By Michael Farber
Inside The NHL
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
June 10, 2010
PHILADELPHIA - JUNE 09: Patrick Kane #88 of the Chicago Blackhawks hoists the Stanley Cup after scoring the game-winning goal in overtime to defeat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 and win the Stanley Cup in Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA -- The Stanley Cup-winning goal should be a transcendent moment, engraved in memory and history, a glorious conclusion to the pursuit of one of the most arduous trophies to win.
Alas, this overtime goal needed subtitles.
Patrick Kane scored the goal for the Blackhawks, on a play off the left wing that was vaguely reminiscent of the Olympic-winning goal that Sidney Crosby scored in overtime for Canada a little more than three months ago. Kane fired the puck with a quick release, there was an odd sound, Flyers goaltender Michael Leighton looked like someone had slashed his tires, and a few of the 'Hawks started celebrating. But other than a disheartened Leighton and a few giddy Blackhawks, there was no definitive sign the puck had gone in.
No red light. No emphatic signal for the referee. The money shot of the 2010 playoffs was proving to be as awkward as a pimply eighth-grader trying to ask a girl for a dance.
The stunned Flyers stayed on the bench as the referees asked for a video review of the most muddled Stanley Cup-winner since Brett Hull scored the controversial skate-in-the-crease goal for the Dallas Stars in Buffalo 11 years ago.
The Blackhawks, happily expectant, waited for confirmation. Why not?
After 49 years, Chicago could hold on another minute.
Blackhawks 4, Flyers 3. Joy, infinite.
Shortly after 11 p.m. EDT, Chicago got off the schneid that had lasted a nearly half a century. This was the longest current streak of futility in the NHL, but it was not a record. (The Rangers suffered a 54-year Cup drought until winning it in 1994.) But the Blackhawks did set an unofficial NHL milestone for the quickest turnaround from irrelevance to champions in hockey history.
Now, there are sudden reversals in the sports entertainment business all the time, but they generally involve a wrestler taking a length of lead pipe out of his tights and going to town. The 'Hawks ... well, this was strictly legit.
Led by captain Jonathan Toews, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner, and defenseman Duncan Keith, who would have been a more inspired choice -- Toews didn't score a goal in the six-game final -- Chicago resurrected a grand franchise in what elsewhere might be called a New York minute. Patrick Sharp, who scored a four-on-four goal to tie the game midway through the second period -- understands this better than any Chicago player. He was traded from the Flyers to the Blackhawks in December 2005, a deal that, given the Stanley Cup parade set for Friday on Michigan Avenue, is tinged with a certain irony. This, of course, is the blessing of hindsight. On that distant winter day, the Sharp trade -- he cost the Blackhawks basically a bag of pucks and a dozen coupons for Subway -- was barely more than lines of agate in North American newspapers.
Sharp's first game in the distinctive Blackhawks jersey was against the Rangers, a nominally attractive Original Six match-up. Not that Chicagoland seemed to notice.
"I remember looking around and seeing 9,000 people," Sharp, the second-line center, recalled early in the final. "I had come from a first-place team in Philly, and now this. Years ago I would have never expected (our franchise) to turn around so quickly. (The Cup) means a lot to everybody, but especially to guys like (Keith and defense partner Brent Seabrook) and myself, who have been here through some pretty tough years ... I challenge anyone to find a better place to play in the league than Chicago."
Mark it down. June 9, 2010 is the day Hawkeytown officially came in from the cold.
Rocky road to redemption
In truth, a 'Hawks renaissance always had been low-hanging fruit. After years of irrelevance and incompetence, Chicago sifted through the rubble of past mistakes, rebuilt on the ice and off, and etched its name on a 35-pound trophy while engraving its brand into the hearts of formerly disaffected fans. As the party swirled around him on the Wachovia Center ice, owner Rocky Wirtz conceded that the franchise had severed a sacred bond with fans, sponsors, media, even the city. The 'Hawks were out of touch, even as they usually were out of the playoffs.
So what was the primordial moment when the franchise started on the long road back to relevance? You can argue it was actually in 2002 when the 'Hawks drafted Keith, a Norris Trophy-caliber defenseman, a prescient choice that predates the selections of captain Toews in 2006 and Kane in 2007, a pair of high-end picks. (Keith, who lost seven front teeth in the clinching win against the Sharks in the Western Conference Finals, said after the game that he doesn't worry about teeth, that he would have them all knocked out to win a Cup.) But for many embittered 'Hawks fans, the rebirth began with the death of Blackhawks chairman Bill Wirtz, Rocky's father.
