Cup Worthy
For the third time in six seasons, the Chicago Blackhawks have won the Stanley Cup, their reward for being the champions of professional hockey. There are a lot of seasons in sports when a team wins a championship and there are grumbles that THAT specific team was lucky. That team cheated. That team didn’t really deserve to win. Those sentiments do NOT apply to this season’s Chicago Blackhawks. This is a team that deserved to win.
The Blackhawks, probably the best offensive team in all of hockey, won the Stanley Cup this year with defense. They trailed the Tampa Bay Lightning after three games of the series as they found that their opponents were capitalizing on their mistakes on offense and had “kind of” taken some control of the series. They were faced with a hockey conundrum. Do they continue playing with the offensive, chance taking game that was their normal style, something ingrained in their DNA? Or, did they tighten up their wild, offensive “push it up the ice” style of hockey and play a more defense-first brand of “playoff type hockey?”
All you need to know is that the high scoring Blackhawks only scored two goals in each of the final three games of the hockey finals. And they won all three of those games. They allowed a TOTAL of two goals in those three games, as they won 2 to 1 in games Four and Five, and they won 2 to 0 in the series clinching final SIXTH game. The offensive Hawks won with great DEFENSE. What’s that saying about “Defense Winning championships?”
Earlier in the playoffs, the Hawks were down to the Anaheim Ducks 3 to 2, but they showed championship grit in winning the final two games, the last of them being on the road. In the tough, elimination rounds of playoff games that have to be navigated, the team that finds that inner strength, that thing they call character, THOSE are the teams that do the best in hockey these days.
Another similar team at having “the right stuff” in terms of team chemistry and character, the Los Angeles Kings, are the other team that has “Cup Worthy” DNA. Between them, the Kings and the Blackhawks have won five of the last six Stanley Cups. There is something to be said about teams that know how to win championships.
It was fitting that the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the outstanding player in the playoffs, was given this year to defenseman Duncan Keith (instead of the usual suspects, Corey Crawford the goalie, Jonathan Toews the captain, or Patrick Kane the flamboyant, high scoring, offensive winger). Keith is the exact type of great defensemen (that plays well defensively, handles the puck well in their own defensive zone, AND are able to be a real threat to score offensively) that always seems to be in the middle of the action on the championship teams. The last six champions were led on the back line by Chicago’s Duncan Keith, L.A.’s Drew Doughty and Boston’s Zdeno Chara. If a team wants to look at what makes the difference in the Stanley Cup playoffs, they should try to get themselves a defenseman like Keith or Doughty.
That ability to win the big games has now been ingrained in the Blackhawks. They have their core players all pretty much still in their prime and during this series, they had 17 players who had won a Cup. This is a team that has done it before and will probably do it again.
The Chicago Blackhawks did not have the best record in hockey this season. But, when it was needed, they had the exact right stuff it took to seize control of the final series and defeat a good Tampa Bay team. And for their reward, the Hawks get to skate with The Cup. Congrats to the champions. Again.
