OT-Lord Stanleys Cup/Dynasty
Some interesting comparisons...
Toews is to the Blackhawks what Steve Yzerman was to the Red Wings. Similarly, defenseman Duncan Keith is to the Blackhawks what Nicklas Lidstrom was to the Red Wings. The Blackhawks also have Marian Hossa, Patrick Sharp and Brent Seabrook. The Red Wings had Brendan Shanahan, Tomas Holmstrom and Kris Draper. Including the coaching, because Joel Quenneville is to the Blackhawks what Scotty Bowman was to the Red Wing.
The Red Wings could spend more than every team when they won their three titles in six seasons. Free agency, and money in general, weren't considerations.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=770990
Given the difficulties of keeping a team together in the modern NHL, winning three championships within six years, as the Blackhawks will do if they can finish off Tampa Bay, would perhaps be no less impressive a feat than what the Islanders did by winning four in a row.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/yeah-the-blackhawks-are-a-dynasty/
For all of us on this blog with Chicago ties this has been so much fun and likely not over yet!
I didn't want Chicago to win for exactly this reason...the talk of dynasty.
But now that it's here...
Chicago very well may be the closest thing the NHL ever gets to a "dynasty" in the post-lockout parity era. It's amazing the run of playoff luck they seem to have when it comes to playoff overtimes. But luck aside, they were clearly playing at a level above every single opponent that came their way, and that difference really showed in games 5-7 of each series they played (if it got there). I've always admired them as a team...they seemed to build themselves around the Red Wings puck possession model that got them a cup in 2008 and nearly another in 2009. Shoot, they did it BETTER than Detroit ever did. It's hard for me to really "hate" them, even though my Detroit fandom practially demands it. Mostly because it's a hell of a lot better than seeing the Bostons and Anaheims of the league winning the cup.
Having said all that...fuck man, their fans don't deserve that shit. Like, at all.
is that they did in while only being in existence as a franchise for about 7 years. I mean as far as I can tell no one even ever heard of them and they certainly had no fans before 2008.
but like someone noted above, talk to me in 20 years when the wings are still on their playoff streak.
they got luck in the draft just like we got lucky in ours with #19; but sustaining that success beyond one or two players over decades is a different ballgame
2013-2015 B2B2B Conference Finals.
They lost to the Kings in game 7 OT and in your opinion that means no Dynasty. I remeber my first beer and some of the stupid posts I made as a kid.
:- )
Love you WD but your wrong.
Would you consider the Pistons in the early-to-mid 00's a dynasty, as they went to 6(!) straight conference series but only 2 Finals (winning 1)? I wouldn't and I love those Pistons teams.
Something, something, opinions are like assholes, something, something.
And the Kings did the same thing from 2012-2014. I don't remember all this dynasty talk last year.
Maybe in your little world it doesn't.
As a Blackhawks fan I've got a parallel for you - the fucking Detroit Lions. Let's talk about Bill Wirtz. In terms of saying that hockey didn't exist here before 2008 - look at the damn owner. The Blackhawks home games were NOT ALLOWED ON TV because the owner thought that fans wouldn't come to the games. Fans were bled dry. For every Lions fan with a paper bag on their head, imagine if the owner regularly was saying "fuck you" to that exact person.
Yeah, the team was awful and started winning, but realize what previous ownership did to the franchise. If you have other thoughts on how the Hawks are awful, see my above post.
Fair enough but Blackhawk fans pretty much stopped caring entirely (not that I necessarily blame them, but you can't really be long suffering if you don't care). It's not like the Cubs or Lions, or the relief when the Red Sox or probably even the White Sox finally won. I'm not much of a Lions fan but around here people are still suckered into going to those games every damn year when nothing is ever going to change.
The Blackhawks are now to the NHL what the Red Sox are to MLB...everyone is tired of hearing about how great the fans are, what a model organization...
I don't care about your sob story for the owner; the lions still had a consistent fan base that showed up IN SPITE of a shitty owner.
I have no arguement that the hawks are good, or even on a streak that may get them viewed as dynasty worthy; but lets call a spade a spade, the blackhawks fans are fair weather until proven otherwise.
You didn't show up when they sucked and now are here when they are good and you are just lucky enough that this good is special even in the context of history.
Not like those Lions fans (with 8 home games to go to, rather than 41) had a recent 25% dip in attendance
http://my.xfinity.com/slideshow/sports-proteamscollapse/3/
Or how about those Pistons fans, didn't they lead the league in attendance for a few years?
http://www.mlive.com/pistons/index.ssf/2012/12/detroit_pistons_have_seen_atte.html
So sorry that people like good teams. It's not like that's an exact reason for why there are more Michigan fans than MSU fans or any other topic on this board...
to call the pistons fans bandwagon fans all you want. I don't think a single person would argue with you.
