A hockey town again:
Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup
by Josh Brewster

JUNE 10, 2010 -- "Holy crap!" exclaimed Patrick Kane in his authentic Buffalonian accent.

Jeremy Roenick, now a TV analyst for NBC, broke down in tears.

Surely, in heaven, Bill Wirtz is smiling.

The Chicago Blackhawks, 49 years removed from its last title, hoisted the Stanley Cup in Philadelphia last night.

Kane's goal at 4:06 of overtime, sent the city of Chicago into a frenzy. In one of the more unusual endings to a Cup-winning game, it seemed as though only Kane knew that the puck had indeed crossed the line, and lodged under the padding at the base of the net.

Kane skated like a loon toward center ice--wouldn't you?--celebrating while even the great TV announcer Mike Emrick searched for the puck. Slowly but surely, his Blackhawks realized that Kane had made good in overtime, and that the Cup was theirs.  Minutes later, Jonathan Toews would skate off with the Conn Smythe Trophy.

The series was a title fight for all times. When one team would score, the other would follow. Three one-goal games; a Game 2 Chicago victory with two goals in 23 seconds. Amazingly clean play by two clubs that competed very hard.

A "certain" title almost erased when Philly scored late in Game 6. If not for Antti Niemi's heroics, the series wouldn't have been decided until Game 7.

The world watched, stunned, as Brent Seabrook and then, Marian Hossa, deflected a puck that landed on Scott Hartnell's stick with just 3:59 left in Game 6. Hartnell tied it and it looked like Hossa's Cup final "mojo" was again not working. Would Hossa lose three Cup finals in a row? The gods couldn't be this cruel, especially since the Blackhawks may have been sunk in Game 2 without Hossa's game-breaking goal, to which Ben Eager added the game-winner in a tight Chicago win that gave the Blackhawks a huge 2-0 lead as the series went back to Philly.

With an Original Six franchise facing a 1967 post-expansion giant, a victory by either would have served as cosmic justice. But with 49 dry years behind them, it's hard not to shed a tear for the Chicagoan, who saw his club sink to playing before crowds of just 8,000- or 9,000 in recent years, the team fifth amongst five in the Windy City. Chicago, to anyone who lived there as long as this author, was just too damned cold to NOT be a hockey town. But that is how it went for the Blackhawks, who only in recent years had begun to mend fences with a community that loved it in the 1960s and 70s.

Having embraced Wirtz's son, Rocky, and his complete overhaul of the club's community relationship, Chicagoans are more ecstatic over this title than they would have been had the Blackhawks beaten the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992, especially since the "new" Blackhawks made sure that everyone in the six-county northern Illinois region could see the game.

For Ed Snider, the classiest of all owners, it's a tough pill to lose another Cup final, the last coming in 1997 at the hands of the Red Wings. Snider has been first-class since Day One, now 43 years in the League, still sitting on two titles won in 1974 and 75 by clubs that still shape the tough identity of the Flyers 35 years hence.

What a great final. The TV ratings are up (again!), and despite the boos rained down on Gary Bettman (as always), his NHL is as healthy now as it's ever been, continuing to grow revenues and broadcast ratings while selling more hockey tickets than ever before.

The Blackhawks are number one in Chicago again, and will prove as much on Friday, when they parade the Stanley Cup north on Michigan Boulevard in America's most livable big city, where Hollywood flash means nothing and New York crass earns you a punch in the face. The city of broad shoulders, a beautiful lake and some terrible winters.

A hockey town again.

Top