(Ed. Note: As the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we're bound to lose some friends along the journey. We've asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The fans who hated them the most. Here are Vancouver Canucks bloggers Harrison Mooney and Daniel Wagner of Pass It To Bulis, fondly recalling the 2010-11 Chicago Blackhawks. Again, this was not written by us. But you're probably not reading the intro anyway.)
By Harrison Mooney and Daniel Wagner, Pass It To Bulis
We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of the 2010-11 Chicago Blackhawks. We will be cremating the team, then sprinkling the ashes around the NHL, just like Stan Bowman did after they won the Stanley Cup nine months ago.
Full credit to the Blackhawks team that won the Cup. They were a team loaded with stars, a testament to what can happen if you're terrible for a long stretch of time, you draft well, and then your incompetent owner passes away, and then his son gives the GM permission to overspend on unrestricted free agents while forgetting to qualify restricted free agents, and then you hand out a bunch of ridiculous contracts, and then you give a stacked, young team with dynasty potential a one-year window to win.
This is, of course, the team-building strategy beautifully outlined in Michael M. Lewis's Moneyball.
Yes, before the salary cap played red rover on the Chicago Blackhawks, they were stacked. They were more stacked than a stack of cups stacked by a champion sport-stacker. They were more stacked than a stack of records at Stax records. But, by the time the puck was dropped, that vaunted depth had become shallower than a petri dish. They'd been stripped like a tearaway tuxedo. Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, and Brent Sopel were Thrashers. Adam Burish was a Star. Kris Versteeg was a Maple Leaf. The entire bottom six played elsewhere, as did the bottom defensive pairing, not to mention the bottom goaltenders. All two of them.
Tasked with replacing the entire bottom half of the lineup, Blackhawks' management filled the lineup with guys synonymous with the word bottom. John Scott. Fernando Pisani. Marty Turco. Ryan Johnson. Nick Bottom. Okay, maybe not that last one, but after the summer, Chicago's depth was almost as fictional.
That said, we're not mourning the team that won the Cup. We're mourning this team, this year's Chicago Blackhawks, a team the Canucks just exposed for who they are: a different team.
It's possible that the regular season exposed the Blackhawks first, but a lot of people chalked that up to a Stanley Cup hangover. You had to know that a youthful team like Chicago was at-risk for one, if for no other reason than the presence of Patrick Kane, whose name is synonymous with the terms "hangover" and "at-risk youth."
After the high of winning it all, it was expected that Chicago would put together a string of unmotivated play. Granted, nobody expected that string to last 85 games. Is it still a hangover if it's permanent? We should ask a doctor. Is there a doctor in the crowd? I would think so. If there's one thing primetime television has taught me, it's that everyone in Chicago is either a doctor or a lawyer.
These Blackhawks rang a bit hollow, not unlike the Hollow Men of which T.S. Eliot spoke: stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when / We whisper together /Are quiet and meaningless /As wind in dry grass /Or rats' feet over broken glass /In our dry cellar.
Speaking of rats from a cellar, let us mourn Dave Bolland, known to friends and enemies alike as The Rat, who returned from concussion either too late or too soon, depending on whom you talk to. He made for one fine villain, though, perhaps the finest rat baddie since Ratigan.
Let us mourn Joel Quenneville, whose stylish moustache may have been the only thing that survived the great post-cup purge, thanks to its no-movement clause.
Let us mourn Corey Crawford, the latest product of Chicago's disposable goalie laboratory, who will no doubt be rewarded for his outstanding debut season by being placed in front of the United Center with a cardboard sign that says "FREE", just as his predecessor was.
Let us mourn Duncan Keith, who was hit 19 times in the first round, a year after being hit 6 times in 6 playoff games against the same team. You have to feel genuinely bad for him, even if you're faking melancholy for everyone else on the roster, as some of us might be. What else was he supposed to do -- pass the puck to Fernando Pisani?
Let us mourn Jonathan Toews, whose effort in Game 7 was unmatched by anybody, at least among his teammates.
Let us mourn Marian Hossa, who may or may not have left the team in last summer's great migration. We're not quite sure. And let us mourn Ryan Johnson, Marian Hossa's heir apparent, who has now been on the losing end of a Chicago/Vancouver playoff match-up three years in a row.
Let us mourn Chris Campoli, who couldn't unlearn the training of six years playing for the Islanders and Senators fast enough to remember you're not supposed to turn the puck over to a 30-goal scorer in overtime of Game 7.
Let us mourn the egos of the Blackhawks' core, which now have to accept that they apparently needed Adam Burish to win a Stanley Cup.
Let us even mourn Vince Vaughn, who may be too depressed to give a strong comedic performance for quite awhile, so now seems as good a time as any to sign on for a sequel to Four Christmases.
I'd like to say they were taken from us far too soon -- like, say, three months before the season started -- but, in the end, they managed to stick around for 185 minutes longer than they should have. If anything, their demise was delayed.
I'd like to say the Blackhawks deserved better. They didn't. They didn't even deserve to be in the playoffs. Their hopes rested in the hands of the Minnesota Wild and the Dallas Stars, which is a little like trusting a kitten to keep a ball of yarn raveled.
I'd like to say I'll miss them, but I won't. The Chicago Blackhawks were the harsh, violent, karate master that, for years, debased and humiliated the Vancouver Canucks, then stroked their long, white beard with a smug self-satisfaction. I was sick and tired of letting them throw our bowl of rice on the ground. There's nothing more satisfying than when the student becomes the master, and then poisons the master's fish heads.
The Blackhawks' demise was about as satisfying as when Dennis Nedry takes a face full of Dilophosaurus spit. It was about as satisfying as watching Hans Gruber fall 32 stories in slow motion. It was almost as satisfying as watching Johnny Lawrence get crane-kicked in the face. I'm glad they're gone, I'm glad!
And so it is that we relegate the Blackhawks to the annals of history. I have written a sonnet to commemorate the occasion, in strict Petrarchan form, which I would now like to share with you:
"We gather here, to mourn, and eulogize,
The Blackhawks, former champ'ions of this league,
Whose losses, Byfuglien, Burish, Ladd, Versteeg,
And others, have, it seems, spelled their demise."The core remains intact! Hossa and Toews,
Brent Seabrook, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith,
But their enormous contracts, like a wreath,
Didst hang the team. We dance atop their graves!"It's difficult to veil such Schadenfreude,
To be the bigger person, to withdraw.
A frown on every Hawks fan, boy and girl!"This thing, which I have longed to have enjoyed,
I heartlessly and heartily guffaw --
The woe of every Illinoisan churl.
Written by Vancouver Canucks bloggers Harrison Mooney and Daniel Wagner of Pass It To Bulis. We can't stress this enough.