Written by Chris Hine at Chicago Tribune.com
If the Blackhawks season doesn’t end with a parade and the Stanley Cup, it typically ends with heartbreak, not resignation — and certainly not without a dramatic flourish.
The final images usually come in a crushing Game 7, like 2014 against the Kings or last season against the Blues.
When the Hawks bow out, the conclusion comes after a bit of puck luck doesn’t go their way, or they fall to a team on their level that just happened to get the fourth victory before they did.
It doesn’t come like it did in a 4-1 loss to the Predators on Thursday night at Bridgestone Arena. It doesn’t come when one team skates circles around them, chases them off pucks and out of the playoffs with a sweep. It doesn’t end with them helpless to explain how it happened.
“You lose a series, you tend to think of a million different things that went wrong,” said captain Jonathan Toews, who scored the Hawks’ lone goal in Game 4. “I feel like it’s a whole different story when you can’t win a game in a seven-game series and you go four straight, scoring three goals with not really having much to show for at all.”
The Western Conference’s top seeds were supposed to have enough pride and fight at least to get deep in a series, to ramp up the drama that would increase the hurt of the fall, not soften it by making it seem inevitable.
But instead the Predators handed the Hawks their first four-game playoff sweep since 1993.
Roman Josi scored twice and Colton Sissons and Viktor Arvidsson once each to provide the final blows that knocked the Hawks into an offseason that will feel different from most of recent vintage. The Hawks won’t live with the fact they were close or were unlucky. They have to live with the fact they just weren’t good enough.
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