Chicago Blackhawks

by Mark Lazerus

  “They were a big part of our lives and our hockey team,” Patrick Kane says. “It’s unfortunate, but at the same time, you kind of have something to play for. Even though they’re gone, they still mean a lot to us today.”

  Less than two weeks after Montador’s death, the Blackhawks were hit with a different kind of adversity, as rumors started to swirl about Sharp’s personal life, and imagined affairs between any number of players and teammates’ wives. The complete lack of accountability of the Internet allowed the rumors to spread and evolve, and get more and more disturbing. A Chicago radio host talked of a rift among the Blackhawks. A former pro football player tweeted about a fight in the dressing room. A Chicago meteorologist was dragged into it. A Chicago-based website with no scruples offered money for stories about Sharp—basically putting a bounty on his head—while posting any and every allegation of infidelity it could find, without taking any steps to verify any of them.

  None of it was true. At least, not what was “reported.” There was no fight. There was no teammate-on-teammate cuckolding. Multiple players were going through issues with their personal lives, however, and the rumors made matters significantly worse.

  After a Sunday practice at Johnny’s IceHouse West in early March, Seabrook—never one to court microphones and cameras—summoned reporters to his locker stall to offer an unsolicited and unmistakable show of support.

  “Being a leader on this team, I think this team’s never been tighter,” Seabrook said. “We’ve never been a tighter group. Some of the rumors that have been said, I think are laughable. You know, there’s nothing going on in this locker room. I’ve been here 10 years and nothing’s been going on, so we’re a tight group. We’ve got ­everybody’s back here and we’re focused on our jobs, which is ­getting into the Stanley Cup playoffs, first and foremost, and winning another championship.”

  Sharp later addressed the rumors too, admitting that the speculation had played a role in his prolonged scoring slump; he had no goals and two assists in 15 games at that point.

  “It is laughable, it’s comical,” Sharp said of the rumors. “But when it affects your family, when you’ve got two little girls at home and your parents are calling you, it takes a toll.”

  “As a hockey player, as a professional, you’re out there, and you’re up for grabs for on-ice play,” he continued. “I’m okay with that. Trade rumors, talk about my play on the ice—I’m fine with that, I can ­handle that. But when people delve into your personal life and make up rumors and things that are completely false and untrue, it takes a toll on you. And it takes a toll on your family, your friends, and it’s completely unnecessary. It’s been tough, but I know I’ve got a strong group of teammates here, we’re going to stick together.”

  By the time the playoffs finally rolled around, the longest and most difficult season of their lives behind them, the Blackhawks had dealt with injuries (including a broken clavicle suffered by Kane that kept him out for the final six weeks of the season), with tragedy, and with potentially destructive rumors of infighting and infidelity. They were mentally drained from the endless off-ice misery, and physically exhausted from three long seasons of hockey. They were too old, too thin on defense, and too streaky, having fallen to a wild-card spot late in the season before salvaging a third-place Central Division finish. The championship window was closing. The end was near.

  Two months later, they were Stanley Cup champions. Again.

  Media Darling

  It was a perfect spring day in Kalamazoo, Michigan, temperatures in the mid-70s and a cloudless sky, and for a moment, on April 18, 2015, Scott Darling got to be a regular person—not an NHL player, not a hometown hero, not a man at the center of a goaltender ­controversy in the middle of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He was just a guy enjoying lunch after the wedding of his fiancée’s friend, a tertiary guest surrounded mostly by people who had no idea who this massive, 6-foot-6 man with a lumberjack’s red beard was.

  “Fifteen people at the table, maybe three of them knew I played for the Blackhawks,” Darling says.

  It was pleasant. It was nice. It was peaceful.

  It was short-lived.

  Suddenly, every television in the restaurant had Darling’s face on it. The dozen or so new acquaintances at the table looked at the TV, looked at Darling, looked back at the TV, looked back at Darling.

  “They all started staring at me,” Darling says. “Like, ‘What is going on? Who are you?’”

