Blackhawks beat Flyers for 2-0 series lead in Stanley Cup finals

Reporting from Chicago

After a sloppy, goal-happy start to the Stanley Cup finals, the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers vowed to tighten up on defense Monday in Game 2.

The Blackhawks almost didn’t clamp down enough. The Flyers pulled back too much and abandoned the aggressive forechecking game that has gotten them this far.

Goals 28 seconds apart late in the second period by Chicago’s Marian Hossa — ending an eight-game Cup final drought — and Ben Eager forced the Flyers to open up in the third period. They produced a power-play goal and pressured Antti Niemi to the end, but the Blackhawks held on for a 2-1 victory at the roaring United Center and will take a 2-0 series lead into Game 3 Wednesday in Philadelphia.

The Flyers aren’t cowed. “We’ve been here and done this before,” defenseman Kimmo Timonen said, referring to their comeback from an 0-3 deficit in the second round against the Boston Bruins. “Now is not time to panic.”

But the noose, like the defense, is tighter.

Home teams have swept Games 1 and 2 of the finals 33 times and have gone on to win the Cup 31 times.

An even darker omen for the Flyers is that Hossa scored, ending a finals’ famine that began when, as a member of the Detroit Red Wings, he was scoreless in seven games against the Pittsburgh Penguins last spring.

Hossa took advantage of a rare moment when the Flyers’ top four defensemen weren’t on the ice to elude defenseman Oskars Bartulis and convert the rebound of a shot by Patrick Sharp at 17:09 of the middle period. The crowd of 22,275 hadn’t settled down when Ben Eager beat Michael Leighton with a 35-foot wrist shot off a fine pass from Dustin Byfuglien.

“Oh, I mean, it’s been a long time,” said Hossa, the first NHL player to play in three straight Cup finals with three different teams — a streak he began in 2008 with the Penguins. “I was looking for some ugly goal like that to get the offense going.”

Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette had a chance to change his defense before Hossa’s goal but chose to leave his third pair out there. The dropoff after his top four defensemen is steep and those four play heavy minutes. Chris Pronger again led both teams in ice time, with 27 minutes 52 seconds. Braydon Coburn played 21:53, Matt Carle played 23:53 and Timonen 24:28. Bartulis played 10:45 and partner Lukas Krajicek played 11:09.

“First, we have to trust in all of our defensemen out there,” Laviolette said. “We look to keep them away from certain people when we can.... Our coverage was there. We had man on man.”

Just the wrong men for the Flyers.

Leighton, who had been pulled during the second period of the Flyers’ 6-5 loss in Game 1, wasn’t the problem Monday. The Flyers’ overdose of caution was.

They didn’t get their offense going until the third period, when they took 15 of their 33 shots and scored when Simon Gagne’s power-play slap shot deflected past Niemi at 5:20.

“I thought we were way too conservative in the first two periods,” forward Daniel Briere said. “We didn’t give them much. I understand that. It’s not really our type of hockey. We didn’t forecheck. We didn’t create much offensively. We didn’t spend much time in their zone and obviously when they take the lead they’re going to play a little bit more passive.”

The game was chippy and ended with a confrontation between Pronger and Eager, who each got a 10-minute misconduct.

The Blackhawks apparently have gotten under the Flyers’ collective skin while moving within two victories of their first Cup title since 1961, but with the next two games to be played in Philadelphia — where the Flyers are 7-1 in the playoffs — the Blackhawks aren’t cocky.

“They’re a much more physical team in their building and we expect Game 3 to be a lot more physical,” Chicago center John Madden said. “We’ve got to clear our heads and go out and get a new plan for Game 3 in that building.”

The Flyers’ plan is clear. “We need to play the way we did in the third for the whole game,” Pronger said.

Even that might not be enough.

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