After three consecutive first-round exits, the St. Louis Blues finally broke through in Game 7 on Monday, knocking out the Chicago Blackhawks with a 3-2 victory - which pleased no one more than Ken Hitchcock.
"The naysayers can all take a day off," the Blues head coach said postgame, according to Mark Lazerus of the Sun-Times. "We can celebrate for a day, and then you all can start bashing us again."
A loss likely would've cost Hitchcock his job, as it would've marked St. Louis' fifth consecutive playoff appearance without reaching the conference finals. Instead, the club eliminated the defending Cup champions.
"Every game was just packed with a sense of urgency and emotion," Hitchcock said of the series, as quoted by NHL.com's Lou Korac. "Every game felt like its own sudden death game. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to coach in it, to play in it, to strategize in it, it was a lot of fun.
"It was real eye-opening what a championship team can do like them when they can dial it up. You find yourself on the bench just in awe with some of the things they do. We had to find a way to battle through it. We knew that there was going to be a push. It came and came hard. You play in a series like this, you see why that team has won three (Stanley) Cups."
With the victory, the Blues advance to Round 2, where they'll face the Dallas Stars - the team Hitchcock led to his lone Stanley Cup win in 1999 against the Buffalo Sabres, who at the time were coached by current Stars bench boss Lindy Ruff.
