Chicago Blackhawks

by Mark Lazerus

  Things weren’t all bad for the Blackhawks on June 5, 2013. Yes, they had dropped a 3–1 game to the Los Angeles Kings in Game 3 of the Western Conference final, snapping the five-game win streak that started when they were on the verge of elimination against Detroit in the previous round. And Duncan Keith’s status was in limbo thanks to a dangerous retaliatory slash to the face of Jeff Carter, after Carter tried to prevent Keith from picking up a loose glove well behind the play in Game 3. Keith wound up getting a one-game ­suspension for the incident.

  But the Blackhawks still had a 2–1 series lead heading into the next day’s Game 4. Kane, though, was borderline despondent. He hadn’t scored a goal in seven games—a lifetime for Kane. And while Jonathan Toews was liked a caged animal during his nine-game goal drought to start the playoffs—agitated and defiant, pacing in place and gritting his teeth as he spoke about it—Kane was like a wounded animal, deflated and defeated. His voice was low, his head was low, his spirits were low.

  “It’s never fun going through a slump,” he mumbled. “As an offensive player, you always want to score and be there for your team, especially when that’s what you’re counted on to do. It’s frustrating. Sometimes, you try to put it in the past and forget about it and move on. Try to play your best the next game. I think from now on, I’ve just got to have the will to do it, and stop thinking that maybe this is going to be the game, or whether the next game’s going to be the game.”

  Few players crave the big stage like Kane, a natural showman who revels in the harsh glare of the spotlight. So it ate Kane up inside that he had a mere two assists in the last seven games. Never mind the five assists he had in the first three games of the playoffs, against the overmatched Minnesota Wild. Never mind that he had the only two goals in the Blackhawks’ three-game mini-collapse against the Red Wings. Never mind that it was Kane—of course, it was Kane—who scored the Stanley Cup winner in overtime of Game 6 against Philadelphia in the 2010 Final.

  It’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of game. And Kane hadn’t done enough lately. And even the supremely confident Kane—the top pick, the superstar, the face of American hockey—was doubting himself. It got so bad that Kane and his dad went online to watch old YouTube highlights of all 22 of his previous postseason goals, just to remind him that he was indeed “a good player.”

  “It’s cool to watch those,” he said with a shrug. “And it gives you a little confidence.”

  It was hard to hear and jarring to see. How could someone who has won the Stanley Cup, who has won the Calder Trophy, who has scored so many goals and made so many big plays, a kid cocky enough to try spin-o-ramas and ridiculous-angle shots from the goal line and between-the-legs passes, suddenly have such self-doubt?

  It’s the pressure of the postseason, and it’s human nature.

  “It’s not like all of a sudden I’m a bad player,” Kane said, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than the reporters. “It just doesn’t happen like that. I had a good regular season and I’m still a good player in this league, and I can make plays. It’s something I’ve just got to go out and do. I can’t take no for an answer. Go out and do it.”

  Or just steal one. That works, too.

  With the Blackhawks trailing 2–1 late in the second period of Game 4 the next day, Niklas Hjalmarsson fired a shot from just inside the blue line that tipped off Bryan Bickell’s stick and past Kings goalie Jonathan Quick. As the puck trickled toward the goal line, Kane pounced from Quick’s right and gave it the final nudge over the goal line as he soared over the crease.

  The puck was going in regardless. But Kane was the last one to touch it. And boy did he need it.

  “I told Bicksie I was sorry,” Kane said afterward, his voice and his mood significantly amplified from a day earlier. “I probably stole it from him.”

  Bickell was fine with it. In a circumstance nobody could have foreseen before the playoffs, the scoring-machine Bickell was thrilled to be able to give the scuffling Kane a boost.

  “Just to make sure it goes in, I’ll take it,” Bickell said. “He’ll take it, too, to give him a little spark and get that confidence again.”

  Confidence is a funny thing. You hear future Hall of Famers such as Toews and Marian Hossa talk all the time, year after year, about how they just need a little confidence, how they just need to see one puck go in to put them over the top, how they just need to feel good about something, and you wonder how it’s possible that they can lose that, even for just a few games at a time. How does Marian Hossa doubt himself? How does Jonathan Toews doubt himself? How does Patrick Kane doubt himself?