And since this is a michigan board, thats a great example. We have sucked on and off (or just on) for about a decade now. Hasn't decreased any of our fanhood yet. Stadium attendance dipped on this one year only and there was a cluster fuck of reasons why for that but the games still nearly all sold out.
Now imagine if Brandon owned the team, made sure home games weren't televised, etc. and couldn't get fired. Wirtz was a TERRIBLE owner.
Yes, there was a one year dip in attendance at Michigan Stadium. Imagine a couple of decades of Dave Brandon and we'll be close to where the Blackhawks were under Wirtz.
we wouldn't have sat complacently going thinking welp guess I am going to give up because we had a bad owner. When Michigan fans had enough there were protests, petitions etc. Had brando been an owner rather than employee I would like to think we would have behaved the same way, granted I will agree apples and oranges.
And I can imaginea couple of decades of an owner like that; its called the lions. I know you are going to say 8 games vs. 36; but its also seating 80K vs. 20K and a city of <1mm vs. a city of nearing 3 (going to assume the burbs are about equal)
He was the owner and he didn't give a shit what any of us thought or did. This is an owner that actually said that Stanley Cups were too expensive. Literally the only things we could do is stop showing up and hope eventually he'd start actually losing enough money to give a shit, and pray for his death. Wirtz died just before the '07-'08 season. Attendance increased by 4000 a game that season, and then up to averaging a sellout the following year.
You Lions fans have had it GREAT with the Fords compared to the Hawks under Bill Wirtz. Imagine that now that the Lions make the playoffs and the best players are expensive, the owner mandates that they trade or let go of Megatron, Stafford, and anyone else expensive, including trading a fan-favorite star who grew up in the Detroit area to the Bears or Packers. Because that's what Wirtz did in the 90s. Out went a 25 year old Roenick, out went an in-his-prime Belfour, and then out went Chelios, the fan favorite, born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, to the Red Wings. That's when attendance started to drop from consistent sellouts/near-sellouts they'd had the previous 15-ish years.
you must not be hockey fans in general. If you were, to quote the late not great db, you would have picked another team they would have been fine with out you.
I am pretty sure team adoption is acceptable in circumstances such as these (and I even recall a few grantland articles about this very topic). I realize how emotionally tough it is to give up on a team but if they were as dreadful for as long as you say then over time it should be easier. If they weren't that awful for that long then I stand by my point of people jumping on the bandwagon lately. Which if thats the case own it, no one will fault you for all the reasons on here. You readily admit that you didn't care for a team at all, stopped showing up, etc, the owner died, they got good again and you care again. that sounds a heck of a lot like a bandwagon to me, but clearly we disagree on this point.
Also - I do see your points about the local greats being traded away in their prime to which I will raise you drafting 8bazillion WRs who were all over drafted and turned out to be massive busts one way or another. At the end of the day I think the ownership was equally as poor just at different stages of player development.
Are they putting Hawks games on TV yet?
The Blackhawks deserve credit for winning 3 cups in 6 years, but as noted earlier in this thread they did so largely by being terrible for a decade (making the playoffs once between 1998 and 2008) and accumulating draft picks. This is obviously the goal of any team going through a down period, but it's still a team that lost 2 straight quarterfinals between their first and second cups, and as recently as last year looked like a team that might be transitioning into another rebuild.
It was a good win against a game opponent, but keeping together this core and having some consistent success doesn't seem any less impressive than other great runs in the past.
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Building a winner in the salary cap era would be impressive if you had been one of the elite teams before the cap. Not one of the ones who had been dogshit for a decade prior and was johnny-on-the-spot with a bunch of high draft picks at precisely the time when that became the only way to build a team. As has already been pointed out, during the Red Wings' dynasty era, plenty of other teams were spending big. It wasn't some one-team arms race. Just because Chicago wasn't relevant doesn't mean Detroit had automatic dibs on every big free agent every year.
Belittle the Wings' streak all you want, but I know this: with salary caps, pro sports franchises' fortunes are now very cyclical. Win championships, then the core ages and drops off, not enough good prospects in the system = dark ages, years without playoffs. Then a few young, budding stars bubble up, fortunes steadily improve, a free agent move here and there, then those young guys hit maturity all at once and BAM - elite all over again. Every team that was dominant during the Wings' elite era (Colorado, Dallas, New Jersey), or was even just a one-time champ and/or frequent solid contender (St Louis, Philadelphia, NYR, Anaheim) has, at some point or another since, completely dropped off the map. They've had that dark age where they sucked for a few years and didn't even sniff the playoffs for a while. Detroit STILL never has. Have they been good enough to be considered a legit contender every year? No, and it's impossible to do so year in and year out (as Chicago will learn soon enough when the bill for these last few years comes due). But what the Wings also haven't done since then is bottom out, like everyone else has had to do at one point or another. Their "bottoming out" thus far has been a wild card spot. And looking at the pipeline, that's likely as bad as it's going to get before their next era as a contender.
