Hawks and Blue Jackets puts to NHL sidelines

The Midwest contingent in the NHL playoffs was cut in half on Thursday (April 20) as both the Columbus Blue Jackets and Chicago Blackhawks were punted in their respective Division Semi-Final series.

After staving off the Penguins in game four of the series a couple of nights earlier, Jackets dropped a 5-2 decision at Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena and shook hands after five games. Meanwhile, after topping the Western Conference through the regular season, the BlackHawks were shockingly sent to the sidelines in four straight games following a 4-1 loss at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

Blue Jackets 2 at Penguins 5

Down 3-0 early in the second, the Jackets battled back with a pair of goals to make things interesting heading to the final 20 minutes, but two goals 51 seconds apart put the Penguins in front to stay and sent the Jackets to summer vacation.

It was Phil Kessel with the lone goal of the opening period for the Penguins and Bryan Rust continued an amazing series with his fourth and fifth goals in the middle period.

William Karlsson finally got the Jackets on the board with a set up from Sam Gagner at the 9:30 mark and Boone Jenner’s second of the series, from Cam Atkinson and Seth Jones ended up being the final goal of the season for the Blue Jackets.

Sidney Crosby and Scott Wilson had he third period goals for the Penguins and Marc-Andre Fleury picked up his fourth playoff win in goal after entering the series due to an injury to Matt Murray during the warm ups of game one. Fleury turned in an awesome effort, stopping 49 of 51 Columbus shots while the Penguins scored five times on 32 chances against Sergei Bobrovsky.

It was a bittersweet finish for the Blue Jackets who on one hand, made the post season for the first time in three seasons, but on the other hand, saw a shot at the President’s Cup and home ice advantage through the opening round go away with a rough finish to the regular season. The last time the Jackets made the playoffs was in 2014 when it also came up short in six games against the Penguins.

BlackHawks 1 at Predators 4

Entering this game, the Blackhawks had scored just two goals in the first three games of the post season, but the good news for the visitors was both of those goals came in game three.

But in the end, the Hawks were stymied by Pekka Rinne in goal for the Predators. The lone goal for the Hawks came on a powerplay with just 5:18 to go as captain Jonathan Toews hammered a rebound home to give the team a glimmer of hope.

The Hawks trailed just 1-0 heading to the third after a second period goal by Roman Josi but Colton Sissons and Josi again scored 1:29 apart to give the Preds a commanding lead with a little under 10 minutes to go.

After the Toews goal, the Hawks turned the pressure up as much as possible but Viktor Arvidson’s empty netter with 1:48 to go finished off the shocking four-game sweep for the Predators.

After winning three Stanley Cups in five years, the Hawks inexplicably find themselves sidelined after an opening round defeat for a second straight year.

This season’s team was admittedly much younger with several rookies in the lineup, but the Hawks showed down the season’s homestretch it was still the class of the West Conference and the addition of defensive specialist Johnny Oduya at the trade deadline seemed a perfect pick up as he played a part in all of those Stanley Cup runs.

The win boosted the Nashville Predators into the Central Division championship where it will face one of the other two Midwest survivors – St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild. Those teams are headed to Game 5 of their series at Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center Saturday as the Wild staved off elimination on Wednesday night.