  Joel Quenneville had just revealed that Darling, not 2013 Stanley Cup champion Corey Crawford, was going to start in net for the Blackhawks in Game 3 of their first-round series against the Nashville Predators. The local guy from suburban Lemont was going to be between the pipes for a playoff game at the arena he grew up going to as a fan, wearing the sweater of the team he loved.

  And just like that, Darling was somebody again. And the rest of the lunch was all hockey questions, all the time.

  “It was all right,” he says. “I’m used to it.”

  The questioning didn’t stop at that restaurant in Kalamazoo. For the rest of the series, Darling and Crawford were the story. In Game 1 in Nashville, the Blackhawks fell behind 3–0 in the first period, and Darling, not Crawford, came out to start the second period. From there, the Blackhawks rallied and Darling saw 42 shots—stopping every one of them—until Duncan Keith scored the game-winner at 7:49 of the second overtime.

  There were a handful of jaw-dropping saves, but the one that sticks out came midway through the third period, the game tied 3–3, with Darling unfolding his massive frame to go post-to-post to stop a backdoor attempt by Ryan Ellis with his right pad. Colin Wilson’s pass was perfect and sneaky, and Darling—a hockey nerd who spends much of his free time watching other games and studying the finer details of goaltending—was the only person in Bridgestone Arena not in a Predators jersey to know it was coming. He credited goaltending coach Jimmy Waite with tipping him off about one of Nashville’s favorite power-play moves.

  Suddenly, Darling—a minor-league journeyman who was perilously close to being out of hockey altogether after an alcohol ­addiction sent him tumbling all the way down to the Louisiana IceGators and the Mississippi RiverKings of the Southern Professional Hockey League, one of the lowest rungs on the pro hockey ladder—was a star, with the Stanley Cup spotlight on him.

  Playing for the team he grew up rooting for, Lemont native Scott Darling answered the call when the Blackhawks needed him, winning three games during the 2014–15 playoffs.

  “Playing a playoff game of this magnitude, in this situation, it was one of the greatest relief performances you’re going to see,” Quenneville said after the game.

  Immediately, the goalie controversy was stirred. Quenneville demurred when asked who would start Game 2, but there was never any doubt that it would be Crawford. Darling was the story, but Crawford was the man.

  Until, that is, he was blitzed for three third-period goals in a 6–2 Game 2 loss. In four periods of play, Crawford had given up nine goals on 47 shots. And even his 2013 heroics couldn’t justify him starting Game 3. In came Darling, who had been told early that morning of April 18 that he’d get the nod, a few tranquil hours before it became the big story in hockey that day, and the big story in a quiet Kalamazoo restaurant.

  The situation put Quenneville in a difficult position. But because of the particularly close friendship between Crawford and Darling, it wasn’t nearly as awkward as it probably should have been for the locker stall-mates. With microphones and cameras in their faces, Darling was humble and gracious, and Crawford was understanding and supportive. Away from the prying eyes of reporters, nothing changed.

  Goaltenders often talk about how they feed off each other, how the internal competition makes them better. But few goalie ­tandems were as tight as Crawford and Darling. They shared a ­similar sense of humor. They had a similar love for the minutiae of their craf
t, always exploring new goaltending styles and theories and testing them out together. They frequently went out to dinner on the road. And during that first-round series, Crawford served as a ­desperately needed sounding board for Darling, who had been toiling in the ECHL the previous season. Darling peppered Crawford with questions about the playoffs and the pressure and how to stay loose and focused amid extraordinary tension. Crawford answered them all and put Darling’s mind at ease. And after Darling backstopped the Blackhawks to ­victories in Game 3 and Game 4 (a triple-­overtime win) to give them a 3–1 series lead, Crawford looked like the ­happiest guy on the ice during the postgame celebrations, wrapping up Darling in bear hugs with a huge smile on his face.

  If there was any jealousy or any grudge at all, he didn’t show it.

