Hawks lose opener to Nashville

A lucky goal and two empty-netters (!) resulted tonight in a wholly misleading score of Nashville 4, Blackhawks 1.

Character-check time. The Hawks are a sufficiently better team that they still should win the series. They need, as Hawks announcer Troy Murray says, to avoid letting themselves get frustrated, let tonight's game go, and come back strong on Sunday.

The Hawks did let themselves be thoroughly outworked in the last half of the third period. The question now is whether the Hawks will decide to reach down and make it happen, or whether they let themselves get flustered like Calgary and Vancouver did last year when the Hawks were the surprising underdogs.

We'll know the answer Sunday night at this time.

One note which should sound the alarm: Nashville won fourteen of sixteen one-goal games during the regular season.

Not panic time yet. Most of the favored teams lost their first games this year.