No one deserved it more.
Duncan Keith, the iron horse of the Chicago defence, who averaged 31 minutes and six seconds of ice time per game through the two-month slog of the NHL playoffs, scored the winning goal as the Blackhawks won their third Stanley Cup in six years with a 2-0 defeat of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The pivotal play came late in the second period of Monday night’s Game 6. Chicago’s Brad Richards – the playoffs MVP back when Tampa won the Cup in 2004 – sent a cross-ice stretch pass to Patrick Kane at the Tampa blueline.
Kane – playoffs MVP when Chicago won the Cup in 2013 – waited for two Tampa players to close in, then flicked the puck between them and onto the stick of Keith, who was wide open. He wristed a shot from up high. Ben Bishop made the save but gave up a fat rebound. Keith skated around Cedric Paquette like he was not even there and fired the loose puck home.
A little over an hour later, and after a late insurance goal by Kane, the Hawks were raising the Cup (as we predicted in these pages before the playoffs began).
Keith was named playoffs MVP -- meaning the winning goal had connected three such players.
His stamina in these playoffs was legendary, and he never faltered. Consider that Tampa’s leader in ice time was Victor Hedman at 23.57 per game, not even close to Keith’s workload.
Keith also led the playoffs in plus-minus at plus-16. In second place: Hedman at plus-11.
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