ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Blackhawks’ goaltending see-saw has tilted back into Corey Crawford’s sandbox, for now.
Crawford made his second consecutive start after the bye week Tuesday and looked fantastic again, keeping the Hawks alive long enough to rally in the third period and earn a point in a 3-2 overtime loss against the Wild.
Robin Lehner will almost certainly start in Wednesday’s game versus the Bruins, but the No. 1 job that seemed clearly his a month ago has shifted back to uncertain again.
“All year, both guys are constantly trying to prove they deserve more,” coach Jeremy Colliton said pregame. “That’s the type of competitors they are. But that competition has been really healthy for us.”
Between Dec. 19 and Jan. 2, Lehner started six of seven games and continued to put up all-world results. But Lehner’s knee injury in Vancouver derailed his momentum, and Crawford has started seven of 11 since.
Crawford now owns a 3-1-1 record and .935 save percentage in his last five starts, while Lehner sports a 3-2-0 record and .899 save percentage in his last five.
“All year [Corey’s] been great, not just the last month and a half,” Duncan Keith said Tuesday. “Early on there, we weren’t playing well as a team — as good as we have been lately — so he got hung out to dry there a few times. But if you look at games, he was making big save after big save.”
As the trade deadline grows closer, the two pending free agent goalies will both be the subject of plenty of rumors, even though it seems unlikely the Hawks would trade either one as long as they remain on the playoff bubble.
They’ll need better efforts than Tuesday’s, however, to remain on that bubble.
They were out-attempted 26-10 in the first period and struggled to make clean, fluid breakouts all game long, resulting in Colliton saying it has “been a while since we played that poorly.”