  But they do. Frequently. And then, sure enough, one goal—one lucky deflection, one fluky bounce, one out-of-position goalie—is all it takes.

  Two days later, back at the United Center, with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final on the line, Kane was his old self again—on and off the ice. He scored six minutes into the game to make it 2–0. He scored with less than four minutes left in the game to take back the momentum after the Kings rallied to tie it. And after Mike Richards tied it again with just 10 seconds left in the third period—10 ­seconds from the Final—Kane found his stage, found his spotlight, found his moment.

  Midway through the second overtime, Kane joined Toews on the rush for a 2-on-1. Toews dished it, Kane crushed it, and it was over. A hat trick. A series-winner. A trip to the Final. Kane slid on both knees, mimed a heart shape with his hands, and punched right through it with his right hand while screaming, “Boom!” The heartbreaker.

  He went on to score three more goals in the Final against Boston and win the Conn Smythe, thanks to a national press corps that didn’t start paying attention until after Kane’s crisis of confidence (even Kane will tell anyone who’ll listen that Corey Crawford should have gotten the award). It was the kind of goal every kid dreams of. The kind of goal Kane has scored lots of. And the kind of goal that, if Kane ever somehow loses his swagger again, he can watch over and over on YouTube to remind himself that, yes, indeed, he is “a good player.”

  Mayers’ Lament

  Marian Hossa tried. He put on his uniform, he laced up his skates, and he took the ice for warmups at Boston’s TD Garden for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final. But the disc issue in his back, which had been giving him problems throughout the series, was too much on this night. He could barely feel his right foot.

  And on his way off the ice, Hossa skated up to veteran Jamal Mayers, who continued to take warmups every night despite being a scratch in every postseason game. Hossa told Mayers he wasn’t going to be able to play that night. Mayers knew what that meant.

  At least, he thought he did. After all, Mayers was the only extra player on the ice for warmups. And assistant coach Mike Kitchen, who was usually the deliverer of the bad news every night, hadn’t told Mayers he was out, per usual.

  “So I prepared myself mentally that I was playing,” says Mayers, who had been waiting for that opportunity since he entered the league way back in the 1996–97 season in St. Louis.

  But when warmups ended and Mayers entered the tiny visitors dressing room at TD Garden, he saw 25-year-old Ben Smith—who had played just one game with the Blackhawks all season, who had played just 27 games in his career to that point, and who wasn’t on the ice for warmups because Joel Quenneville didn’t want to, in his words, tip his hand about Hossa’s status—getting his gear on.

  Mayers put two and two together quickly. He plopped down dejectedly at his stall, next to Jonathan Toews, and started quietly peeling off his equipment.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Jonny, but I don’t want to be a distraction,” Mayers said quietly. “I’m just going to take my gear off.”

  For Smith, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. He wound up spending most of the game on the second line with Dave Bolland and Patrick Sharp. He played 10 minutes and 23 seconds, had one shot on goal, and blocked two s
hots. He did fine, and as a result he guaranteed his name a spot on the Stanley Cup should the Blackhawks pull it out.

  “That was crazy,” Sharp said the next day. “[Smith] didn’t really have the typical game-day preparation. I don’t even know if he had a nap or a decent meal, but he didn’t even take warmup. He just kind of showed up to the rink, put the skates on, and jumped into the Stanley Cup Final. For a guy who works as hard as Benny does to be rewarded like that, I thought he played great. He put pucks in great areas, he got a good scoring chance there in the ­second period. That’s something that he’ll always remember, and it kind of gave us a big lift to see him roll in here and put his gear on. All this preparation and nutrition is overrated. Just put the skates on and play, I guess.”

  For Mayers, it was no laughing matter. He was crushed. The ham-fisted way the Blackhawks coaching staff handled it, forgetting to even tell Mayers during the pregame crisis, only amplified the impact of the decision.

  “I’m not gonna lie, it was very difficult,” he says. “In that moment, it was very difficult to take. If you can imagine playing 915 games, playing 15 years, and thinking that’s finally your chance to get in a Stanley Cup Final game, all the way up until after warmups, that was tough. But it all worked out.”

