"The Blackhawks rank 25th in the NHL in goals-allowed average, five spots from the league's defensive rock-bottom. In related news, for a team harboring Stanley Cup aspirations, this is not a sustainable way to go about fulfilling those hopes.

"Well, obviously the way we've been playing right now, I don't think you can," defenseman Duncan Keith said Sunday, when asked if the team can survive leaky defense like this. "I don't think that's saying anything outrageous.

"We think we have a good team and we know when we play the right way we're a really tough team to play against and a really tough team to score goals against. We've been talking about it a lot, and working on it a lot throughout the year, but it doesn't seem that we've been able to develop our consistency in our team defense.""