Blackhawks' road back to Stanley Cup Final paved by experienced core
The Chicago Blackhawks may have the best core group of players in hockey and for the third time in six seasons, they'll be playing for the Stanley Cup.
For the third time in the last six seasons, the Chicago Blackhawks will be playing for the Stanley Cup. After a convincing 5-3 win over the Anaheim Ducks in Game 7, the Blackhawks improved to 3-2 in the Western Conference Final over the last seven years. Just getting to this stage of the season five times in seven years in the salary cap era is ridiculous.
Leading the team in this incredible run of success dating back to the 2008-09 season, has been a core of players that the team has done well to keep together for all these years.
There are seven players on the Blackhawks roster that have played a large role during each of the two Stanley Cup runs in 2010 and 2013. They have been there and done that, and with the way they played in Saturday night’s Game 7 against the Ducks, those players are the biggest reasons the Blackhawks will get the chance to do it again.
It all starts with the dynamic duo of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. The arrival of these two players in 2007 changed the Blackhawks franchise forever and each year, they continue to assert themselves as belonging among the most impressive duos in NHL history. Adding a third Stanley Cup to their collection certainly won’t hurt.
In Game 7, the two did what they seem to do a whole lot in these kinds of situations. They performed.
Toews, the team’s captain and best all-around forward, scored the first two goals for the Blackhawks to ensure that the Ducks always had to play from behind. He now has four goals in four career Game 7 appearances.
Then there was Kane, who notched three assists in Game 7 to extend his team-leading point total to 20.
The 26-year-old superstar has made something of a habit of excelling in the playoffs. With his three-assist night, Kane now has 31 career playoff performances in which he has registered at least three points. On six of those occasions, the Blackhawks were facing elimination. Kane has also put up multi-point efforts in each of the last five games in which the Blackhawks faced elimination. (Those figures from Elias via NHL Communications).
Two of the other three goals in Game 7 were also scored by members of the Cup core. Marian Hossa, who will play in his fifth Stanley Cup Final in the last eight years, scored the fourth.
Hossa arrived the year after the Blackhawks lost to the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Final in 2009, a team he happened to be on at the time. The veteran forward proved to be the missing ingredient that helped Chicago become a team on the rise to a team to be scared of. At age 36, he has shown few signs that he is slowing down.
Brent Seabrook, who scored the Game 7 OT winner in the second round of the 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs, added the fifth goal on a bullet shot. It was his fourth point in as many career Game 7s. Not bad for a blueliner who focuses on defense first.
On the defensive side of things, what more could be said about the way Duncan Keith, Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson have played? They look like they’ve been doing this sort of thing for years, and they have. Only difference this year is that they had to cover for a severe lack of depth in the defensive corps.
Keith, who had two assists in Game 7, finished the series with an average of 33:22 per game. That’s bolstered by two long overtime games, but it’s still an absurd figure. There’s a good argument to be made that Keith has been the Blackhawks’ most important player in these playoffs for how much ice time he has run up. On top of his tough usage, he is producing, too. Keith is tied with Toews for second on the team with 18 points in these playoffs.
Chicago’s “Stanley Cup Core” has accounted for 97 points in these playoffs. The top five scorers on the team are all players from that group. Seabrook, with 10 points, is seventh on the squad.
Most remarkably, not a single one of them has missed a game this postseason due to injury. Our Adam Gretz documented the importance of this group’s health to the success of the team and the remarkable run they’ve been able to make because of that luck with health.
Watching the Blackhawks’ core produce like it has in the postseason, and the fact that they’re going to have a chance to play for another Stanley Cup, is going to be bittersweet for the local fans. This may be the last time that all seven individually will be together to see through this postseason run.
Next season, the new $10.5 million-per-year contracts of Toews and Kane will begin. That’s going to put a massive strain on the team as the salary cap is not expected to budge much, if at all, from this season. The team quite simply is going to have to shed contracts to remain cap compliant. Those within the core are going to be able to bring back big value and they’re also the ones that would create the most space. Who that player or players will be for this team remains to be seen, but this is a group that has to make the most out of the time they have left.
As important as the core has been, though, they aren’t able to do it on their own. The Blackhawks, led by general manager Stan Bowman, have carefully built around this core. They’ve done it in a variety of ways, but they’ve had some of their best success in how they’ve drafted.
Considering that the Blackhawks basically had to dismantle its roster after the 2010 Stanley Cup win, the turnaround to get them back into the hunt as quickly as Bowman did remains grossly underappreciated.
Brandon Saad, who scored the team’s third goal in Game 7 against the Ducks, was extremely impressive in the Western Conference Final. He was picked 43rd overall at the 2011 NHL Entry Draft. That same year, Chicago picked up scrappy forward Andrew Shaw in the fifth round. Both have played big roles in getting the Blackhawks back to the Cup Final. Both are going to have a shot at winning their second Stanley Cups in three years.
There are other key players that have come via the draft and development system. Starting goalie Corey Crawford seemed to regain his form in the middle stages of the playoffs. Bryan Bickell, who was around in 2010 but not an integral player at that point, hasn’t had a great postseason, but remains a regular. Marcus Kruger had some big moments in the playoffs and has been an important role player.
The team’s first-round pick in 2012, Teuvo Teravainen, has really started to come into his own despite just 37 NHL games prior to this season. He’s only 20 and is sure to get better. The Blackhawks will need him to, especially while he's still on a cheap entry-level contract.
All of these players feed off the more experienced core. There is one forward from the core on each of the first three lines. The Blackhawks D corps can rotate in any one of their three core defensemen with any player and not drop off too much. There's always going to be some level of Stanley Cup experience on the ice when the Blackhawks are playing, assuming everyone ie healthy.
Chicago is simply good. They have been good, and they probably will continue to be good. If they can skate with the youthful and exuberant Tampa Bay Lightning in the final, they'll be much more than good. The Chicago Blackhawks would most likely be known as the first true dynasty of the NHL's salary cap era, if they're not already worthy of such a title.