Wirtz was an NHL colossus, one of its great power brokers and a man with a heart that was often in the right place even if his mind was back in the 1960s. You could land at O'Hare, mention the Blackhawks to a stranger and within 90 seconds, as guaranteed as death and taxes, you could hear a complaint about the 'Hawks' absence from local TV. Former general manager Dale Tallon, the architect of this Cup team as surely as Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Robie House in Oak Park, regularly used to moan that Wirtz's recalcitrance was costing the 'Hawks a 2½-hour infomercial every time they played a home game. Wirtz would not be moved. He was as intractable as the Blackhawks were invisible.
But with the surprising ascension of Rocky to chairman -- most in the hockey world assumed that Wirtz's younger son Peter, who had been a Blackhawks vice-president, would succeed his father -- the Blackhawks were slingshotted into modernity.
The 'Hawks skipped the 20th century and went directly to the 21st in November 2007 when they hired the man who was most responsible for turning Wrigley Field into a baseball theme park. John McDonough, the ex-Cubs president, is a tall, patrician fellow who, using an approach he called "a bulldozer on steroids," pounded on the reset button. In his first 11 months on the job, he made 27 changes to the business office, doubled the front office staff, hired a receptionist -- no, the 'Hawks hadn't bothered previously - started a midsummer Blackhawks convention, rehired popular play-by-play man Pat Foley and courted estranged ex-Blackhawks stars like Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita.
The season ticket base was 3,400 in 2007. Now there is a waiting list of as long as Toews' accomplishments -- Olympic gold medal, Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe.
Captain Serious?
How about Captain Spectacular?
"I think Rocky Wirtz lay awake at night thinking: 'I can't wait to get the reins of that hockey club because it's going to change when I get it'," Hull told SI earlier in the finals. "And he did everything right. He got rid of (longtime executive Bob) Pulford. He brought in McDonough, the smartest marketing guy in the history of the game. He hired Scotty Bowman [as a senior advisor]. He put the games on TV, and he decided to dive into his past. Because he knew with what we had, if he couldn't be proud of his past, they wouldn't have much of a future. And bringing back (Hall of Fame goalie Tony) Esposito and Hull and Mikita was the icing on the cake. The engine was Rocky. The engineer was McDonough and the two boilermakers were [marketing director] Peter Hassen and [senior vice president] Jay Blunk. They made the train run, and it's running very smoothly."
The 'Hawks made an extended playoff run in 2009, reaching the conference finals and settling on a burrow-in-your-brain ditty called Chelsea Dagger to celebrate goals, a reminder that it wasn't going to just be the same old song in Chicago. This season the growing 'Hawks fever enjoyed the ancillary benefit of the 2010 Olympics in which Kane, Toews and Keith played brilliantly.
For every home game in the final at the United Center, a shot of the Mount Rushmore of 'Hawks' hockey -- Hull, Mikita, Tony O and Denis Savard sitting together in a luxury suite -- would appear on the Jumbotron. Now it is easy to imagine that in 2059, 49 years from now, there will be a new Blackhawks trinity -- Toews, Keith, Kane -- that waves down to the crowd at whatever hockey palace holds one of the NHL's heritage teams.
The ending was most uncomfortable -- "I tried to sell the celebration," Kane admitted -- but it did provide closure if not the climax that a quirky, engaging, sloppy, riveting and goal-filled final deserved.
Now the 'Hawks can really paint their Cup-starved city red.
After 49-year drought, Hawks win for one reason: They're the best
BY RICK MORRISSEY
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist
http://www.suntimes.com/index.html
June 10, 2010
PHILADELPHIA - JUNE 09: Jonathan Toews #19 of the Chicago Blackhawks is awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy after the Blackhawks defeated the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 to win the Stanley Cup in Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA -- Above the ice, the Stanley Cup gleamed and sparkled as it moved from new owner to new owner.
From Jonathan Toews, who was named most valuable player of the playoffs, to Marian Hossa, who had come so achingly close to a championship twice before, to Patrick Sharp, who had started his career in Philadelphia.
Now Brent Sopel and John Madden. Now Duncan Keith, the guy missing seven teeth, and his mate on defense, Brent Seabrook. And so on.
Finally Hawks owner Rocky Wirtz, the man who saw to the franchise's turnaround, handed the Cup to coach Joel Quenneville, who actually smiled. No, really. He did.
