Breathe Deeply Blackhawks, You're Coming Home

Chicago would like to forget wild loss

It's back to the beginning for the Blackhawks, who lost 6-4 to the Flames in Calgary in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. After Wednesday's wild loss, the team needs to regain composure to win two of the next three games to move on in the playoffs. Mental mistakes and overall chippiness contributed to their loss, which is one of the reasons why having such a young team can be trouble.

Wednesday night's game was wild, with 10 goals scored, including six of them in the second period alone. Patrick Kane started out the game strongly, with a goal in the first five minutes. He was then matched by Jarome Iginla less than a minute later. Calgary took the lead in the second, scoring three straight goals. The Blackhawks then matched their efforts, scoring three unanswered goals, tying up the game heading into the third. The game seemed deadlocked, until Eric Nystrom scored. The Flames earned their final goal when, in an attempt to generate some offense, Joel Quenneville pulled Nikolai Khabibulin in favor of having more attackers on the ice. Iginla scored on the empty net with less than 30 seconds left in the game.

To take this series, a few things need to happen for the Blackhawks. First, the stars need to show up. Kane, Jonathan Toews, and Patrick Sharp need to score, plain and simple. Also, the team needs to stop making so many mental errors. Khabibulin gave up too many goals, and the team didn't take advantage of power play situations.

It will be nice for the Blackhawks to be in there own, very loud building. Now, they need to use the rush of playing at home to stay focused and win.

 Maggie Hendricks is a lifelong Chicagoan who has loved sports since, quite possibly, birth. She also writes for Cage Writer, Yahoo! Sports' MMA blog, and Fourth-Place Medal, Yahoo! Sports' Olympic blog.

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