Hawkey Central

It's been a long 2,547 days.

Yes, local hockey fans, it's been that long since you've watched your beloved Chicago Blackhawks compete in an NHL Stanley Cup playoff game.

That's, oh, roughly 220 million seconds.  Three million minutes.  Sixty-thousand hours.  Better savor every moment of this year's run.  You just never know.

Seriously, on April 25, 2002, the host St. Louis Blues defeated the Blackhawks 5-3, taking the conference quarterfinal series 4-1 and sending Chicago hockey fans into an excruciating drought.

But, today, Thursday, April 16, 2009 - the Hawks return to the ice to compete for Lord Stanley's Cup.

Number of players on the Hawks' 2002 roster?

As one might expect - since the team is exceedingly young - zero.

The 2002 squad was led by the likes of Andrei Nikolishin, Alexei Zhamnov, Lyle Odelein, Chris Simon, Jocelyn Thibault - those were the days.  But it was a healthy mix between veterans and youngsters.

This year - that's one area other teams plan to beat the Hawks in - experience.

Having Joel Quenneville behind the bench is a plus, he won a Stanley Cup as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche and knows what it takes.

But as the young Pittsburgh Penguins learned last year, winning 16 games to capture one of the most coveted trophies in all of sports is no easy task.  They suffered through growing pains.  This year, they should be better for it, and indicated that with a convincing 4-1 first-round win over Philadelphia last night.

Now it's the Hawks' time, and they can prove the critics wrong.  I'm talking to you, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Martin Havlat, Brian Campbell, and Brent Seabrook.

And oh, by the way, having both Nikolai Khabibulin and Cristobal Huet doesn't seem like such a bad idea anymore, does it? (Not at all, the goaltending cushion is their greatest strength.)

The Hawks finished the season in playoff form, rattling off a 7-2-1 record in their last 10 games.  In the Western Conference, only the St. Louis Blues and Anaheim Ducks are walking into the playoffs on such a hot streak.

They'll need to pounce on Calgary, and pounce early.  Score the first goal, get the crowd involved, and win game one.  From there, the rest should come naturally.

Chicago's already beaten the Flames four times this season.  The playoffs are a different animal, but the home ice advantage and offensive firepower tilts the ice in the Hawks' favor.

But even if they get past the first round against a team that in fairness did finish with the same amount of wins (46), the playoffs is a long, grueling stretch, filled with twists and turns, injuries, and surprises.

Don't miss a second of the action.  You might just have to wait another 220 million.  In the NHL, especially with the parity today, you just never know.

My prediction: Chicago in 5.

Thanks to Timeanddate.com for the fascinating numbers.

And the game article for the Hawks' last playoff game can still be found here:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/cup02/games/2002-04-25-stl-chi.htm

It seems like the Chicago Blackhawks have been sitting in fourth place in the Western Conference all year long.

Certainly the last several weeks if nothing else.

The Detroit Red Wings remain the class of the Central Division, and since the top three spots go to division leaders, the Hawks have been stuck at No. 4.

They've faced hardly any competition for that slot, which guarantees home ice advantage for the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  Is that where they'll stay?

After its 3-1 win over Atlanta this evening, the Hawks trail the Red Wings by 11 points.  Passing Detroit is the only way they'll get into one of the top three places this season.

And the Hawks are nine points ahead of the Dallas Stars, who currently occupate fifth place.

Anaheim, Vancouver, Minnesota, and Columbus all have their eyes set on that spot - 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th respectively.  All five of these teams are within just two points of each other.

The top of the conference has been a complete opposite of the logjam at the bottom, rankings that have jumbled quite a few times in recent weeks.  San Jose has been No. 1, Detroit has been No. 2, Calgary has been No. 3, and Chicago has been No. 4.

With just 30 games left in the regular season,  fourth seems like a pretty likely result for the Hawks unless they go on a ridiculous hot streak or have a percipitious fallout.

For a team that's just dying to get back into the playoffs for the first time since 2001-2002, fourth would be just fine.

Breakaway for Patrick Kane, one move this way, one move that way, he shoots -- scores!

Hawks fans have heard this before, many times.  Kane isn't denied often on such golden opportunities.  And he wasn't denied last night in Montreal.