  Indeed, Mayers’ name is etched onto hockey’s Holy Grail, as the team successfully petitioned the league to have him added for his significant off-ice contributions. And when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in Game 6, Mayers was the third player to receive the trophy, after Toews and Michal Handzus.

  That one, at least, he knew about ahead of time.

  At the morning skate, Toews came up to Mayers with that look in his eyes.

  “We’re gonna win the Cup tonight,” Toews told him. “And I’m going to give it to you first.”

  Then, Toews paused.

  “Well, I should probably give it to Zeus [Michal Handzus] because he’s actually playing. But you’re next.”

  Mayers will never forget that brief, slightly awkward conversation.

  “I was floored,” he says. “He was putting himself out there, to say that. The guy’s got cojones, you know? I was very touched and started to get emotional, so I skated away from him. Lo and behold, it ended up coming true.”

  Considering how quickly a one-goal deficit became a one-goal lead in Game 6, Mayers was barely able to get his gear on in time to join in the postgame celebration.

  “It was pretty surreal to think we actually won,” Mayers says. “And when Zeus gave me the Cup, I could see the genuine happiness in my teammates’ eyes for me. And that made me feel that much ­better. I’ll never forget it.”

  17 Seconds

  On June 23, 2013, the day before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final in Boston, Patrick Kane—that wily, cagey, grizzled veteran at the ripe old age of 24—tried to launch a pre-emptive strike on his teammates’ fraying nerves. He told them that Game 6 was going to be an emotional roller coaster, a whirlwind of chances to be a hero and chances to be a goat. Just like Game 6 was three years earlier in Philadelphia, when Kane got to live out the ultimate dream—scoring the Stanley Cup winner in overtime.

  “There’s going to be a lot of ups and downs,” Kane told his teammates before the game.

  And after the game?

  “Man, I didn’t think there’d be this many,” Kane said.

  See, losses don’t become wins in hockey. There is no three-pointer down two points. There is no touchdown down four points. There is no grand slam down three runs. At best, a loss becomes a tie as the clock winds down. Then there’s an 18-minute intermission, then however much overtime it takes to determine a winner.

  In 2013, in the most remarkable conclusion to a Stanley Cup Final imaginable, a loss became a win for the Blackhawks.

  The game was tied 1–1 midway through the period, the tension mounting in TD Garden. And when the Bruins took a 2–1 lead on Milan Lucic’s goal with 8:49 left in the game—the product of a Corey Crawford misplay behind the net and some ferocious forechecking by David Krejci—the building erupted, and the Blackhawks sank. And as the clock melted away, the seconds flying by too fast for the Blackhawks and their fans and not nearly fast enough for the Bruins and their fans, they were all but resigned to their fate.

  “The standpoint for most of the guys was, ‘Oh, boy, here we go,’” Dave Bolland says. “‘I guess we’ll just head back home and ­finish them off at home. Hey, we’ll win a Stanley Cup back home in Chicago. It’ll be nice to win it at home. We’re done, whatever.’ That was most guys’ mindset, because you’re down 2–1. Who’s ever pulled this off before and came back to win the Stanley Cup?”

  With 89 seconds left in the game, Crawford broke from his crease and raced to the bench.

  With 84 seconds left in the game, Michal Handzus hopped over the boards as the extra attacker and raced into the corner, where Jonathan Toews and Kane were converging on the puck.

  With 79 seconds left in the game, Duncan Keith finally won the five-second board battle—it felt like an eternity at the time—and slipped the puck up ahead to Toews, who turned toward the goal.

  With 77 seconds left in the game, Toews sent a pass through Zdeno Chara’s legs and across the crease to Bryan Bickell.

  With 76 seconds left in the game, Bickell slammed it home, and celebrated with a fiery fist pump in the corner.

  Now, what’s gone down in hockey lore as “17 seconds” actually took 75 seconds of real time. In that time, the entire mindset of the arena, and the Blackhawks bench, changed.

  “Suddenly, we had all the momentum,” Bickell says.

