COLUMBUS, Ohio — During the awkward commercial break between the overtime and shootout, Zack Smith caught Robin Lehner’s ear.
Moments before, referees had waved off an apparent last-second Blue Jackets winning goal, complete with a confetti shower and all. Moments later, Lehner would stop two of three shots in the shootout, hurling an Ohio-sized monkey off his back in a 3-2 Blackhawks win.
But in this awkward moment, between two sequences of chaos, Smith sensed his chance.
“Zack Smith, before the shootout started, told me a really, really bad story,” Lehner said. “He just put it in my head, and that’s all I was thinking about.”
Distracted in a good way from his unbelievable years-long streak of shootout woes — he was 2-16 in them dating back to December 2014, including 0-3 this season — and debuting a new tactic of just standing on the goal line and barely moving, Lehner finally ended his drought.
The celebratory 20-man hug that quickly surrounded him might only be rivaled again this season if the Hawks make the playoffs.
“We were all happy for him,” Dylan Strome said. “He’s obviously been pretty vocal about it. He hasn’t had the best shootout numbers, but [he’s] one of the best goalies in the league in my opinion, and it was only a matter of time before he did it in the shootout.”
The timing of it was fitting considering the wacky series of events that transpired so quickly and abruptly late in the game.
After the Blue Jackets protected a 2-0 lead into the final 13 minutes of regulation, blocking 23 Hawks shot attempts and practically lulling the game to sleep, the drowsy evening erupted into insanity.
After Strome pulled the Hawks within one, Erik Gustafsson’s tying goal with 2:02 left was as ironic as they come: Gustafsson had been suffering through a terrible game, having committed an egregious turnover to set up the Jackets’ second goal, and the power play had been even worse, barely registering a shot on goal through their first three opportunities and continuing an 0-for-17 drought.
In overtime, the Blue Jackets’ overturned winner came just a few tenths of a second after the buzzer, and coach John Tortorella — claiming 1.1 seconds had inexplicably ticked off before a penalty call with 18.1 left — stormed in and out of his postgame press conference with a violent, expletive-filled rant about the timing error.
Torts was not very impressed in his post-game press conference on Sunday... to say the least. pic.twitter.com/UMyssfqy1l
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 30, 2019
And then in the shootout, Jackets goaltender Joonas Korpisalo injured his leg on Jonathan Toews’ leadoff attempt and was replaced by backup Elvis Merzlikins, who eventually was credited with the loss despite facing just one shootout attempt (a Patrick Kane goal).
The win, however, gives the Hawks four in their last five games, and their ability to persevere through these odd circumstances underscores a key positive this team has repeatedly demonstrated: resilience.
The Hawks have not lost more than four in a row this season, have constantly bounced back from their most atrocious efforts (including the 7-1 home loss to the Devils less than a week ago) and have somehow pulled within four points of a playoff spot again.
“This is one of those games, maybe the first two periods we didn’t deserve to win this game, but that’s [how] hockey works sometimes,” Lehner said. “We stuck with it, we got our goals, and we really battled really hard to get back. To lose this one in a shootout, it would’ve been tough.
“With what we did, we deserved to come through there.”