As for comparing the Hawks to the Lions, what a joke. Of course there have been fan protests, that's what happens when there is utter mismanagement. But I would daresay the Lions have still been the most beloved franchise in Michigan the entire time. When I moved to Chicago to work on my post-grad in the fall of '04, all I ever got was, "Oh, man, you're from Michigan? The Lions and Tigers suck, brah!"
"Well, that's nice. The Pistons just won it all THIS YEAR."
"Oh, one title, big whoop, flash in the pan, brah!"
"Heh. The Red Wings just won their third in six years a couple years ago, and are still very much among the top teams in the league."
"Hockey??? HOCKEY? LOL who gives a fuck about hockey, brah?"
I can't tell you how many times I had that exchange. And now today here you are, the day after your third championship in six years, coming here to troll Wings fans. You guys are the NHL equivalent of MSU. Piss on your bandwagon fanbase.
Calm down, man. Every city has a different dynamic. Whatever the reason, the Hawks' "lost decade" clearly did something devastating to their fanbase. And given the franchise's history, demeaning Chicago's passion for hockey is hollow.
Not trying to put words in your mouth, but it sounds more like a general distaste for Chicago as a city and its sports teams, like a lot of native Michiganders feel. Sounds like simple rivalry to me, nothing more.
Yeah, I hate Chicago. The whole city. That's it. I'm pretty sure most of my post was answering the 2009 New Blackhawk Fan of the Year attempting to belittle the Red Wings and had nothing to do with Chicago. The anecdote at the end was just to make a point about how incongruent it is to compare Lions fans to Blackhawks fans.
I think the OP was trying to make a comparison, simply draw similiarties between the Yzerman-led wings and Toews-led hawks. Maybe I read it wrong, but you seemed to interpret it as belittling.
Quenneville was getting it handed to him by Bowman before he retired. And Duncan Keith does not compare to one of the top 2-3 defensemen of all-time. At least not yet. And the Blackhawks do not have a comparison to Federov, who may have been the best in the game for a five year period.
Also, the Blackhawks do not have a rival like Colorado to deal with. Remove Colorado from the equation and the Red Wings likely have a couple more cups.
Dynasty? Yes. Are the coaches and players comparable? No.
Ooh, I forgot to address that part. Is Duncan Keith the best defenseman today? Most likely. Does he deserve mention with Nicklas Lidstrom, best defenseman of a 15-20-year era? Hahahahah hell no.
Yea, you're right. If only there was another dominant team in the West that had won Cups in 2012 and 2014.
Thank God the Blackhawks have been able to cake walk through the conference the last couple of years.
We're talking about all-time great teams. Sakic, Forseberg, Roy and on and on. The Kings couldn't win their division in any of these years while the Wings and Avs were battling for the President's Trophy every year.
The Conne Smythe disagrees.
Perhaps he needs 5 more Norris' before we compare him the perfect human.
Yeah, you must be a reale hardcore hockeye fan, guye.
Win like you got some class, not like you're the same people that booed a deceased owner during a moment of silence in respect to him. It's so Sparty of you.
But I don't think it's a coincidence that Scotty Bowman is the link between both franchises.
But I still think that's poor taste on booing a dead man. Hockey is still just a game.
If that happens, then the debate becomes real interesting.
But personally, I don't see it happening. LA hasn't been good enough to finish better than 5th in their conference since 2008, and one of thier cups was as an 8 seed (which, don't get me wrong, is quite a historic accomplishment...but in the discussion of "dynasty", it matters)...you'd think a dynasty-level team would have better regular season stats than that I doubt it suddenly changes in the next two years, especially when they couldn't even make the freaking playoffs this year.
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Given the difficulties of keeping a team together in the modern NHL, winning three championships within six years, as the Blackhawks have done is no less impressive a feat than what the Islanders did by winning four in a row.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/yeah-the-blackhawks-are-a-dynasty/
The Blackhawks are the first team in any of the four major sports to win a championship three times in an era with a hard salary cap.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=770990
READ THE ARTICLES!
What happens if LA wins next year?
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Is not as good as four in a row, especially when you don't win back to back. The Islanders won four in a row, plus made it to the Finals in their drive for five. IMO, the best runs/dynasties since the 1980s (when I started watching hockey) are:
1. Edmonton Oilers
2. New York Islanders
3. Detroit Red Wings
4. Chicago Blackhawks
I admit that I do believe something should be said for back-to-back titles. Also, you or someone else mentioned that it was easier for the Wings to go back to back. I assume that's based on one of the articles you read. The Nate Silver article mentioned that it was easier to go b-2-b prior to 1990, which is also before the Wings run. So even the article you cite shows how hard it was for the Wings to go B2B.