Game one started just past 8PM on the east coast and both teams came out flying. Both teams came out throwing their weight around matching eachother hit for it. Boston got on the board first at the 13:11 mark when Milan Lucic scored his 4th of the playoffs. So after an exciting first period Boston had a 1-0 lead. Boston outshot Chicago in the 1st 11-8. Once the 2nd period got going, it took :51 for Boston to stretch the lead to 2-0 as Lucic scored his 2nd of the game and 5th of the playoffs. Boston look in control at this point and had the Hawks back on their heels a bit. Chicago would get back into things at the 3:08 mark when Brandon Saad scored his 1st of the playoffs to cut the Bruins lead in half. Boston would get into a bit of penalty trouble in the period, getting three minors in the middle period, but the Hawks powerplay came up empty. So with 40 minutes of play in the books the Bruins held on to a 2-1 lead. Chicago really started to take play back in that 2nd period outshooting the Bruins in the period 16-8.
Chicago started the 3rd period the way the 2nd ended, dominating play for the first few minutes of the period. Some of the momentum went away when Michael Frolik got called for tripping almost six minutes into the period. It didn't take Boston long to capitalize as :18 seconds into the man advantage this happened:
The blast from Bergeron was his 6th of the playoffs and gave the Bruins back their two goal lead. This seemed to fire the Hawks up as they dominated the Bruins for the remainder of regulation. Chicago cut into the Bruins lead at the 8:00 mark when Dave Bolland scored his 1st of the playoffs. It got the Hawks back to within one and brought the crowd at United Center to its feet again. Chicago finally pulled even at the 12:14 mark when Johnny Oduya scored his 3rd of the playoffs to even the game at 3. In that 3rd period Chicago outshot Boston 15-8.
So to overtime we go in the opener, and Boston seemed to have more of the jump in the first extra session. Shots favored Boston 12-8 and both netminders, Tukka Rask and Corey Crawford had to play at the top of their game. Best chance in the first overtime came to Boston when David Krejci had trouble grabbing a rebound on a 3 on 2. He tried to pick up a lose puck in front and had the left side of the net staring at him but he couldn't get a clean handle on the puck. Same thing could be said for the 2nd overtime period as well. Shots in the 2nd OT were even at 10-10, and again both netminders had to be good. Best chance in the 2nd overtime came in the final seconds with Boston on a powerplay. Zedeno Chara, the Bruins captain had Crawford beat dead to rights but rang it off the goal post and out the other side.
After two grueling overtime periods we started the 3rd extra period. The clocks on the East Coast had hit 1AM Thursday morning. Both teams still going. After all the great hockey being played it had to finally come to an end at some point. That moment came at 12:08 mark of the 32rd overtime period when this happened:
Andrew Shaw scored his 5th of the playoffs giving the Hawks the game one win. Total shots on goal were 63 for the Blackhawks and 54 for the Bruins. Tukka Rask stopped 59 of 63 shots in the loss. His counterpart Cory Crawford stopped 51 of 54 Bruins shots. Both goalies played outstanding in game one.
Total overtime in this game reached 52:08 making it the 5th longest overtime game in the history of the finals. The five longest games are:
5/15/90 EDM 3 @ BOS 2 Petr Klima 55:13
6/19/99 DAL 2 @ BUF 1 Brett Hull 54:51
6/8/02 DET 3 @ CAR 2 Igor Larionov 54:47
4/9/31 CHI 3 @ MTL 2 Cy Wentworth 53:50
6/12/13 BOS 3 @ CHI 4 Andrew Shaw 52:08
Both teams get much deserved time off as Game Two will take place Saturday night at 8pm from the United Center in Chicago!
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