  In those 58 seconds between Bickell’s goal and the ensuing faceoff, you could almost see the dawning realization on Patrick Sharp’s face as he celebrated—his arms up, his face stunned, his still body ­sandwiched between giddy teammates jumping up and down like little kids. Sharp looked like Moses at the Red Sea—the beard, the arms outstretched, the eyes turned skyward. He was looking at the scoreboard. What he saw was 1:16 left on the clock. What he sensed was the opportunity of a lifetime.

  “I always had comments for Kaner about scoring that goal in Philadelphia, because I always wanted to be the guy to score that goal,” Sharp says. “That was the happiest I’ve ever been, watching that puck go in that net—you could see my reaction in Philly. But I still wanted to be that guy. So fast forward three years, we’re in Boston, Bicksie scores to tie it up. All I could think was, Holy shit, we’ve got another chance. Someone’s going to score another overtime Stanley Cup–winning goal on the road, just like the first one.”

  Yeah. About that…

  “Before I could even turn around,” Sharp continues, “17 seconds later, we’re up a goal with a minute left. It was too fast to really comprehend what the heck was going on.”

  The Blackhawks weren’t exactly trying to win the game in that situation. Joel Quenneville didn’t keep Toews and Kane and Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook on the ice. He didn’t put a fresh Marian Hossa out there. Or a spry Brandon Saad. Or a scrappy Andrew Shaw.

  Quenneville was playing for overtime. So he sent his fourth line, his shutdown guys, over the boards. Dave Bolland. Michael Frolik. Marcus Kruger.

  Hell, NBC and CBC didn’t even catch the faceoff as they dwelled on the raucous celebration in the Blackhawks’ family section of the crowd.

  With 73 seconds left in the game, the puck entered the zone as the Bruins won the faceoff and pulled back.

  With 71 seconds left in the game, Niklas Hjalmarsson backhanded a near-icing by Boston at his own blue line.

  With 65 seconds left in the game, Bolland carried the puck over the Boston blue line.

  With 63 seconds left in the game, Frolik took a drop pass and fired a harmless shot that Tuukka Rask sent wide.

  With 61 seconds left in the game, Kruger backhanded the rimmed puck back to Johnny Oduya at the point, and Oduya fired.
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br />   With 60 seconds left in the game, the puck ticked off of Frolik and hit the left post.

  With 58.3 seconds left in the game, Bolland whacked in the rebound.

  In 17 seconds, a loss had become a win. And Bolland started to undress. Well, not exactly.

  Bolland’s celebration is the stuff of Blackhawks legend now, flinging his gloves off the way Kane did in 2010. It would have been perfectly appropriate had there not still been 58.3 seconds left on the clock. But Bolland didn’t exactly plan it that way. A stunned Johnny Boychuck had locked up in the crease as he processed what had just happened, and Bolland’s stick was wedged between Boychuck’s stick and leg. Bolland was just trying to get out of there.

  “Everybody gave me shit after that, like, ‘You didn’t know there was time left?’” Bolland says now. “Yeah, I knew there was time left. But Boychuck’s stick was over my gloves. When I tried to pull them out, I was just too excited—I just pulled my hands right out of my gloves. Jesus, it was crazy. I didn’t think that it went in the net.”

  Radio play-by-play man John Wiedeman had a unique view of the emotional roller coaster from high above, in the press ring encircling the top of TD Garden. After Lucic’s goal, he had turned to his producer and said, “Same setup for Game 7?” The producer replied, “This one’s not over yet.”

  Dave Bolland lost his gloves—and Blackhawks fans lost their minds—after he scored the Stanley Cup–winning goal in Game 6 of the Final against the Boston Bruins in 2013. (USA Today Sports Images)

  “But I knew in my heart, we were done,” Wiedeman says. “I looked down in the seats and I saw all the Bruins fans with their arms up, hugging each other, high-fiving, all the histrionics. So we get into the last 1:30. Crow comes to the bench, Handzus is the extra guy, Jonny rolls out of the corner, feeds it to Bicks, bam, we’re tied. I’m looking down from our perch at the seats, seeing those same people like, ‘Oh, shit.’ Seventeen seconds later, we score. I look down in the seats, I see those same fans, sitting down, head in their hands, ­devastated. Within three minutes, they went from as happy as you can be to as crushed as you can be. It was unbelievable.”