For a team whose marketing campaign this season was One Goal—meaning to make the playoffs after missing them by only a couple of points last season—losing to the defending Stanley Cup champions in the Western Conference Finals in a hard-fought series can only be seen as a positive.
And don’t let the 4-1 series tally from the Conference Finals or Detroit Red Wings “fans” fool you: any series that has three overtime games out of five played is not a blowout by any stretch of the imagination.
Of course the Hawks wanted to have a chance to win the Stanley Cup. But given that they went from not making the playoffs in seven seasons and having the second-worst attendance numbers in the league in 2007 to leading the league in attendance and making it to the Conference Finals less than two years later, the Chicago Blackhawks team and its franchise went further than the wildest imaginations of many. Forbes magazine even called it the greatest sports-business turnaround ever.
But the Red Wings are the Red Wings. They’ve won four cups in the last decade. The Blackhawks haven’t won since 1961. But I feel that is bound to change.
Mark my words: there will be a changing of the guard when it comes to who is the Western Conference powerhouse in the next few years. The oldest and youngest teams in the NHL just had a fairly epic battle. It may not have gone seven games and the older and experienced won out, but the dinosaurs won’t be around forever.
But at the end of the day, hockey is back on the radar in a big way in Chicago. I pissed and moaned all season for the media to follow the team. They finally did.
And for ex-hockey players and fans of the sport, not much besides a Stanley Cup win can be better than that.
