Chicago Blackhawks Vs. St. Louis Blues A Goaltending Battle

Impressive Goaltenders Star In Series

Coming into this year’s first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series with the St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks fans knew this would be quite ugly. Both sides knew players would be plastered to the boards, and goals would only really come from ugly battles in front of the net. Through three games of the gut-wrenching series, those have all lived up to their expectations.

While some goals have been pretty snipes, others have come from players working hard deep in their offensive zone and badda bing, badda boom, the puck finds its way to the back of the net. While the defenses for both teams have stepped up a lot, the best players on both teams have been the men between the pipes.

Starting with Brian Elliott for the Blues, he has been stellar. First of all, for the whole regular season, he split time with Jake Allen. Elliott only started 41 games and posted a .930 save percentage and a 2.07 goals-against average. Through the first three games of this series, Elliott has let in four goals and has a .963 save percentage, which ranks third in the NHL for playoff goaltenders.

Elliott has easily been the better goaltender of the series as well. Half of the goals were shots that came from good plays and half were from ‘Hawks players working in front of the net. Either way, he has been able to neutralize the ‘Hawks hot offense. While

Corey Crawford

has made some better highlight type saves, Elliott has been way more consistent. While the Blues defense has been fantastic, Elliott has been the anchor to bail out players like

Kevin Shattenkirk

and

Alex Pietrangelo

consistently through these three games.

Those highlights are from Game 1, Elliott’s best game so far, and they make me cringe while watching them. Players like Artem Anisimov, Patrick Kane and others who usually finish when they have an open shot were just stoned by a goaltender who has gotten hot at the right time. If the ‘Hawks want to defeat the Blues, they will need to cool down Elliott just like they have done to Roberto Luongo and Jonathan Quick in the past.

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Now on the other side we have Crawford. Like we did with Elliott, let’s take a look at his regular season, in case you have been living under a rock. Through 58 games played, Crawford (35-18-5) had a .924 save percentage with a 2.37 goals-against average. He had seven shutouts all season, his career high, and pretty much matched his career high for save percentage (.926 in 2013). Through this series, Crawford has made some unbelievable saves that made the Scottrade Center and the United Center crowds jump to their feet.

This huge glove save by Crawford in Game 3 is among them. Let’s flash back a couple years. In series with the Kings or the Predators, we saw skilled players exploit the fact Crawford may have had cement in his glove. Not now. Not in 2016. Along with the glove, he has been strong in the crease by not giving up ice space in scrums in front of the net like this one below.

His stats through these three games have been a bit misleading, in my opinion. He has let up six goals so far and has posted a .929 save percentage on 85 shot attempts. That save percentage puts him in the middle of the road in terms of other goalies’ save percentages through the playoffs so far. These numbers are very misleading considering the task Crawford is asked to handle.