June 09--Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop was there for the taking in Game 3.
Appearing to fight through an injury, Bishop was laboring just to make the routine saves early in the game. Rebounds abounded.
There was just one problem for the Hawks in all those juicy chances. The Hawks weren't doing a good enough job of creating traffic in front of the net. Whether it be through screening Bishop so his already slow reaction time would get slower or cleaning up those juicy rebounds Bishop was leaving behind, the Hawks couldn't quite get the traffic they needed in front of the net.
"I think we still didn't put enough pucks at the net and (create) traffic, obviously," coach Joel Quenneville said. "But certainly later in the game there we made it easier on him."
There were a few near misses off rebounds, Teuvo Teravainen's comes immediately to mind, but that Hawks missed an opportunity to score by not being in position enough to slam one or two more of those rebounds home, especially in the first.
According to war-on-ice.com's shot attempt chart, which measures all shots -- on goal, missed or blocked -- the Hawks had just two shot attempts classified as rebounds in the first period -- Teravainen's and one from Marian Hossa. Given Bishop's vulnerability and slow reactions after making initial saves, the Hawks needed that number to be higher.
The Hawks, however, did generate eight rush chances around the net, five which made it to Bishop, three of which were blocked. For the period, the Hawks on 19 shots on goal.
In the second period, the Hawks didn't generate a single chance off a rebound and had no rush chances around the net, while in the third Brandon Saad missed the Hawks only rebound shot attempt near the net. The Hawks had four rush shots near Bishop in the third.
All that goes to say the Hawks were applying pressure on Bishop in the first and third periods, but they needed to clean up the messes they were creating in front of him better.
