What a difference...

We hope that many Stanley Cups are in your future young Toews



Being that it’s the middle of summer and college hoops is still a while away, I figure it would be a good time to talk about the status of my favorite hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks.

For a decade or so, the Hawks were the laughing stock of the NHL, a lot of it having to do with owner Bill Wirtz and his complete lack of giving a shit about the Blackhawk fans. Examples of this included not showing games on TV, continually shipping popular and key team players out for next to nothing in return, and running an “old-boys club” organization with unqualified people in key positions leading this team further into the abyss. I’ll just come out and say it, the Hawks were shit for a long stretch of time.

Then things started to turn around. Bill Wirtz passed away and his son Rocky Wirtz took over control of the team. Rocky has made a commitment to winning since day 1 of his reign and there was a complete shifting of organizational culture in the Blackhawk front offices. A lot of the success off the ice is due to the tireless efforts of team president John McDonough as well, so it's only fair to mention his name. And on the ice, despite my belief that our GM, Dale Tallon is an incompetent boob at times, he does deserve some credit in building this team. A little luck to draft Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews doesn’t hurt either.

What has happened in the last 2 years is nothing short of remarkable. The Blackhawks have gone from one of the worst run franchises in all of pro sports to one of the best. The fans who were paralyzed with apathy and hatred towards management (but never lost track of the team) are in love with this team once again. They sell out every game. Players will take less to go there now. It’s like bizarro world when you look back to 5 years ago.

Driving to work this morning I was talking to my brother (both of us are die-hard Blackhawk fans and have been our entire lives) and I reminded him how a few summers ago it appeared the Hawks were about to sign Mike Modano to a free-agent contract and some media outlets had reported it as done. Instead, Modano was only using the Hawks as leverage to get more from Dallas, and he left the Hawks at the alter. Now, players are willing to take less money to play for the Hawks. Players want to play in Chicago and are down-right pissed off when things don’t allow for it (see Martin Havlat’s twitter page as an example). It’s unreal.

While the team does have some issues on the horizon such as Cristobal Huet in net, and the cap situation in 2010-11 that will no doubt strip the team of some complimentary pieces, so long as the Hawks are able to keep their core together, this will be a very good team for a long time. After enduring being fans of the laughing stock of the league for so long, it’s about time things started going right for Hawks fans.

So the Blackhawks enter next season as a Stanley Cup contender (I still can’t believe I’ve typed that). My next entry will deal with analyzing the current makeup of the squad and where things may go from here.