NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Sometimes you just have to go off the grid. Clear your head, get your mind off issues or work, take a breath, reset, pick up and go again.
Such was the Blackhawks' plan on Tuesday: with two days in between Monday's crushing 3-2 overtime loss to the Nashville Predators and Thursday's must-win Game 4, they got away from hockey for the day.
"Take a day here to just decompress and rest up and be ready for tomorrow," Brent Seabrook said. "Go back to work tomorrow and try and find that energy and be rolling for Thursday."
As tough as this series has been physically it's been really trying mentally. As strong and confident as the Blackhawks have looked in recent seasons, they sounded decidedly (and understandably) down and reserved when they met the media on Tuesday. So coach Joel Quenneville wanted players to do whatever was necessary to be ready.
"Today we'll give them a day to take a breath and stay away from each other, and then tomorrow we're looking to get a practice. For us to just to try to come in here and look at that focus and try to win one game, we had a great opportunity I felt we had a lot to do with letting go," Quenneville said. "There's some things we've got to be better at for sure, be harder to play against with the puck, puck management, decisions with it, protecting it, putting it into good areas. But I think as the game progressed, we got worse in that area."
The Blackhawks were going through the expected emotions on Tuesday: anger, frustration, maybe even a little bewilderment. The schedule is what it is, and even before Game 3, Tuesday was likely going to be an off-the-ice day. Getting away from the rink is one thing. Getting away from hockey, not thinking about it at all, isn't easy.
"Right after the game you just want to play again. You just want to get back at it because you're angry and you just want to get the game back," Dennis Rasmussen said. "At the same time it's nice to get a day off. We can talk a little more, get together and prepare ourselves for the next game."
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Getting on the ice on Tuesday wasn't going to be the big solution to the Blackhawks' problems. This was not a situation where they were going to draw the magic right formula on the dry-erase board. This was not a situation where a bag skate was going to benefit anyone. The Blackhawks know what they have to do, they just haven't done it yet.
The Blackhawks just have to deal with where they are right now. Going over and over things in their heads isn't going to solve anything. They've got one more opportunity to stay in this series, one chance to send it back to Chicago. Their game has to be in the right place on Thursday. So do their heads.
"Obviously looking back it's easy to say we could have, shoulda, coulda, woulda done things differently. But it wasn't good enough," Duncan Keith said. "Going forward, we just know we have to have our best game. That's the bottom line."