BOSTON – Dave Bolland looked us right in the eye and said it.
“We’ll do it,” he promised. “We’ll do it.”
It’s as close to a guarantee as you get anymore, after a question that started with the Pittsburgh Penguins, and how they had felt the Boston Death grip closing around them not long ago. Crosby and Co. had thought they had the answer to it, but inevitably, they did not.
So why will Chicago be able to get the handcuffs off, then the straight jacket, and unlock the steamer trunk from the inside, then swim to the surface before they drown in Boston Harbour the same way that Pittsburgh did?
“We’ll do it,” was all Bolland would say. “We’ll do it.”
We’ve never been a professional athlete, of course. But we’ve spent enough time around professional athletes to have learned that, sometimes, absolute denial is required.
At a time like this, when everybody outside the Chicago dressing room sees the arms of the giant Boston squid closing around Chicago in Game 3, you have to be able to utter quotes like this one, from Brent Seabrook on the off-day before Game 4:
“I thought we played well last game. I thought we came out and worked hard. I thought we had some desperation, we couldn’t score.”
It’s like the Rudyard Kipling poem, “If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you./ If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…”
So this is where Chicago stands, after watching the Bruins walk away decidedly with the last six periods of this Stanley Cup final. They have not scored a goal in 122 minutes and 26 seconds; Chicago has gone 0-for-11 on the power play in this series; Boston is killing them at the dot, winning 56.8 per cent of the draws (71 per cent in Game 3), and while Chicago’s best players have been ineffective, Boston’s are all finding their groove.
They are inside the belly of the beast now, these Blackhawks. A loss in Game 4 and they … are … done.
“I think we’re in a tough spot,” head coach Joel Quenneville admitted. “Like, we have to win tomorrow night. Come up with a good result, (and) we’re right where we want to be.”
You can sense in the Blackhawks just a hint of what we on the outside are feeling, creeping into their answers. It’s not all about making little adjustments, or raising the game just a tad, when the Chicago leaders are talking.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to need urgency,” Brent Seabrook said. “We’re going to need desperation, we’re going to have to play a solid 60 minutes. Every shift, every second of tomorrow’s game is going to be important for us to be at our best. We’ve got to come out and answer the bell.”
Talk, of course, is cheap. Belief, however, is not. It is earned, always the hard way, in battles past.
So the Blackhawks should not care that, two years ago, the Vancouver Canucks were unable to figure out how not to get dominated inside this hostile arena. Or that the mighty Penguins just tried and failed at the exact job the Blackhawks are now tasked with.
They should care only that they had enough of the magical potion to win that 2010 Cup, and a fresh batch of the secret sauce to overcome a 3-1 series deficit to Detroit in Round 2.
“We can believe in each other,” the thoughtful Patrick Sharp said. “I can’t speak for Pittsburgh. I’m not in that locker room. But I know we’ve been in a situation like this before, playing against the Red Wings this year. That was one of the tougher series I’ve been a part of as a pro. There weren’t a whole lot of scoring chances out there, it seemed like things were going the wrong way, and we were down 3-1. We managed to battle back.
“I know it looks ugly from the outside,” he added. “People can look from the outside and say the series is lopsided or whatever. We win Game 4, we’re in great shape.”
Call it whistling past the graveyard. Call it swagger. Call it whatever you want. Every great athlete we’ve ever spoken to has the ability to control his belief system and never let the doubt creep in.
“You have to. Whether you believe it or not,” Sharp said. “You have to go into a game thinking you’re the best player on the ice. You have to think you’re the best team on the ice. There’s no shortage of that in our room.
“Sometimes when you have to dig deep and find that great effort, you have to rely on the character of the team. I know my teammates in here have that.”