Chicago Blackhawks: Can Corey Crawford win a playoff series?Vincent Pariseon May 26, 2020 at 12:00 pm

In the 2010s, Corey Crawford was one of the best goalies in the world. He won the Cup twice to go along with two Jennings Trophies. In 2019-20, he split a lot of time with Robin Lehner but his numbers were still very good. They traded Lehner to the Vegas Golden Knights at the trade deadline with the knowledge that they were probably not going to go to the playoffs.

Crawford took back the net as the true number one and was still very good. In 40 games this year he had a .917 save percentage to go with a 2.77 goals-against average. The Blackhawks clearly didn’t take advantage of his good stats as they were only 16-20-3 in the games that he was the goalie fo record. With that said, Crawford is one of the reasons they have a chance to win the play-in series. It would be interesting to see how he would fare against the Dallas Stars in the second-round but Crawford has proved that he can do it in the past.

Of course, goaltending is important for everyone but for a team like the Blackhawks it feels just a little bit more important. The Montreal Canadiens, the lowest-seeded team in the Eastern Conference, are in the same spot with Carey Price. Neither of these two teams but their goalies are capable of stealing a series based on their resumes. Some people might not like it, but Crawford and the Hawks didn’t ask for any of this to happen. They have to like their chances better than some teams in this situation.