It's official: statues of Hull and Mikita will be erected at the UC

It seems that whoever makes such decisions has finally gotten around to decreeing that statues of Blackhawk greats Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita will join that of Michael Jordan at the United Center. About time, in my opinion.

It's easy for the current generation of Chicago sports fans to forget that NBA basketball is a relative newcomer to Chicago. There was, somewhere in the late Cretaceous Period, a team called the Chicago Stags (named, I presume, more or less in memory of Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary coach of the University of Chicago's great early football teams) in the NBA. It failed in 1950, the year of my birth. I remember another  failed franchise, called (shudder!) the Chicago Packers (pardon the language!) starting up in my youth. Its owners quickly realized their lapse and had the good taste to change the team's name to the Chicago Zephyrs (Windy City. Get it?). Alas, it didn't help much. The team only lasted two years, going out of business in 1963. It was three years later that the Bulls were founded.

The Blackhawks, however, were founded in 1926- and trace their lineage even earlier, to a team called the Portland Rosebuds (isn't that sweet?). They  had their rough spells in the early years after Major Frederic McLaughlin started the franchise, named after the "Blackhawk Division-" the 86th Infantry, in which the Major fought during World War I.  They managed to win the Stanley Cup in 1934 and again in 1938, but the years between those victories and their next Cup in 1961 were often lean. Curiously, not so the even longer draught between the 1961 Cup and the one they won last Spring; it featured some pretty good hockey teams. Hull and Mikita were fixtures on these teams, and- along with Glenn "Mr. Goalie" Hall- the cornerstones of modern Blackhawk history.

 I saw my first NHL game at the Stadium during his rookie year, 1957, when the eighteen year-old future star wore, not his famous number 9, but number 16, Hull, often regarded as the greatest left wing in hockey history, possessed a slapshot so vicious that it was pretty much a done deal that if it was on net, it was in. Goalies couldn't see it, much less stop it. He lead the league in both goals and scoring by his third season, and on March 12, 1966 he broke the record jointly held by Maurice "The Rocket" Richard and Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion for the most goals ever scored by a player in a single year. His record 51st goal briefly earned the man better known as "the Golden Jet" the alternate nickname "the Babe Ruth of hockey."

That record has, of course, been subsequently broken by Phil Esposito (briefly a teammate of Hull and Mikita on the Hawks) and, of course, by the incomparable Wayne Gretzky. But Hull's greatness is beyond dispute. The most feared scorer of his era and, at the zenith of his career, the best-known hockey player in the world, he deserves to be far better remembered, not only in Chicago but wherever hockey is played. Hull was not only a great player himself, but is the father of another pretty fair scorer: Brett Hull, who had the best years of his career with the St. Louis Blues and has his own statue in front of their arena.

Mikita, who was born Stanislav Guoth in Slovakia, joined the Hawks two years after Hull. "Stosh" was a scoring machine in his own right, but more of a assist specialist  than a goal scorer. In the 1966-67 season, he tied another Hull record: that for most points (goals plus assists)  in a season, at 97.

Mikita was the cornerstone of the Hawks' number two line, the "Scooters," during the championship season of 1961. Hull was the star of the team's first line, the "Million Dollar Babies." The two stars led the Hawks to the Finals a total of five times, in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1971, and 1973. The 1965 and 1971 defeats were heartbreakers, going the full seven games. The two Chicago stars could easily have led the team to at least three Stanley Cups instead of just one.

Now that the dark days of the Bill Wirtz era is over, and Chicago hockey fans are finally filling a new stadium the way they used to fill the old one  to watch Hull and Mikita play, it's only fitting that their greatness be commemorated the same way Michael Jordan's has. In some ways, it's even sweeter than that Stanley Cup we won last Spring  to this further evidence that the team I love is back, and that hockey has once again resumed its rightful place in the hearts and minds of Chicago sports fans.

Taking nothing away from the great Jordan, like I said... it's about time.