Chicago celebrates the Blackhawks Stanley Cup victory on Clark Street in Wrigleyville.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative
UPDATED
The Chicago Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup celebration completed a remarkable comeback from sporting irrelevance.
The Hawks ended a 49-year championship drought and claimed the grandest prize in hockey Wednesday night when they beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in overtime at Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center for a 4-2 victory in the best-of-seven final series.
“Words can’t describe it,” Jonathan Toews, the Hawks’ 22-year-old captain, said after 21-year-old teammate Patrick Kane drilled an odd-angle shot past Flyers goaltender Michael Leighton 4:06 into overtime to make the formerly forlorn Hawks champions of the National Hockey League.
Toews received the Conn Smythe Award as the playoffs’ most valuable player after tying a franchise record with 29 points in 22 games.
“It’s like that commercial—I’m speechless,” he said. “This is the best feeling you can have playing hockey.”
Kane, with a team-high eight points in the series, was more than happy to concur. “This is the coolest feeling in the world,” he said.
The celebration was delayed a bit for a replay review of Kane’s goal—the red light did not go on as the puck shot through Leighton’s legs and crossed the goal line. But Kane knew he had scored, and what it meant, and he dropped his stick and shed his helmet and gloves as he skated toward the Hawks’ goal in jubilation. His teammates soon joined him in a joyous scrum on the ice when the goal was confirmed, mobbing goaltender Antti Niemi, and the Cup presentation followed.
“Strange ending to a wonderful game, and a wonderful season,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “This is something we’ll cherish for the rest of our lives.”
Toews, as team captain, got to handle the Cup first. He then passed it off to Marian Hossa, a classy veteran who won it on his third try after failing in the finals with Pittsburgh and Detroit the last two years.
“The right guy got it after being so close two years in a row,” Quenneville said. “Hossa was a monster out there. The guys fed off his preparation.”
The Hawks’ championship campaign began in earnest in October of 2007, when Rocky Wirtz took over as team chairman following the death of his father William Wirtz. Wirtz the younger immediately began making common-sense moves to reconnect with an alienated fan base whose disillusionment was evident in the startling number of empty seats at the United Center, where full houses had once been the norm.
Wirtz put home games on television, a no-brainer business decision his father had stubbornly resisted. He mended fences with franchise icons Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito, employing them as good-will ambassadors who represented the team’s crowd-pleasing, illustrious past. He hired John McDonough and Jay Blunk away from the Cubs, where their marketing acumen had transformed a frequently inept team into one of the city’s most popular attractions. He added NHL coaching legend Scotty Bowman and his 11 Stanley Cups to the front office staff as a senior advisor.
Meanwhile, general manager Dale Tallon and assistant GM Stan Bowman were assembling the nucleus of a contending team. They drafted Kane, Toews, Duncan Keith and Dave Bolland, traded for Patrick Sharp, Kris Versteeg and Andrew Ladd and signed Brian Campbell, Niemi, John Madden and Hossa as free agents. The Hawks reached the Western Conference finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs last season before losing to the Detroit Red Wings, and served notice that they were in it to win it this year.
Chicago’s long dormant hockey interest was stirred. The Hawks have been the NHL’s attendance leaders in each of the last two seasons. They’re working on a two-year string of sellouts at the United Center and seem to set a ratings record with every game telecast. “Watch parties” were held in bars all over the city Wednesday night, and impromptu celebrations spilled into the streets following Kane’s game-winning goal.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with celebrations,” said McDonough, who spent 24 years in the Cubs’ front office without ever reaching a World Series.
The Hawks survived a few bumps along the way. Just four games into last season, Denis Savard was let go as as coach. Savard was one of the most popular players in franchise history, but he was believed to lack championship-caliber coaching savvy. Quenneville, who’d been hired as a scout after highly successful coaching turns in Colorado and St. Louis, replaced him and provided the order and discipline a young team required, as well as a Stanley Cup pedigree as a Colorado assistant coach.
Last summer, a procedural error in contract negotiations with young veterans Versteeg and Cam Barker forced the Hawks to overpay to retain them and caused them problems with the NHL’s salary cap. Tallon was reassigned to a senior advisor’s role shortly thereafter and Stan Bowman succeeded him.
In March, enigmatic goaltender Cristobal Huet and his $5.6 million salary were sent to the bench in favor of Niemi, a 26-year-old rookie from Finland who was a quietly effective presence throughout the playoffs and made the big stops when he had to.
“We believed in him. We knew he was that type of guy,” Toews said. “He just kept playing, enjoying the game. He was a huge part of our team. Huge.”
The bleak years were long forgotten as the Hawks sprayed champagne in their victorious locker room Wednesday night—though most of them are barely old enough to drink the stuff.
“I never thought I’d see this day,” said defenseman Brent Seabrook, 25, who debuted in 2005-06, one of the leanest years. Seabrook, Toews and Duncan Keith now have a Stanley Cup to go with the Olympic gold medals they won for Canada earlier this year.
The Hawks were the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference when the playoffs began. They beat the Nashville Predators and and Vancouver Canucks in six-game series in the first two rounds, then swept the top-seeded San Jose Sharks in the conference finals.
Philadelphia, their finals opponent, was somewhat lightly regarded, entering the playoffs as a No. 7 seed after winning in a shootout to qualify on the final day of the regular season. The Flyers came back from an 0-3 deficit against Boston in the Eastern Conference semifinals and demonstrated similar resilience against the Hawks—four of the six games were decided by one goal, and two required overtime, including Game 6 when Scott Hartnell scored to tie it at 3-3 with less than four minutes left in the third period.
Dustin Byfuglien scored the first goal of the game for the Hawks. The Flyers jumped ahead 2-1, but the Hawks bounced back to grab a lead 3-2 on goals by Sharp and Ladd. Then came Kane.
“I saw Patrick shoot the puck, and the next I saw was gloves on the ice—I couldn’t believe it,” Rocky Wirtz said. “What a feeling.”
“One Goal” has been the Hawks’ marketing slogan since the Wirtz-McDonough team took over. Patrick Kane delivered that goal Wednesday night, and it enabled the team to hoist the Stanley Cup.
The Hawks own the city. The victory parade is Friday.
Shot by Jose More
