Ben Bishop gets crash course in decision-making upon return

TAMPA – All in all, it had been a tough enough week for Ben Bishop.

First of all, there was the mysterious injury. Then there was the constant game of dodge-the-question about whether he would be able to play next. There were, of course, the Blackhawks.

And suddenly, there was teammate Victor Hedman, streaming toward him like a fullback on the goal line. They slammed into each other, the puck skittering loose between Bishop's legs where Patrick Sharp scooped it it and delivered it into the net, as easy as an empty-netter.

In a low-scoring series, it was 1-0, Chicago.

It wound up 2-1, and in hindsight, it was easy to place the blame on a pair of plays. There was Sharp, picking up the puck behind the fallen Lightning players. And there was Nikita Kucherov, picking up a bouncing puck in front of Chicago's Corey Crawford but missing the goal and slamming into the post, costing him the rest of the game.

"I hadn't thought of it like that, but it does kind of suck,'' said Lightning coach Jon Cooper.

Bishop had figured to be one of the key figured to the game all along, since he and Cooper had talked Saturday morning and had agreed he would return to the lineup after missing Game Four. But suddenly, it wasn't about the acrobatics Bishop preformed in the net. It was about his cartoonish collision with Hedman.

"I saw the puck coming off the boards,'' Bishop said, "And I thought I could get it to Stammer (Steven Stamkos). I saw Heddy, but I guess he didn't see me. I yelled, but you can't hear anything in there. I guess I should just let him play the puck.

"I can't remember the last time we played that. Looking back, I probably came out too far.''

Cooper called it a "one-in-a-million'' play.

"I thought he was terrific,'' Cooper said. "He gave us a chance to win the game.''

The Blackhawks got the winner early in the third period when Antoine Vermette stuck a rebound past Bishop, who said he was sprayed with ice on the play.

"We had to win one more game anyway,'' Bishop said. "We just put a little more pressure on us. We'll try to go up there and win and then move on and see what happens.''

Cooper compared this to the first round of the playoffs, when the Bolts trailed the Detroit Red Wings three games to two. "We've gone form an inexperience playoff team to an experienced playoff team. We've been in this situation.''

If Chicago can win one more game, it would bring home its third Stanley Cup in six years.

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