  “It’s funny, everyone kept asking me if it was awkward, and it wasn’t awkward at all,” Darling says. “He was happy for me. And he was huge for me, being a guy I could talk to, because obviously that was a situation I had never been in before. The only thing that made it awkward was all the media questions that we had. But between us, behind the scenes, we’re all about the team. We just want to win, and whoever’s winning, that’s what it takes. It just went the way it did. I hung in for a few games, then he came back in and saved my bacon like I did for him in the first game. That’s kind of the way we operate. We’re always happy for each other. Obviously, we both want to play and we both want to be the best. But at the end of the day, we’re good friends who have a healthy competition, and we root each other on.”

  Just like it wasn’t all Crawford’s fault in Game 1, it wasn’t all Darling’s fault in Game 6. But a coach can’t bench the entire team, so sometimes he has to yank the goalie to send a message. After giving up three goals in less than 12 minutes, Darling made the same skate of shame to the bench that Crawford had 10 days earlier.

  “I don’t know that it’s a recipe for success to get down and then come back, but it seemed to get us going a bit,” Patrick Kane shrugged.

  Crawford was greeted by rousing cheers when he came off the bench. And he was greeted by a big bear hug of his own by Darling after the Blackhawks again rallied to win the series.

  With that, Darling went back to the inglorious life of a backup goaltender—always at the ready, but always sort of hoping he’s not needed. The goalie controversy, such as it was, ended that night. There was no doubt who would be in goal for Game 1 against the Minnesota Wild, and a four-game sweep showed why.

  But Darling got his moment to shine, saving his buddy and his team from a potentially disastrous first-round defeat. His name etched onto the Stanley Cup, like the ink etched into his right arm—the Stanley Cup standing tall amid the Chicago skyline—was well earned.

  “You’re always staying ready, but I don’t think he had a bad game the rest of the playoffs,” Darling says. “You have to be ready at all times; I learned that the first game. But I didn’t see the ice again, which was great for us.”

  What’s in a Name?

  Hockey nicknames are the worst. They’re lazy and uncreative. Boring and awkward. For every Great One or Rocket, there are thousands of by-the-book nicknames. There are basically three types:

  First syllable of last name, add an “s” or a “y” or a “zy” or an “er.” Examples: Ryan Hartman becomes Hartzy, Andrew Shaw becomes Shawzie, Patrick Sharp becomes Sharpie, Patrick Kane becomes Kaner, Michal Rozsival becomes Rozy, Scott Darling becomes (ugh) Darls, Jordin Tootoo becomes Toots, Richard Panik becomes Pans, Brent Seabrook becomes Seabs. Everyone with the last name Campbell becomes Soup. Everyone with the last name Crawford (Marc, Corey, etc.) becomes Crow.

  Even more creative minor-league nicknames get killed by the NHL. Dennis Rasmussen went from Moose, an actual thing, to Raz. Teuvo Teravainen was Turbo in Rockford, and despite the best efforts of Jonathan Toews—er, Tazer—to make Fetch happen, it never stuck in Chicago.

  Tyler Motte has a last name that’s just tailor-made for something fun. His baseball teammates growing up called him Sauce, or Saucy, to play into the apple theme. A perfect nickname for a guy with some pretty slick moves on the ice. But he got to the NHL, and immediately became Motter. Sigh.

  Sometimes, the standard hockey nickname is particularly ­unfortunate. Defenseman Kyle Cumiskey was Cummer, which made for some unusable interview footage for the local television stations. David Rundblad was Runs, which isn’t great, but is at least better than the other option, Bladder.

  There are occasional exceptions, occasional bursts of creativity. Trevor van Riemsdyk is usually Reemer, but was occasionally known in the Hawks dressing room as Travis, because his teammates needed to distinguish between him and Trevor Daley for a few months. And even though van Riemsdyk predated Daley in the room, Daley was the veteran, and it was funnier to call the rookie by the wrong name. And during the 2016–17 season, van Riemsdyk casually referred to Campbell, his defensive partner, as Soup Dogg. So that’s something.

  Joel Quenneville saddled Bryan Bickell with the Pickle Head moniker. Then there’s the Bread Man nickname that Artemi Panarin picked up early on, because his last name sounds a bit like Panera Bread. It’s kind of cringe-worthy, but at least it’s not Panner.

