Chicago Sports Then and Now

Patrick Sharp (foreground) is one reason the Hawks are winning without Captain Jonathan Toews (background).

When Patrick Sharp scored the game winner with just four and a half minutes left in the Blackhawks’ last game for the month of October, Coach Joel Quenneville’s knuckles might have been as white as his hair.

Four regulars—grinders Adam Burish and Ben Eager, Hawk Captain Jonathan Toews, newcomer Marian Hossa—are missing from the lineup. Top defenseman Brent Seabrook just returned after being out for a pair of games with ‘concussion-like symptoms’.

So Quenneville and his men have been finding ways to win, that contrast with the explosive style fans now expect from Chicago Blackhawks hockey.

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The jacket notes for Harvey Wittenberg’s Tales from the Chicago Blackhawks have a simplicity and substance that mirror the book itself: “A collection of stories that come straight from the source-players, coaches, and managers, to name a just a few. Intended to be informative and, above all, entertaining, these tales are not only for fans of the Blackhawks, but for all fans of hockey.”

Harvey Wittenberg has been covering the Blackhawks since 1959, when he was sports director for Chicago radio station WLS-AM. He became the second-string public address announcer at the old Chicago Stadium that fall; and began to do the radio color commentary for the Hawks the following March. When he took over as full time public address announcer in 1961, his tenure lasted 40 seasons; so there may be no one more qualified to tell the stories he relates here.

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The Blackhawks are hopeful that "The Madden Effect" will help them earn additional victories this season.

John Madden was in Zurich, watching his teammates play the European Champion Zurich Lions for the Victoria Cup, in the Blackhawks’ final exhibition game for 2009. He was in the broadcast booth, though, instead of on the ice, providing color commentary as Coach Joel Quenneville had decided to rest Madden for the season opener in Helsinki. But that wasn’t where Madden wanted to be.

As he saw the Lions stymie and take the lead from the Hawks, Madden remarked “We’ll get it back. We’ll win this one.” The Hawks did not, and one could sense Madden’s frustration, the fruit of the intensity and hunger to win that has been the backbone of his career. That hunger to succeed has characterized not only his accomplishments as a hockey player, but as a person.

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Will Antti Niemi be the answer in goal for the Blackhawks? photo: ingoalmag.com

When the horn sounded to end Antti Niemi’s first game of the 2009-10 season, it began a whirlwind of wishful thinking from Chicago Blackhawks fans. Not only did the 26-year old ‘rookie’—actually a veteran of Finland’s top-flight SMLiiga—pitch a shutout, he did it while exuding the poise that Hawks fans are desperate for in a netminder.

The Blackhawk fan base decided some time last season that Dale Tallon’s signing of former Canadiens and Capitals goaltender Cristobal Huet was not only overpaid, but unwise. Huet’s positional style and tendency to go down to block shots leave him open to being beaten on what sportscasters and fans refer to as ‘soft goals’. Perception being nine-tenths of reality, that characterization quickly obscured the French-born goalie’s qualities. Despite being statistically among the top ten netminders in the past few years, Cristo can’t catch a break in Chicago, and was even booed by the hometown crowd during the exhibition season.

Enter ‘The Nieminator’.  The Finn’s performance had armchair GMs scrambling to concoct trade scenarios where Huet was spirited away in exchange for the ‘piece the Hawks need’ to end their almost half-century Cup drought.

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Stan Mikita

To recognize the start of hockey season, we profile as the Chicago Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Week one of the all-time greats in Chicago Black Hawks history.

Spending his entire 22-year career with the Chicago Black Hawks, Stan Mikita was one of the best centers of his generation.

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It is time to start the annual quest for the Stanley Cup. Can the Blackhawks make a run in 2010?

The shortest off-season in professional sports is over. The NHL season is ready to begin again and most of the teams have made huge changes in an attempt to make the playoffs and challenge for the Stanley Cup in 2009-10. Here’s a quick look at the teams in the order they finished the regular season in their conferences and how I expect them to do this year and why.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

1. San Jose Sharks (5) – San Jose won the tough Pacific division and the President’s trophy as the leading team in NHL regular season last year. Then they were handled by a more talented eighth place Anaheim team losing their first round playoff series in six games.

San Jose has been an early season Stanley Cup favorite for years now and they started paying their players as if they’d already won a cup. As a result San Jose has huge cap problems this year. They had arguably the best defense in hockey last year giving up a league low 27.2 shots per game.

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