Pardon us if we're a little wide-eyed here. Many of us have never seen the Cup like this, in the hands of Blackhawks.
It looked different carried by men in Hawks jerseys. For Chicagoans who had experienced 49 years of desert dryness, it might as well have been space invaders hoisting the Cup.
When Patrick Kane knocked the puck under the legs of Philadelphia goalie Michael Leighton four minutes, six seconds into overtime Wednesday night, it gave the Hawks a 4-3 victory and handed the rest of the NHL a message.
Submit to the Indian.
The Flyers did, finally and inevitably. The Hawks were the more talented team, and that was obvious for long stretches of Game 6. Their skating and passing were a thing of beauty, and in the end, there was nothing Philadelphia could about it.
Well, it could boo, which Flyers fans did loudly as the Hawks carried the Cup around the ice. You can't teach that kind of classiness. You're born with it.
For the Hawks, Wednesday's celebration was the culmination of a whirlwind three years.
''We've really come from not being very good a couple years ago to winning the Stanley Cup,'' Seabrook said. ''I was joking around with a few of the trainers that you'd never think it would actually happen. I never did.
''It's unbelievable to bring the Cup back to Chicago's great fans. We're going to have some parties with them.''
There were stretches of frustration in this one. At times, the Hawks seemed intent on not making this easy for anyone except the Flyers.
With a 3-2 lead in the third period, they went into the hockey equivalent of the prevent defense. The damsel in distress was tied to the railroad tracks, and the hero was pacing over what to do.
It cost the Hawks. The Flyers' Ville Leino skated between two defenders and dumped the puck in front of the net. From there, it deflected off Hossa and onto the stick of Scott Hartnell, who knocked it past goalie Antti Niemi. Tie game. Silly.
Now the Flyers and their fans were totally engaged, their belief in manifest destiny total. The Hawks had allowed them to believe.
Overtime.
No problem. A little pain to go with your pleasure.
Kane's goal set off a delayed celebration. For a few seconds, no one seemed to be aware that the puck had gone in the net. Kane dropped his stick and gloves, and skated to the other end of the ice. The rest of the Hawks caught up with him and mobbed him.
''I saw it go right through the legs,'' Kane said. ''Sticking right under the pad in the net. I don't think anyone saw it.''
''It was kind of an awkward celebration,'' Toews said. ''We didn't know what to do. We were all standing around for the official call.
''It didn't matter how it happened, how it went in.''
There was a year of hard work and sacrifice in the wild celebration, and almost a half-century of frustration being released in it as well. The last time the Hawks won a Stanley Cup was in 1961. Were the 21-year-old Kane's parents even alive in 1961?
The Hawks came out blazing Wednesday night, as if all 49 of those years were fueling them.
There can't have been many other periods in which one team outplayed another so badly and still was locked in a 1-1 tie for its efforts. No offense to our friends in Philly -- no, none at all -- but the Flyers looked overmatched from the first faceoff. The Hawks' top line of Toews, Hossa and Tomas Kopecky was all over the place, and the energy seemed to set the tone for the other three lines.
The Hawks looked faster, stronger and better, probably because that's what they are. When Quenneville split up the line of Toews, Kane and Dustin Byfuglien before Game 5, it spread out the talent throughout the lines, and it quickly became apparent the Flyers couldn't keep up.
The first period Wednesday was simply an extension of that. The Hawks outshot the Flyers 17-7 and looked every bit that dominant.
It was the craziest game. For all the Hawks' decided advantages, the Flyers took a 2-1 lead on Danny Briere's second-period goal. It was made possible when Keith tripped on Hartnell's skate. The Hawks came back to score on a Sharp goal when both teams were down a man.
It was a 2-2 game that felt like a 4-2 Hawks lead. They knew they were the better team, even if the scoreboard didn't know it yet.
That finally changed when Andrew Ladd deflected a Niklas Hjalmarsson slap shot past Leighton to make it 3-2 in the second period.
That set up the maddening third period. And the third period set up the inevitable.
For Keith, all the struggles were worth it. So was the pain. He had lost seven teeth after being hit by a puck in the conference finals.
''I'll knock out all my teeth to hoist that thing again,'' he said, smiling that empty smile of his.
Before the game, the Flyers had handed out orange T-shirts with the slogan ''Unfinished Business'' printed on them. If, by unfinished business, they meant that sock drawers needed organizing in Philadelphia, well, yes, the city now has plenty of time to finish that business.
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