ANALYSIS: Heartbreak Late as Blackhawks Fall in Final Seconds

The Blackhawks were a mere 17 seconds away from taking the Boston Bruins to overtime on Thursday night, but heartbreak at TD Garden sometimes takes that exact amount of time.
David Pastrnak found the game-winner with 17.2 seconds on the clock to take a 4-3 victory, thwarting a solid effort for most of the night by the visitors from Chicago.

POSTGAME LINKS
GAMECENTER: CHI at BOS
RECAP: Blackhawks Fall to Bruins in Final Seconds, 4-3
HIGHLIGHTS: Blackhawks at Bruins
GALLERY: Blackhawks at Bruins
"I liked our battle, I liked our compete," interim head coach Derek King said. "We stuck with it and came out with a real solid third. I was thinking, 'Hey, we get this to overtime, we might have this one.' It's a tough one, but we did a lot of good things."
"It's tough," said Brandon Hagel, who scored twice on the night including a third-period equalizer. "I thought we played a really good 60 minutes there."

LATE HEARTBREAK

The Blackhawks were faced with a defensive-zone draw to kill out the final seconds of the clock in the third and take the game to overtime and at least get a point out of Boston.
Ryan Carpenter won the draw cleanly back into his own corner, where Jake McCabe went to retrieve, but tumbled to the ground with Bruins forward Taylor Hall in the process. Hall corralled the puck and went to slide a puck back up the ice to a teammate when it redirected towards the slot instead. The puck bounced it's way between the legs of Connor Murphy and directly to the stick of David Pastrnak for a point-blank game-winning one-timer with 17.2 seconds to play to steal the regulation win.

"Fortunate, (then) unfortunate the way the puck went," King said. "We won the draw, we fall, we kind of go in to help, maybe we shouldn't have, but we do, it hits a skate, bounces up, bounces over and it's in the back of your net."
"It's tough when everyone's out of position and the puck's bouncing everywhere," Hagel added. "That's our luck I guess... In the game the whole way and that happens it's a dagger for sure."

STICKING TOGETHER

The painful defeat late was compounded by the positive momentum Chicago had built to even get back to a 3-3 contest. Down 1-0 early on the road, Alex DeBrincat and Hagel put the team in front 2-1 by the early minutes of the second period.
"I thought we played well," DeBrincat said. "I thought we controlled a lot of the first, too, some of the second. I thought overall we played well."
The Blackhawks, though, got into penalty trouble with three straight minors over the rest of the period against a fifth-ranked Bruins power play, who converted their second and third looks to pull ahead 3-2 after 40 minutes of play.
"They're tough," King said. "It's a young (PK) crew, young guys up to with the forwards, stick's not in the right position, they seam you and a guy like that (Pastrnak) is going to put the puck in the net."
"There was no really momentum in the second period there with all the penalty kills and stuff like that, so we just kind of came in and said stick together, let's win this one together,'" Hagel said of the message after two period. "I thought we did a really good job with that coming into the third period, putting the pressure on."

The comeback was on a power play of Chicago's own early in the final frame as Hagel cleaned up a DeBrincat rebound off a rush to pull level, 3-3.
The goal was Hagel's second of the night and 20th on the season, a plateau he and Patrick Kane were in friendly competition to reach first.
"I think it was $10,000 or something like that?" he joked of the possible prize after. "Just kidding. Just check that one off the box, I guess it's a race to 30 now."
"He's been great for us, scoring big goals all the time," DeBrincat said of Hagel. "Tying 3-3 is huge and his one before was pretty nice too. He's been a good player for us and pretty clutch for us."