He made Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins look silly on the play, using the exact same move that resulted in a goal against Thomas in the Hawks-Bruins shootout at the United Center a few months ago.  Five-hole.  Not a chance for the Eastern All-Star.

The Kane tally put the Western Conference up 11-10 with less than five minutes to play at the Bell Centre, but Jay Bouwmeester of the Florida Panthers tied the game 1:02 later to force overtime.  The East took the game in a shootout after goals from Alex Kovalev of the Montreal Canadiens and Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals.

In regulation, Jonathan Toews also scored for the West.  His goal came off his patented wrist shot, also past Thomas, about two minutes into the third.  Toews first settled down a rolling puck, then fired it past the sprawling goalie.

Brian Campbell, who started the game, also reached the scoresheet with an assist on Dan Boyle's second period tally past a shaky Henrik Lundqvist of the New York Rangers, who surrendered a game-high six goals out of the six goalies.

And Chicago also got a little extra play, as the play-by-play on VERSUS repeatedly brought up the success of the Jan. 1 Winter Classic at Wrigley Field.  Doc Emrick and Eddie Olczyk also spoke of the Hawks' resurgence in the Second City.

Not a bad showing for the Blackhawks, not bad at all.  Now if only someone could please explain to me why Chicago's leading goal scorer Patrick Sharp was left off the Western Conference roster?

The team is back in action Wed. night in Anaheim.  The game is set for 9 p.m. CST.

A local man is a million dollars richer and he's not in any way affiliated with the Chicago Blackhawks organization.  He's actually a Hawks fan.

Cary Stolarczyk beat enormous odds to win a contest sponsored by the Illinois Lottery at the Wed., Jan 21 game against St. Louis.

Of the 22,000+ seats in the United Center, his seat in section 326 was the lucky one of the game.  If Chicago scored with exactly 10 minutes on the clock of the second period, he'd win a million dollars.

Yeah right, right?

Not only did Martin Havlat score with 10:00 on the scoreboard, it turned out to be the Hawks' only goal of the game, as the team suffered a rare home loss 4-1.  It was just their third regulation home loss of the season.

Stolarczyk said "there was a lot of cursing" when he found out he won, according to the Tribune Icing blog by the Chicago Tribune's Chris Kuc.

The story even garnered international attention.  This article appeared on the Polish Web site sport.pl (also zczuba.pl).

The promotion began at the Wed., Jan. 14 game against the Buffalo Sabres.  Who knew someone would actually cash in?  It's funny too because I was at that game on Jan. 14, and my sister and I were joking about it -- "No way that would ever happen," I told her.

This just in: The Winter Classic drew the largest television audience for an NHL regular-season game since 1975, according to ratings released today by NBC.

It's big news for a sport lagging behind others on a national level and hoping to land a major broadcast deal perhaps in the next few years with national sports leader ESPN.

The stat also speaks volumes of the resurgence of hockey in the city of Chicago.  Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Kris Versteeg and other sharp-shooting youngsters have brought star power to the Windy City.  Goaltending has been solid, the defense has contributed offensively, and head coach Joel Quenneville has done the rest since taking over Denis Savard.

And who says the sport is dead in the United States?  Approximately 4.4 million viewers tuned in, per NBC, the largest total since a New York Rangers-Philadelphia Flyers regular season match-up on Feb. 23, 1975.

Hockey has gotten a bad wrap in the U.S. in recent memory between the Jarko Ruutu-Andrew Peters biting incident in Buffalo and the dispicable tactics of Sean Avery.  An event as magical as Jan. 1's contest at Wrigley Field helped a little, and news of these ratings will help a lot more, especially on the business table as the NHL negotiates sponsorships for Jan. 1, 2010 and future television deals.

The sport has a ways to go, most worrisome is the increasing trend of low-scoring games (Americans like points, hence the fantasy crazy), but it is making positive strides and this is another one.

Hawks' Notes: Chicago bounced back from two consecutive losses with a 3-1 win at the United Center Sunday night.  They're back in action Wednesday at 7:30 when they'll host my hometown team the Buffalo Sabres, who have won four of their last five.  I'll be attending that game and will try to get some video and photos to post later.  Early indications are the goaltenders will be Cristobal Huet for the Hawks and former Blackhawk Patrick Lalime for the Sabres, though that could change.  It will also be defenseman Brian Campbell's first game against his old team.