By the skin of our teeth

Who ever heard of the Cubs losing a game they had to have?
-- Frank Chance, "The Peerless Leader," 1908- the year the Cubs won their last World Series

All the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks had to do yesterday was to tie the Detroit Red Wings- whom they had thrashed in Detroit the night before, and had beaten four times in a row- in regulation
and the five minute overtime to make the playoffs. And they were playing at home.

Last year they would have done it. No problem. Winning games when a team has to is the hallmark of a champion. But the Hawks just couldn't get it done yesterday.

It was one of the best hockey games I've seen in a long time, and the Hawks certainly didn't lose for want of effort, heart, or discipline. They "left it all out on the ice," as the saying goes. Twice the Wings led by two goals in the third period, and twice the Hawks managed to cut their margin back to one. But when the final buzzer sounded, Detroit had won, 4-3.

Oh, the Hawks are going to the playoffs anyway. As it happens, just before firing their coach the Minnesota Wild managed somehow to beat Dallas 5-3. The Hawks were in- and thus granted the privilege of playing the team with the best record in the league, the leading offense, the leading defense, and which either led or finished second in just about every other significant category. My guess is that the Vancouver Canucks, whom the Hawks have ousted in each of the past two years,  will end up winning the Cup this year. For the Hawks to beat them is not impossible. But it seems much less likely, now that we know that this is a team that doesn't necessarily win the games it has to.

Dustin Byfuglien. Andrew Ladd. Antti Niemi. Kris Ver Steeg. Brent Sopel. Ben Eager. Adam Burish. Colin Fraser. John Madden. All key players from the 2010 Stanley Cup championship team. All them are gone now, due to the last dirty trick played on Blackhawk fans by the man in the Hall of Fame as a "builder," but whose career as the Hawks owner more accurately could be summed up in the word "wrecker"" William (Dollar Bill) Wirtz.

A combination of penny pinching, arrogance, bad judgment in picking subordinates and absolute loyalty tto those inept hirelings despite their blundering almost destroyed the franchise. Chicago- one of the great hockey cities in North America- almost forgot what hockey was during the Bill Wirtz era. Wirtz refused to allow home games to be televised. No matter, though; the teams he put on the ice were so inept that nobody would have watched. The fans who filled the old Chicago Stadium to the rafters to cheer for Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita and Glenn Hall stayed home. And Dollar Bill just didn't learn. He just wouldn't listen. After a while, the fans simply stopped caring. If Wirtz didn't care, why should they?

After a while, you couldn't give Blackhawk tickets away. The relatively rare cheers raised by Chicago fans echoed off the empty seats.

Bill Wirtz died in 2007, leaving the team to his son, Rockwell. Rocky made it a his number one goal to woo the fans back. The team started winning again. And once again, the stadium was filled to the rafters.  But before he died, Dollar Bill had left Hawk fans one final "gift:" he almost single-handedly talked the NHL owners into adopting a salary cap.

That salary cap decimated the championship team that Wirtz's son and heir, Rocky managed to build with the help of all those high draft choices awarded to the Hawks over the years because they were so consistently bad. It could have been a dynasty, a team for the ages. Instead, a great hockey team was reduced to a merely good one.

The Hawks will do better next year than they did this year. They found a new and elite goalie during the second half in Corey Crawford, and pretty much turned it around in the second half; they figure to finish much higher than eighth in the conference next year almost no matter what they do in the off season. That's especially the case because they won't be exhausted by the necessity of playing into the early summer this year.

Despite their historical dominance over the Canucks in the playoffs, I don't see the Hawks  getting past the first round. They could pull off an upset; they're a good team, and a far better one than their record for the season indicates.

But I doubt it. And if they somehow do, I don't see them repeating as Stanley Cup champs. Yesterday's game was one which a championship team would have found a way to win.

Last year's team would have.