Corey Crawford: Brutal plus brutal equals doubly brutal.

It’s funny how the outcome colors the drama of a sporting event—funny yet somehow sad. Here the Blackhawks are playing one of the most exciting, dramatic Stanley Cup playoff series in memory. Each of their first four games with the Phoenix Coyotes has gone into overtime, and three of those regulation ties came with the Hawks scoring after they had pulled their goalie for a sixth attacker in the final minute or so. There’s been conflict, in the form of Raffi Torres’s savage hit on Marian Hossa in the third game, and there’s been beauty, with the two teams playing oftentimes at an urgent, breakneck pace back and forth—the sport at its gorgeous best.

There are moments in these games that would be as fondly remembered as Hossa’s game-winning goal coming out of the penalty box in overtime in the fifth game of their series against Nashville two years ago—if only the Hawks hadn’t lost three of those games, the last two at home on very soft scores surrendered by goaltender Corey Crawford.