Brett Seabrook scored 3 minutes, 35 seconds into overtime to give Chicago a 2-1 victory over Detroit on Wednesday as the Blackhawks stormed back from a 3-1 deficit to win their quarter-final series in seven games.
Defenceman Seabrook collected a loose puck in the neutral zone then carried it into the Red Wings end, before firing a wrist-shot that beat Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard to the glove side. Seabrook’s shot appeared to change direction slightly after it hit the left leg of Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall.
“I was just trying to step up. The coach has been telling us defense to jump into the play. I felt like I got a lot of room and I just tried to shoot it,” Seabrook said.
Photo: Reuters
Chicago advance to the semi-finals to face defending Stanley Cup champion the Los Angeles Kings, who also needed a Game 7 to punch their ticket by beating the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night.
Chicago open their Western Conference series against the Kings tomorrow at home.
The Hawks or Kings will meet the winners of the other semi-final between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins for the Stanley Cup title. Their best-of-seven series also gets under way tomorrow.
After taking Game 1, Chicago lost three straight to the seventh-seeded Red Wings to trail 3-1 in the series, but they fought back, recording a 4-1 win on home ice in Game 5 and then tied the series at 3-3 with Monday’s 4-3 victory on the road.
Dave Bolland helped spring Seabrook free on the winner by placing a big hit on Detroit’s Gustav Nyquist. That opened up the middle of the ice for former Lethbridge Hurricane Seabrook, who moved the puck quickly toward the Detroit goal, then got the fortunate bounce off Kronwall.
Seabrook said he was not aiming for any particular spot, just trying to see if he could force the Detroit goaltender to make a save.
“Kronwall is like me, he likes to block a lot of pucks, so I was just trying to get it past him,” Seabrook said.
The goal was almost justice for a controversial call by game official Stephen Walkom late in the third period that disallowed an apparent Blackhawks goal by Niklas Hjalmarsson.
Trailing the play and seeing two players fall to the ice in front of the Detroit bench, Walkom blew his whistle quickly with 1:49 left in regulation and called coincidental penalties just as Hjalmarsson was up the ice beating Howard with a high slap-shot.
Chicago protested the call on the grounds they had possession and were in the middle of a scoring chance, but to no avail, setting the stage for Seabrook’s winner.
Seabrook said by the time overtime began they were no longer thinking of Walkom’s call.
“We forgot about that. We were excited and looking forward to getting the overtime started,” he said.
Howard had been Detroit’s best player in the series, but on Wednesday Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford matched him with a superb 26-save performance.
“All our guys are just as tired. It was a heck of an effort by everyone,” Crawford said.
It was just the third Game 7 between the two Original Six clubs and the first one since 1965. Chicago also won that Game 7 in the semi-finals.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier