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All in all, a brutal game for the Blackhawks. So much for this being a long series... so much for the idea that we wouldn't see a rematch of last year's final come June 5.

At least Chicago coach Joel Quenneville tried to make the festivities interesting in his postgame comments after the Red Wings shellacked his team 6-1.

"Well, I think we witnessed probably the worst call in the history of sports today at the end of the second period there, nothing play," he said to open his press conference, speaking in reference to a roughing call on Matt Walker to end the first period. "You know, they score, it's 3-0, they ruin a good hockey game. They absolutely destroyed what was going on on the ice."

He was then asked about players taking a run at Patrick Kane and if the penalty came in retaliation for that.

"I couldn't find the penalties," Quenneville said. "I think you could argue along the way. But they ruined the whole game. I think that's basically the gist of what I'm trying to say."

And here comes the fine...

There's clearly some frustration at play there for the 'Hawks coach, and that's understandable, but this game (and this series, frankly) hardly turned on a few botched penalty calls. Yes, the Red Wings had nine power plays to Chicago's four, but many came after the game was out of hand.

I'm not sure there's any good news out of all this for the Blackhawks, other than the fact they've got nowhere to go but up. The bad news is they're headed to Detroit for Game 5 on Wednesday and that they were pummelled by a Red Wings team missing both Lidstrom and Datsyuk.

Then again, Chicago's surprised a few times in these playoffs, so who knows? Taking things back to Game 6 at the United Center would sure do a lot to help rescue a third round that's quickly lost a lot of its intrigue.

Finally, here's Mike Babcock and Henrik Zetterberg on the Blackhawks' undisciplined play, which just so happened to be the topic of conversation after the game.

"We just felt that we wanted to play the game as physical as we can between the whistles, not do a whole lot of talking after the whistles. And, you know, when you're hyped up, you're excited, sometimes you cross the line. That's what unfortunately happened for them tonight."

"I don't know what they were thinking," Zetterberg said. "You know, that was the way they were playing. You know, we just pay attention to ourselves, try to stick with it, play the way we want to, don't care about so much what they're doing."