Blackhawk players and staff on the ice with the Stanley Cup before their home opener against the Redwings. Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago News Cooperative
The Blackhawks had seen first-hand how pregame pageantry can upstage a competition—it took a near no-hitter by then-Cub Ted Lilly to get a Wrigley Field crowd focused on the ballgame when the Hawks brought the Stanley Cup to Wrigley for a visit during the Cubs-Sox series back in June.
They saw it from the receiving end on Saturday night. After staging an elaborate ceremony to raise their 2010 Stanley Cup banner to the United Center rafters, they couldn’t find their skating legs once the game started and took a 3-2 beating from the Detroit Red Wings.
“The ceremony had nothing to do with it—we talked about it and we were ready to play,” defenseman Duncan Keith said. “There is tough competition in the Western Conference. We’re going to get the other team’s best every night.”
As they did in the season opener at Denver Thursday night, losing 4-3 to the Avalanche in overtime.
The Hawks have done a thorough and innovative job of glamming up their championship franchise, the best evidence of it the red-carpet festivities that preceded Saturday’s raising of the banner. The players, dressed like schoolboys headed for church, arrived at the United Center in limousines and paraded down an honest-to-goodness red carpet before entering the building. Fans saluted their familiar heroes—Toews, Kane, Keith, Hossa—and shouted encouraging welcomes to newcomers such as Nick Leddy, a 19-year-old defenseman.
Some of the players seemed a bit non-plussed by the fuss—they had a game to play, and the hated, healthy, heavyweight Red Wings were the opponent. The Wings have been the NHL’s model franchise for more than a decade—Chicago has yet to supplant Detroit as Hockeytown—and all the pregame carrying-on they had to sit through probably reminded the visitors that the Hawks are holding something they believe is rightfully theirs.
Too bad. The show was a spectacle, a classy production from start to finish, highlighted by a video recap that served as a vivid, eloquent reminder of what a special season the last one was.
Chairman Rocky Wirtz, in his opening remarks, thanked the skaters and staff responsible for winning the Cup, as well as “the greatest fans of any franchise on earth. “ Then five survivors of the ’61 Cup champions—Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Pierre Pilote, Ab McDonald and Eric Nesterenko—unfurled the 2010 banner, and handed it off to the 12 returning members of the current champions. As the banner was raised to the United Center rafters, the entire Hawks party looked on, as awestruck as kids at their first fireworks show.
Then again, a lot of them are kids. And it had been 49 years since the Hawks raised a banner.
The crowd of 22,161 loved every minute of it, of course. The full-throated roar that accompanied Jim Cornelison’s bravura rendering of the national anthem was exceeded as a noisemaker only by the introduction of coach Joel Quenneville. The angry skepticism that greeted Quenneville’s hiring as a replacement for the beloved Denis Savard just two years ago? What angry skepticism? Coach Q and his mustache are Chicago icons.
Hard to imagine a Blackhawks-Red Wings game, even an Oct. 9, second-of-the-season Blackhawks-Red Wings game, being overshadowed by the most elaborate pregame ceremony, but this one was. The Wings took the play to the Hawks for much of the night and scored first when Valtteri Flippula got to the goalmouth and redirected Johan Franzen’s shot past Marty Turco at 12:59 of the first period.
The Hawks pulled even after Detroit’s Rusan Salei was sent off for hooking at 18:34. Goaltender Chris Osgood denied Hossa on a one-timer, but Hossa got the puck back along the left boards and slipped it to Brent Seabrook, whose blast from the slot eluded Osgood for a game-tying power-play goal just three seconds before the period ended.
The teams traded goals within 40 seconds of each other early in the second period, Todd Bertuzzi scoring from Turco’s doorstep at 1:12 for the Wings, and Bryan Bickell countering with a deflected slap shot at 1:49 for the Hawks. But the two-goal flurry hardly ignited a shootout. Both teams settled back into a cat-and-mouse game of positioning in which scoring chances were rare.
The Wings finally created one on the power play at 6:01 of the final period. They enjoyed a two-man advantage for 45 seconds after Nick Boynton went off for holding and Dave Bolland followed him on a hooking rap 1:15 later. Twenty-five seconds after Boynton’s penalty expired, Flippula came in alone on Turco after defenseman John Scott fell for the game-winner, his second goal of the game.
The Hawks couldn’t mount anything in the remaining 10 minutes, whiffing on three power-play chances. The new faces are still settling in, the new lines still sorting themselves out. It’s a long season.
“We had three power-play chances to get the equalizer, but we didn’t generate enough,” Quenneville said. “You’re judged by wins and losses, so we’re not happy right now. We need more from some people across the board.”
