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For the third time since the 2009-10 season, the Chicago Blackhawks are champions of the National Hockey League. More than that, they clinched it in the Windy City, hoisting the Stanley Cup aloft on home ice for the first time since 1938.
OK, now we can call it a dynasty.
Scarce few of the Chicagoans who saw the Blackhawks last receive the famous trophy, considered the hardest to win in all of sport – 82 regular season games, four best-of-seven playoff rounds and a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears – at home are alive in June of 2015, so for the sports-mad city on the shores of Lake Michigan this is an entirely new and special experience. There’s nothing better than clinching a championship in front of your own fans.
After breaking the longest active championship drought in NHL history, 49 long years in 2010 with a 4-2 series win, the Blackhawks beat the Boston Bruins in six games in 2013, and this year handled the Tampa Bay Lightning in six.
In 2010 and 2013 the Hawks were on enemy ice when they clinched the Cup, as they were in 1961 when Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita led the team to glory.
In 2015, to the delight of their delirious fans – they don’t call the Blackhawks’ home United Centre ‘the Madhouse on Madison’ for nothing! – it’s happened in Chicago, on a night so stormy that the Stanley Cup itself was delayed getting to the arena, eventually arriving just after the final horn, under police escort.
Chicago win this cup like they won their two previous in this dynastic modern era – through good goaltending and overall resilience.
Antti Niemi backstopped the 2010 championship, then left for San Jose. After a year with veteran Marty Turco and youngster Corey Crawford each occupying the crease for stretches, Crawford emerged as the starter and he’s barely taken a backward step.
Often maligned outside of Chicago, his resumé now includes two Stanley Cup titles, and he was particularly made to earn this one, facing a Tampa Bay squad who were relentless in attack.
Defenceman Duncan Keith who won the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to playoff MVP, after scoring 21 points (including the first goal of tonight’s game) while playing over 700 minutes in these playoffs, but Crawford, for mine, was a close second.
If Crawford was impressive, then the team-wide resilience that the Hawks have showed so often this year (and in previous campaigns) is something else, a power snatched from a higher plane. No matter their situation, they find a way to withstand, and to win, often from the unlikeliest of situations. Remember the 2013 clincher? Two goals in 17 seconds after Boston took a lead with less than half a period remaining. Somehow, someway, Chicago find a way to win. It’s in their DNA. It’s what they do – and they do it really well, after many years of practice.
Most notable this year was Chicago’s ability to win without major contributions from their two biggest starts, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. Yes, Toews scored in Game 5 and Kane’s laser in Game 6 kick-started the celebrations inside United Centre, but for the most part they were invisible in a series we expected them to dominate. Hockey can be strange like that.
Instead, it was left to lesser lights, guys like Brandon Saad, Antoine Vermette, Brad Richards and Teuvo Teravainen – the 20-year-old who had to drink sparkling apple juice in the dressing room post-game, because he’s not yet able to legally consume alcohol in America – to lead the way. Those players, in the Kane/Toews shadow for so much of the season, laid the foundations for this win. And they will not soon be forgotten for it.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Blackhawks franchise was in dire straits. The team was playing to paltry crowds inside United Centre, not winning often, and struggling with ownership and other off-ice issues. Under the ownership of Rocky Wirtz, everything has turned around. Of course, the entry draft selections of Kane and Toews helped, but it’s hard work at every level that builds an organisation like this, particularly at the top end, with general manager Stan Bowman.
The core of this team, Toews, Kane, Keith, Marian Hossa, Brent Seabrook, Patrick Sharp and Nicklas Hjalmarsson have been around from the outset of this run, all seven a part of all three Cups. Kris Versteeg won with Chicago in 2010 and now again five years later. Head coach Joel Quenneville has been there for all three championships, too. ‘Coach Q’ is as good as they come in the NHL.
Yet the Blackhawks will celebrate their 2015 Stanley Cup championship with heavy hearts, burdened by the tragic plight of one of their favourite sons, Stan Mikita. The Hockey Hall of Fame inductee is suffering from the terrible ravages of dementia. Sadly, Mikita is completely unaware of Chicago’s run to Stanley Cup glory.
The 22-season veteran of the NHL – all of it as a Blackhawk – is unfortunately the forgotten man of this playoff run. As his wife told the Chicago Tribune yesterday, “His mind is completely gone.” The Blackhawks organisation is worse for it, as is the wider hockey community.
I met him in 2010, after the current crop of Blackhawks went into history for delivering the city’s first NHL championship since the sixties, when he was working as an ambassador alongside the likes of Bobby Hull and Denis Savard. It took all of 20 seconds for me to realise his passion for the game. That passion makes his decline even more difficult. At least Mikita’s legacy will live on with the current crop of Blackhawk champions.
If you’re under the age of 30 and you’re born and bred Chicagoan, it’s been a pretty good life as far as far as watching your city’s sporting teams winning championships. Since January 1986, four separate professional teams have won their respective holy grails: the Chicago Bears first, winning Super Bowl XX in late January, before the Chicago Bulls went on a Michael Jordan-led dynastic run of their own (six championships in eight years, between 1990 and 1998), and now, in three out of the last six years, the Blackhawks.
Congratulations, Chicago – a super team. Welcome to the dynasty, everyone.
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