As I am sure you are sick of hearing by now, the Chicago Blackhawks just won the Stanley Cup. The Goddamn Chicago BLACKHAWKS won the Cup. The Stanley Cup. Its been a week, I am still in awe. My mom and my little sister went to the Cubs-Sox game Sunday night (the dueling no-hitter game that ended with no hitters) and got to see the Cup. In all its glory. Its amazing.
I have been a hockey fan for most of my life. Sure it helped that Eddie the Eagle Belfour broke into the league when I was 8, and Jeremy Roenick was the most electric player in the league when I was 10, and Dirk Graham was the first partial african american captain in the league (not that I knew that of course. He was Dirk Graham. He had a kick-ass mustache. He ate glass for breakfast. And he was the captain. The reverence given to the hockey captain is something that will never be understood by the masses). Roenick and the Eagle, along with Cheli, lead the Hawks to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1992. I was 11. I was excited. This was to be the greatest moment of my life.
At least until Mario Lemiuex and Jaromir Jagr swept the Hawks out of the building. The games were so close. I always thought we had a chance. Even in game 4. Hey we are down 3-0? What of that? We are the team that will be the first to come back from that deficit to win the Cup! How can we not? We are so damn good!
But fucking Barrasso would be better (and he had to be American too. Bitch).
Then I walked out of my wide-eyed, in awe of professional sports phase, and saw the Hawks for what they were. Or really, who they were. Bill Wirtz, aka, Dollar Bill. I am sure you heard he kept home games off of local TV.
My love for hockey never waned, though my love for the Hawks did. In 1996 I would decide I wanted to play hockey. I took some beginner courses, and played on the JV hockey team in my Sophomore through Senior years (yeah, I was never that good, but hey, good enough to win some trophies!). And through all this time, and numerous hockey games, I would see one or two games a year live, get irrationally excited when a Hawks home game aired on Fox (hell yeah glowpuck), and sink into misery when Eric Daze got injured yet again (though Pat Foley's assurances that Mark Bell would one day be Captain material is hilarious in hindsight).
I went to college, and played intramurals there (even took a class in ice hockey. I got an A (though some jack ass took a slap shot four feet away from me and I thought I broke my ankle blocking it. Seriously, it was class. You would never take a slapper from inside the hash marks on your own goalie during warm-ups).
I cannot say I thought much about the Hawks during this time. I would usually get tickets to a Hawks game for Christmas, but really, the hawks sucked. We had pinned our hopes on the ABC line--Tyler Arnason, Mark Bell, and Kyle Calder. They had moments, but looking at them through non-fan eyes reveals that they sucked. (in doing some research just now, I realized I blocked out the Doug Gilmour as captain, Tony Amonte as captain (he was good, never great, but given the shit Hawks fan had seen, we made Tony Amonte out to be great, and he never was, nor could he ever handle that role as team leader), and Alexi Zhamnov as captain (holy hell, this guy was so smooth on skates, but he didn't have the hands. I completely forgot about him as I was thinking about the writing of this post. Shit. I feel bad. I mean, I remembered Alpo Suhonen. (Upon secondary reflection, Zhamnov could skate like Kane, as if it were easy, but Kaner has skills beyond what Zhamnov had)).
I would be remiss if I didn't throw a few words in here about my dad. He had been a hockey fan forever. He remembered the teams with Hull and Mikita and Magnuson. He was 12 the last time the Hawks won the Cup. Old enough to remember. Young enough to revere. The intervening years had crippled his fandom. But he was excited as anyone when I started to play hockey. He and my mom, collectively, never missed a game I played. They saw many of the practices too (once I bought a car, not much need for them driving me 30 minutes away to late night practices). He is the one that bought me all the Hawks tickets as Christmas Gifts. (And I have a memory of going to a Hawks-Flames postseason game where the hawks lost. But according to history, that would have been, at the earliest, in 1989. And I never went to the conference finals. Maybe it was 96, and the Hawks loss in the next round clouded my judgment. Whatever, the Hawks sucked for a long time.)
I do not want keep yammering on here. I continued to go to one game a year after college. One day, my dad ended up with first row tickets and I took my good friend from college, and it was awesome. Sadly, it was the year after the lockout and the Hawks had signed Dynamos like Martin Lapointe and Adrian Aucoin (though we did see Aucoin punch some dude twice in the face, out of sight from the refs as he drove him into the boards. Classy. Shows why he is still playing in the "New" NHL (No really, he is! Plays for the "Yotes!)).
So then Bill Wirtz died. And the rest is history.
2 Million people showed up to the Hawks Victory parade. I felt a pang of . . . something. I was actually in Chicago, but decided not to go (and this was before I realized that many people would attend). A parade is nice. Seeing the cup is nice. But more important things were going on. Its not like I was going to get to touch the cup or anything.
But more importantly, 2 million people showed up. The metro area is estimated at 10 million people living there. One out of five people in the entire Chicago area showed up.
Seriously?
Look, I am not gonna rip on bandwagon fans, but seriously? Hockey was virtually dead in Chicago before Dollar Bill died. I was hardly contributing to the teams bottom line, but at least I knew who some of the players were. I saw Duncan Kieth when he was a skinny motherfucker who made terrible blind passes in his own zone. And then he learned. And he evolved. And now, he is gonna win the Norris trophy this year (Norris Trophy goes to best defenseman, fyi).
I am not bitter. A championship is meant to be a party. I wish I could have watched the Cup clinching game with my father or my girlfriend. But it didn't happen. I watched it alone, which really sucks some of the joy out of it. Do not get me wrong, I am ecstatic, but there was no one to high five/hug/kiss/dance with after we realized that Kane had actually scored.
But I have invested a lot of time and a lot of heart, and even some tears in this team. Fels said it well, over at his site. (And as a season and a half subscriber to the Committed Indian, I am pumped for the Commemorative issue).
Alright, so what does all this yammering mean. The Hawks won the cup. I cannot believe it. I already have a hat and a shirt and am probably gonna buy some more stupid crap from shop.nhl.com before the week is through. And, well, i am still in shock. This was mostly rambles. More in depth thoughts will have to wait a couple days (like you will get them, because I never write).
