sees the puck as much as he did tonight (is) going to be effective,” Quenneville said. “We’ve got to find a way to get through and hang around. That’s where the rewards are.”

The Hawks got off to a decent start with 5 shots on goal in the first six minutes, but fell behind 7:52 into the first period when Arvidsson tipped in a Filip Forsberg shot after Forsberg took a pass from Ryan Johansen. Jonathan Toews, Richard Panik and Nick Schmaltz were all bunched together in front of Johansen as he made the pass, and it left Forsberg wide open. Schmaltz actually upended Panik and both laid helpless on the Predators blue line when Arvidsson scored.

“Kind of a mix-up there at the blue line and all of a sudden a guy finds himself all alone behind our defensemen,” Toews said.

After sleepwalking through the rest of the first period, the Hawks controlled the flow of the game and had plenty of chances to knot the score. Kane had a pair of point-blank shots turned away by Rinne in the second period, and Marian Hossa also failed to convert on a shot in close after taking a pass from Ryan Hartman.

Artem Anisimov, who missed the last 13 games of the regular season with a leg injury, also should have buried a couple of shots. His best opportunity came about four minutes into the third period when he pounced on a puck sitting right in front of the net, but the shot bounced off Rinne and into the corner.

“Timing a little bit off,” Anisimov said. “The puck went through me (a lot). I need to bury those chances to score. Next game’s going to be better.”

If it is, we’ll have a series that’s knotted at one game a piece.

If it’s not? Well, then feel free to sound the alarm.

“The intensity, the speed, the physicality — it steps up every single game,” Toews said. “I won’t say teams feel each other out in the first game, but there’s no doubt it becomes more personal as the series goes along. So we’ll expect that in the second game … and we need to respond and have the best 60 minutes we’ve had so far this year. It’s a big one.”