Dethroned
After trailing three games to none against Vancouver, they won three straight and forced a Game Seven. Trailing Game Seven 1-0 inside the last two minutes of regulation, Jonathan Toews tied it up.
Was it destiny? Alas, no. It's hard to see how they could have come any closer. Corey Crawford- who by rights should be one of the candidates for the Calder Cup- stood on his head; Coach Joel Quenville called Crow's performance the greatest exhibition of clutch goaltending he'd ever seen. But when it Alexandre Burrows scored on a knuckle ball of a slapshot 5:22 into overtime, it was the Canucks who would be advancing, and the Hawks who would be going home.
Final score: Vancouver 2, Chicago 1.
My Blackhawks have been dethroned as Stanley Cup champions. They have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I'm proud of them. And I think the next Stanley Cup will come long, long before we've had to wait another 49 years.
We knew all along that it wouldn't be easy to repeat. It doesn't happen very often; the last team to pull it off was the 1997/98 Detroit Red Wings. Playing from October through June is exhausting, and three months off doesn't give you much time to recover physically or emotionally- especially when it's largely taken up with celebrations, ceremonies, guest appearances, and so forth. And it figured to be even tougher without Brent Sopel, Ben Eager, Andrew Ladd, Colin Fraser, John Madden, Ben Eager, Adam Burrish- and especially Dustin Byfuglein, Kris Versteeg and Antti Niemi, lost to to the late Bill Wirtz's last dirty trick on the team he owned: the salary cap he almost single-handedly got adopted by the NHL.
The advent of Corey Crawford takes the sting out of losing Niemi. But undoing the damage will still be the work of more than just one more off-season. I doubt that the Hawks will be able to mount another realistic challenge for the Cup for another two or three years. But I have confidence in the Bowmans; Scotty, after all, served Detroit pretty well when it came to building championship teams, and his kid is no slouch, either. We'll get there sooner, rather than later.
And in the meantime, watching the Hawks will still be something it wasn't through all those dark and dreary years of managerial ineptitude under Dollar Bill: fun.
Sadly, the Cubs seem to be going through their own mini-Bill Wirtz era at the moment. I didn't follow them very closely last year, and I won't this year, either. What's the point?
I'm a Bulls fan in principle, but only in principle; I've never been much for basketball. The White Sox, of course, are the enemy. And from the look of things, the Bears won't even be playing come fall. It's going to be a long, dry spell for this kid sport-wise.
One more reason to wish that the dream- which seemed to be over even as it only began- had lasted just a little longer.
Comments