Deposit Your Beards In The Sink On The Way Out

Tommie Lee
Jun 3, 2014
3 min read

(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

So I’m sitting down to write this less than 24 hours after Martinez knocked the Game 7 winner in. Off Leddy, past Crawford, and right down the collective throats of Blackhawks Nation.

This may or may not have been a good idea. My emotions are still fresh, my nerves still raw and taut, and my heart still struggling to find a nice metronome-like rhythm again after so many cardiac-threatening games. I take my Hockey seriously. That’s why I always capitalize it.

For much of the Second Season this year, it felt as if Chicago was skating on borrowed ice. The team had moments of absolute brilliance, most notably the improbable play of Kane, the impossible net-minding of Crow, and the way Captain Serious was able to grab a stick when things seemed most grim and rally the troops with an unspoken Follow Me, Boys. That man was born to lead.

There were also some stretches that made us all wonder just how this team was even still alive. Moments when it seemed that no one but the First Line was capable of accomplishing anything. Entire periods where our Defense looked like a bunch of guys the Panthers or Sabres would have dismissed during camp. A lot of pure dumb luck kept the team alive through much of the late regular season and all of the playoff run. In your heart, you know that to be true. You didn’t want to think it…but you knew it.

Through it all, we loved our boys. We shouted at our televisions and in sports bars (if we could find one where the Basketball game wasn’t the one we had audio for). We dared to look ahead to possible matchups in the next round even when the Hawks were struggling to make it out of the current one. We did what we always do. We backed our boys.

We grew playoff beards again. Well, most of us did. I started a new job at The Elkhart Truth and didn’t figure a scraggly 40-something Hockey Beard was the right first impression to make on my new coworkers.

Now, those beards…like our hopes of repeating as the caretakers of Lord Stanley’s Cup…are down the drain.

Less than 24 hours later, Blackhawks Nation is doing what it does. The Left Click General Managers are trading everybody. Lose Leddy. Lose Bollig. Lose Crawford (are you INSANE?). Lose everybody but the core four or five. Q can’t get it done, he has to go. Q wants to be a GM too much. Bowman isn’t being enough of a GM. And so on. Twitter has been a very ugly place since Sunday night if you do a search on Blackhawks. And I did. Even my little circle of loyal, devoted Hawks fans that I talk with during the games vented their frustrations in some seriously twisted ways. This, of course, is what the internet is for. For my own part, it seems funny that a game populated with commercials that featured a talking liver ended with so much bile being spilled on my social media walls.

Consider this, though: Crawford gave up, what, 27 goals in the WCF? Before that he gave up 30 in the other rounds combined. Any other Goalie would have struggled far worse. Without Crow between the pipes the Blackhawks don’t get past Minnesota this year. He made some spectacular saves, some of the best I’ve seen in 25 years watching the sport. It’s difficult to remember those saves after the Kings kept ringing the bell. There were games where that man should have lost in spectacular fashion but found a way to stand tall over and over again. I think we’re in good hands with Crawford. Cut him some slack. No man loses a season.

It seems somehow perfect that an exciting Game 7 came down to a lucky bounce in overtime. The whole series was littered with those bounces. Game 7 was what it should have been: Fun to watch, until the end, and I don’t think we have any reason to be disappointed with the team Chicago had on the ice. Sutter coaches like he played, and the Kings were playing smart, tough hockey. It has been enough for them.

Will there be changes? Well…yeah. There always are. Brookbank will probably find more steady work elsewhere. Handzus probably didn’t sell many jerseys or create new fans in the last few months. And Hossa, my guy, the big Eight-One…he’s notably slower and starting to show his age (like ‘Zus, I suppose.)

Stay tuned. And for God’s sake…don’t forget to clean out the sink, or your wife will never let you hear the end of it.

Go Hawks.