  Grown men calling each other by cutesy nicknames is inherently amusing. But the funniest part is the awkward introduction when a new player is called up or acquired. The first day of training camp sees a bunch of guys walking around, telling everyone what to call them. Because heaven forbid you refer to a teammate by his actual name. In fact, the day Antoine Vermette arrived with the Blackhawks as a trade-deadline acquisition in late February of 2015, he was told he would be on a line with Brandon Saad.

  Saad introduced himself. Then he asked the veteran Vermette what to call him. The following absurd exchange ensued.

  “What do I call you?” Saad asked.

  “Vermy is good,” Vermette responded. “You Saader?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, let’s go with that. Now we can go out there and play.”

  A Celebration 77 Years in the Making

  They had no flight to catch. No security guards checking their watches. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do but celebrate—celebrate the unlikeliest Stanley Cup yet, celebrate the Blackhawks’ first championship won on home ice in 77 years, celebrate their entrenchment as Chicago icons for all time.

  It was time to tear the roof off the place. Literally.

  In the delirious wake of the Blackhawks’ 2–0 Game 6 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning—the first time either team had a lead of more than one goal in the entire Stanley Cup Final—the players and their families spilled into the dressing room at the United Center. They hugged and poured champagne and beer all over each other. They stood on benches and sang Queen’s “We Are the Champions” out of key. And soon enough, Niklas Hjalmarsson’s and Marcus Kruger’s dads started ripping ceiling tiles out. Because why the hell not?

  “Who’s gonna pay for that?” shouted vice president of marketing Pete Hassen, the sarcasm dripping from his voice.

  The timing couldn’t have been better. The home dressing room suite at the United Center was going to be torn up and remodeled over the summer, and the Blackhawks and their families were simply helping get the project started. Unlike in Philadelphia and Boston, when the locker-room celebrations were brief before heading to the airport, the Blackhawks partied in their room until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning. Crate after crate of beer and champagne was being wheeled into the room, and every time the door opened to allow more booze in, the smell of victory wafted down the hallway, past the long-vacated visitors room, and into the press room, where reporters were putting the finishing touches on their stories.

  If the 2010 celebration was pure, unbridled machismo revelry, and 2013 was the culmination of a coronation, 2015 was as much a release as anything. The toughest and longest season of their lives had ended in glory. Their legacies were secu
red as the team of the decade, if not a technical dynasty. It was joy. It was release. It was relief.

  Some hours earlier, as the Blackhawks gathered for their ­pregame meal, the air thick with expectation and anticipation, Jonathan Toews lifted his fork to his mouth and looked around at his teammates. Chicago had been buzzing for two days, ever since the Blackhawks took Game 5 in Tampa on yet another game-winning goal by trade-deadline acquisition Antoine Vermette—his third since being ­inexplicably scratched by Joel Quenneville for Game 3 of the Western Conference final against the Anaheim Ducks. The possibility of clinching the title at home had sent the city into a tizzy, with people in red jerseys filling the streets, filling office buildings, and eventually filling the bars.

  The pressure to win at home was immense. Even Toews, Captain Cool, felt it.

  “It was incredible,” he says. “It was that opportunity that no one wanted to let slip away, and it’s one of the things that made me the most nervous.”

  But Toews’ nervous is different than ordinary people’s nervous. So as he took another bite of his pregame meal, he and his battle-tested teammates had the same thought.

  “We had eaten the same chicken, broccoli, asparagus, and sweet potato pregame meal over and over and over, so many times,” Toews says. “We all looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s just win tonight so we don’t have to eat this meal again.’”

  And that’s what separated the 2015 Blackhawks—weary, flawed, vulnerable—from their opponents during that run. The Nashville Predators chased a Cup-winning goalie to the bench and still lost. The Minnesota Wild were the hottest team in hockey over the second half of the season and got swept. The Anaheim Ducks were the big, bruising badasses of the Western Conference, and they choked away a 3–2 series lead. And the Tampa Bay Lightning were the young, skilled, up-and-coming team, and they couldn’t keep up.