Hitchcock thinks fans get carried away with agonizing over such experiences. The veteran coach said it's something that happens often. It's all about how the leading team manages the game.
"I don't think you ever get it out," Hitchcock said. "I think if you have this conversation 10 years from now, something like this will happen. I think it's a natural tendency that players get into that they don't want to get caught, they think in terms of protecting rather than attacking. It's every team. You look at the game against Chicago that we came back in, that wasn't Chicago's game plan. We outshot them badly in the third period and came back on them to tie it up.
"Those are the things in hockey that you're trying to prevent all the time. I think it requires a real mindset collectively, not just one line doing it, everyone's got to be focused."
Hitchcock is used to coaching in the tense moments.
"The first thing that happens is you get a little quiet on the bench, you get a little quiet on the ice, you stop talking and when you stop talking in this style of game, the games are so fast and so physical now, you get slow," Hitchcock said. "When you get slow, you stop skating and you start chipping pucks in. Every team goes through it. We recognize it and hopefully next time we get another chance to have something like that, we do it a little bit different."
What the Blues have been good at this postseason is not falling for those "oh-no" moments. They've been able to regroup accordingly and, given the chance, rectify what went wrong in the first place.
"Once they tied the game up, the intermission was a good time for us to regroup, get refreshed, kind of change our mindset and go back at them," Blues left wing Alexander Steen said. "I thought we did a good job in overtime.