Blackhawks' Dominant Supporting Cast Putting Chicago on Brink of Another Title

For most of the postseason, the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning have shown that the traditional maxim about the necessity of depth may be overstated. The Blackhawks have done it on defence, where they have played the last four rounds with essentially only four defencemen. The Bolts have done it at forward, where the top six have managed 51 playoff goals to the bottom six’s eight.

Watching Game 5, though, it was easy to remember how important good depth can be in the pursuit of the Stanley Cup. The Blackhawks would not have come away with the win if not for the superb play of their bottom two lines.

Chicago’s depth forwards were dominant in the contest. The six players on Tampa’s bottom two lines were on the ice for, on average, less than one shot from the scoring chance area all game. The Blackhawks’ group, in contrast, was on the ice for an average of four, meaning that Andrew Desjardins was as likely to be on the ice for one of his team’s scoring chances as Steven Stamkos was for one of the Lightning’s.

And of course, the game-winner came in the third period as Chicago’s third line went head-to-head with the fringe forwards of Tampa Bay:

Antoine Vermette was the star of the sequence, starting the play off in the defensive zone with a stick check on pinching defenceman Andrej Sustr and then skating to the other end of the rink and putting the rebound away. Afterward, Hockey Night in Canada’s Scott Oake asked Vermette about the value of the Blackhawks’ depth.

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“As a group, here we are aware of the quality of players we’ve got,” Vermette said. “We don’t want to get too confident. We have a lot of respect for the opponent, but we think we have made our lineup pretty deep, and on given nights you can’t always rely on [star players to score].”

That’s been a trend throughout the series, and especially on the road, where Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville has not been able to dictate the line matchups.

Tampa Bay catches a lot of flak for its impotent bottom six, but in the Final, the third line centered by Cedric Paquette has consistently made life miserable for Chicago’s top line. Lightning coach Jon Cooper has repeatedly gone for that matchup whenever he can get it; Quenneville has assiduously avoided it. As a result, in Illinois, Jonathan Toews has gone power vs. power, and in Florida, he’s been dogged by an aggravating and tenacious shadow.

Let’s look at who was driving the bus for Chicago in its three road games of this series:

• In Game 1, the third line contributed both goals to a Chicago win, with Teuvo Teravainen tying things up late in the third and Vermette winning it a few minutes later.
• In Game 2, Teravainen scored again, as did Andrew Shaw. The Blackhawks’ fourth line contributed five of the team’s 11 even-strength scoring chances and was on for just two of 12 against.
• In Game 5, Vermette scored the winner and Chicago’s bottom six lines both went plus-four/minus-two in terms of shots from the scoring chance area at even-strength.

The Blackhawks won two of those three road games, even as their top-six forwards were outchanced by an average of 8-5 in them. After Game 1, we wondered whether Chicago’s offensive depth would be the difference in this series or if the checking work of Paquette et al. neutralized the gap. As it turns out, the Blackhawks’ ability to get scoring from its bottom lines has been the club’s decisive edge so far in the Final, as Yahoo Sports' Sean Leahy writes: 

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The Lightning were carried by their top six throughout these playoffs, but have been unable to contain Chicago’s secondary scorers. Steven Stamkos, who is without a goal in the Final, didn’t record his first shot on net until the third period. Game 5 was the third time this series Tampa was held to a single goal. They haven’t been able to get the timely scoring from down their lineup like the Blackhawks have.

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By virtue of winning Game 5, Chicago now gets two cracks at eliminating Tampa Bay.

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As the series shifts north, we can expect the Blackhawks’ stars to once again take on more importance as Quenneville runs them against a wounded Triplets line (Nikita Kucherov was injured in Game 5 and Tyler Johnson has been hurt all series). Game 6 is likely to hinge on Toews and Patrick Kane, as home games have throughout this series.

If, though, the Lightning manage to survive their trip to Illinois, they’ll face a very different challenge in Game 7. Those road games, where the stars face a tougher slog through an obstacle course devised by the opposition coach, are where teams really lean on their alternate scorers. If the Final makes it that far, it would not be at all surprising if Vermette or Marcus Kruger or somebody else from the supporting cast were to contribute the Cup-winning goal to Chicago’s cause.

Scoring chances manually tracked by B/R; scoring statistics courtesy of NHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.