“On State Street, that great street, I just wanna say. They do things they don’t do, on Broadway.” — lyric from the song “Chicago.”

CHICAGO — One day they might be able to quantify whatever it is that keeps the Chicago Blackhawks in the conversation today. What they do, like the song says, that other teams in other towns do not.

If the geeks can ever put a number on whatever it is that the Blackhawks have — that the Anaheim Ducks are slowly acquiring — there will be a lot of hockey scouts looking for work.

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“I’ve said it a hundred times, it’s the belief. The belief that it can happen,” Anaheim head coach Bruce Boudreau said. “We score three goals last game, (Game 4) and Chicago comes right back and ties it up. Ends up winning it.”

Perhaps someone will perfect the “jersey tracking” system to the point where we can measure Jonathan Toews level of desire. Then maybe we’ll know why Toews shoots that puck from the corner when he did late in Game 5, and how it ends up in the net, where the other 200 shots from that location go down as “poor shot selection” and end up in neutral ice or frozen by the goalie.

Why is it that a three-goal spurt against cripples some teams mentally, but not the Blackhawks?

“We knew there was a lot of time,” Toews said of Game 5, in which his club was absolutely throttled for the first 20 minutes. “We just had to find our game and get our four lines rolling.”

So belief, then, is the reward of success. And everyone else just gets varying levels of hope.

After two Stanley Cups, the Blackhawks know what works, while Anaheim only thinks it knows. However, as the Ducks continue to be the better team in this series, an osmosis is taking place.

Anaheim is watching this thing unfold, and they’re beginning to truly believe they’re the better team. And I’m not sure Chicago isn’t experiencing the same “Come to Jesus” moment here, with the series beginning to sort itself out quite plainly.

Anaheim is the better, deeper team though five games. They have more defencemen who can play at this level, better support players up front, and zero no-shows, as ‘Hawks Marian Hossa, Bryan Bickell and at times Patrick Kane have been in this series.

Chicago has not won a game in regulation yet, and we know the element of luck that separates an OT winner from an OT loser. They’ve been chasing this series virtually throughout — Chicago has led this series for just 51 of the 383 minutes played — and history tells us that seldom turns around after five games. Because there is a reason one team is behind, and another in front.

You know the Blackhawks are well aware: This isn’t Nashville or Minnesota they’re messing with now. It’s a team that has an answer to every question the Blackhawks pose — except for the fact that Chicago has won before, while most of these Ducks have not.

And that’s starting to change too.

“Giving up two late goals like that, to be able to come in our locker room, regroup, get behind each other, go out and make a big play like Matt (Beleskey) did there?” captain Ryan Getzlaf of the Game 5 OT winner said. “Moving forward that gives us that little bit more confidence.”

Boudreau knew that overtime was a tipping point. That after losing two previous OTs and blowing a late lead in Game 5, that the balance between Anaheim’s tangibles and Chicago’s intangibles had reached critical mass.

“I said, ‘It’s our turn,’” he said of his intermission address. “’Don’t be upset and hang your heads. Get angry. Get really mad that we sort of pissed it away a little bit. Just come back and play the way you did in the first period. Things will work out.’”

Said Andrew Cogliano of finally winning in overtime: “That is as big as it gets for us.”

There is one last hurdle here, however, and it is found in the person of Frederik Andersen. Where Chicago goalie Corey Crawford has been pulled plenty of times in the playoffs and bounced back, this is all new territory for the big Dane.

And his backup, John Gibson, hasn’t played a game since April 3. So if Andersen can’t recover, he may represent the trap door Chicago needs right about now.



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Because the ‘Hawks know they’ve used up a ton of good luck and happenstance through these five games. To win two straight games now, they’ll have to straight-up be the better team.

Have the puck more. Make more saves. Win the physical battles. Be more opportunistic.

Can the old dogs be that team against this newer, hungrier pack from Anaheim?

“I think you definitely dig deep and ask yourself those questions, too, and you find out how much you’ve got,” Toews said. “I think we’re confident that we’ve got that character and we’ve got what it takes to win the next game and keep ourselves alive in this series.”

They’ve got to be out of the pixie dust left over from two Stanley Cups runs by now. Now, Chicago must get deeper, bigger and hungrier if they want to survive.

Can that happen? Barring an Anaheim goaltending collapse, I just don’t see how.