa said. “The puck is coming to me and all I have to do is just put it into the net. One of the most amazing feelings in my career. I still got the chills.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While winning the Stanley Cup is never easy, the first goal is making the playoffs. The Chicago Blackhawks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,37,96,5263,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-408118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-blackhawks","8":"tag-blackhawks","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-chicagoblackhawks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115896224569329511","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}