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| The goal that clinched victory |
It
has put the Blackhawks in a position where the team of this decade has the
potential to become a historically-great hockey team, along with one of the
best Chicago sports franchises of all time.
BECAUSE
LET’S BE honest. Winning teams is not what Chicago sports is all about.
Somebody who can only back a winner would be ever so frustrated if they were
forced to root for the professional franchises that come from the Second City.
If
anything, the fact about the Blackhawks that makes them a prototypical image
for our city isn’t that they won their third Stanley Cup championship in recent
years, but that Monday’s victory was the sixth Stanley Cup championship they
EVER have won.
Two
of them came back in the 1930s, and the third was in 1961.
Which
means so many decades of hockey fans are used to coming up short year after
year after year.
THE
IDEA OF a perennial winner on the ice is something we ought to savor while it
lasts. Because none of our teams has that New York Yankees-like aura where it
is expected that when the team gets old, they will figure out a way to rebuild.
Our
teams never get to that level, and are filled with countless players who never
managed to live up to their potential.
 |
| He gave the Hawks the lead |
Perhaps
it is because I came of age in the 1970s, when the baseball scene was year
after year of seeing which baseball team would stink the joint out worse than
the other and where the Chicago Bears would think it a completely successful, potentially
even historic, season, if they made it to the first round of the playoffs
before getting knocked out of contention.
I
still remember that very scenario from 1977 and the way Bears fans got all
worked up at the thought of even being in a playoff game.
NOW
I KNOW the Bears went on to win that Super Bowl following the 1985 season.
Although the fact that quality Bears teams were unable to follow up with
another championship is more the norm.
 |
| A memorable moment a decade later |
Just
as the Chicago White Sox are still flying that lone 2005 World Series title
banner because they didn’t win another.
But
which looks downright outstanding considering how the Chicago Cubs haven’t even
accomplished that much!
I’m
not a big hockey fan (baseball and soccer in the form of equipo Mexico, along with college basketball of the
Illinois Wesleyan Titans of my alma mater are my rooting interests). But I
realize how unique it is for one of Chicago’s teams to come up with a “three
titles in six years” streak.
IT
CERTAINLY SHOWS how incredibly off-the-wall it was for the Chicago Bulls to win
two streaks of three straight NBA titles during the 1990s. A taste of
Yankee-esque attitude for the city still remembered for having one of its teams
getting caught throwing a World Series (even if eight ballplayers were
eventually acquitted in court).
The
fact that the Bulls have won nothing since, and in some seasons have become
such a disgrace to the local sports scene, is more in line with the character
of the Chicago sports scene.
 |
| Still waiting 3 decades later for another Super Bowl title |
So
it is with some sense of joy that we should perceive the Blackhawks’ victory
(and think that those killjoys from Nashville, Tenn.; Anaheim, Calif.; and
Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla., all tried to take down da Hawks and turn them into
some sort of bully in need of a beating).
Because
it’s just a matter of time not all that far off in the future that the
Blackhawks will be back to mediocrity and “2014-15” will be just another banner
hanging from the rafters at the United Center that fans manage to ignore while
sitting in costly seats and guzzling down overpriced concessions.
-30-
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