Blackhawks one game away from erasing curse

Many of the Chicago Blackhawks were just toddlers the last time that their team skated in the Stanley Cup Finals. Even more exhausting to wrap one’s head around is the idea that the parents of the Chicago young guns were toddlers themselves when Chicago last hoisted the Stanley Cup.

For a city known as much for its championship droughts as it is for the Sears Tower and Al Capone, there is still a cool air of confidence. This team is one win away from winning, and for the city and its fans, it’s almost a quiet certainty the trend will reverse.

Chicago’s has its share of bad luck. The Cubs have not won since 1908, and have not even won the pennant since 1946. The White Sox were famously cursed by the ‘Black Sox’ scandal of 1919, in which the team threw the World Series for bribe money. They had a drought from 1917 to 2005. The Bulls never saw their team play from a championship from 1966 until 1991, after odd circumstances dictated that Michael Jordan land, and then rise, in Chicago.

The Bears, the most successful of the Chicago sports franchises, didn’t win from 1963 to 1985 and never since.

But hockey curses are different. Hockey curses are earned through bad management and untimely trades. Notably, the Black Hawks (as they were called until 1986) sent future Hall-of-Famer Phil Esposito to the Boston Bruins for a Pit Martin. The team refused to pay their biggest star Bobby Hull marquee money, and he left to join the Winnipeg Jets. William Wadsworth Wirtz oversaw two decades of futility, blacking out local television games, increasing ticket prices and not allowing the Chicago spirit to build with the Blackhawk community.

The drafting of Patrick Kane (above) a year after selecting Jonathan Toews was a sign of change in Blackhawk-dom.

With the death of Wadsworth, son Rockwell shaped the team in his image. He televised games, allowing fans around Illinois to witness the developing team, a team that would reach the conference finals in its first year back in the playoffs since 2002.

Hockey curses are broken by images. Steve Yzerman jumping after his double-overtime Game 7 goal in 1996. The Wings did not win that year, but won in the next two. Mark Messier, a slave to winning his whole career, putting on a Rangers jersey for the first time, to join Brian Leetch and Mike Richter as a defenseman and goaltender entering their primes. The Wings were Cup-less since 1954. The Rangers since 1940, but within a span of two years, that was all forgotten.

Chicago is on that path. A path to not only erase the current Blackhawk cup drought, but change the culture of Chicago sports. A culture of sport plagued by the influence of the city’s criminal past. I give you Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith, Antti Niemi, a club destined to erase this Blackhawk crime: The Untouchables.

Thumbnail image courtesy of jc5680 flickr photostream from the flickr commons.