Chicago Sports Memories: Stan Mikita

Showing posts with label Stan Mikita. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Worth a Thousand Words: Patrick Kane

Patrick Kane played his 1,000th game for the Blackhawks last night, joining an exclusive club that already included Stan Mikita, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Bobby Hull, Eric Nesterenko, and Bob Murray. It was another in a series of milestones for Kane, who racked up his 1,000th point on January 20, 2020, and his 400th goal ten days ago, on February 28. At the relatively tender age of 32, he ranks fourth in franchise history in goals, third in assists, and fourth in points.

ONE OF PATRICK KANE'S MANY SENSATIONAL GOALS.

It would be hard to exaggerate Kane's importance to the franchise since he was selected first overall in the 2007 draft. In 2010 he scored the goal that gave the Hawks their first Stanley Cup in 49 years. He was also a key contributor, to say the least, when the Hawks captured the Cup again in 2013 and 2015. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the playoffs in 2013.

Kane's trophy case includes the Calder Memorial Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 2008 and a raft of awards in 2016--the Art Ross Trophy as leading scorer, the Hart Memorial Trophy as most valuable player (voted by journalists), and the Ted Lindsay Award as player of the year (voted by his peers). He was also named a first-team All-Star in 2010, 2016, and 2017. He will certainly be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

In 2010, Kane was on the U.S. Olympic team that settled for a silver medal after losing the gold-medal game to the Canadian team that featured his friends and Hawks teammates Keith, Seabrook, and Jonathan Toews. He was the first American-born player to win the Hart or Ross trophy, and he is likely to retire--when the time comes--as the greatest American player of all time.

This year, with Toews out of commission, Kane has taken on a more active and vocal leadership role while continuing to play with the energy, enthusiasm, and uncanny skill he has brought into each of his 1,000 regular-season and 136 playoff games.

"As my 1,000th game approaches," Kane said this week in a recorded message to Hawks fans, "I can't help but think of you guys. These great moments are meant to be shared with friends, family, and obviously you great fans.

"I've dreamed of sharing this moment with you, so that's what we're going to do. When it's safe to pack the United Center with all 21,000-plus of the best fans in sports, we'll share that moment together."

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Blackhawks By the Numbers

The Blackhawks are one of the the NHL's legendary "Original Six" franchises, are in their 95th season of play, and have enjoyed a recent run in which they won the Stanley Cup three times in six years--equaling the number of times they captured the Cup in the previous 83 seasons.

For no particular reason, we thought it would be fun to name the greatest Blackhawks by sweater number, so here goes. (Asterisks indicate retired numbers.)

No player ever wore No. 35 for the Blackhawks before Tony Esposito, and no one has ever worn it after him. Likewise, Patrick Kane is the first and last Hawk player who will ever wear No. 88. It also seems likely that numbers 2, 19, 50, and 81 have each been worn by the last player who will ever do so.

Please note that there are many numbers beyond 45 that have never been worn by a Blackhawk or have been worn by very few players, none of whom made much of an impact. Those numbers are not represented below.

THE FIRST NUMBER RETIRED BY THE BLACKHAWKS.

1. * Glenn Hall, G, 1958 - 1967

2. Duncan Keith, D, 2005 - present

3. * Pierre Pilote, D, 1955 - 1968

4. Keith Brown, D, 1979 - 1993

5. Phil Russell, D, 1972 - 1979

6. Bob Murray, D, 1975 - 1990

7. Brent Seabrook, D, 2005 - 2020

8. Bill Mosienko, RW, 1941 - 1951

9. * Bobby Hull, LW, 1957 - 1972

10. Patrick Sharp, LW, 2005 - 2018

11. Doug Mohns, LW/D, 1964 - 1971

12. Pat "Whitey" Stapleton, D, 1965 - 1973

13. Alex Zhamnov, C, 1996 - 2004

14. Doug Bentley, LW, 1939 - 1952

15. Eric Nesterenko, RW, 1956 - 1972

16. Chico Maki, RW, 1961 - 1976

17. Ken Wharram, RW/C, 1951 - 1969

18. * Denis Savard, C, 1980 - 1990, 1994 - 1997

19. Jonathan Toews, C, 2007 - present

20. Doug Jarrett, D, 1964 - 1975

21. * Stan Mikita, C, 1958 - 1980

22. Grant Mulvey, RW, 1974 - 1983

23. Behn Wilson, D, 1983 - 1988

24. Doug Wilson, D, 1977 - 1991

25. Cam Barker, D, 2005 - 2010

26. Steve Sullivan, RW, 1999 - 2004

27. Jeremy Roenick, C, 1989 - 1996

28. Steve Larmer, RW, 1981 - 1993

29. Bryan Bickell, LW, 2007 - 2016

30. Ed Belfour, G, 1988 - 1997

31. Antti Niemi, G, 2009 - 2010

32. Kris Versteeg, RW, 2007 - 2010, 2013 - 2015

33. Dirk Graham, RW, 1987 - 1995

34. Tony Horacek, LW, 1992 - 1995

35. * Tony Esposito, G, 1969 - 1984

36. Dave Bolland, C, 2007 - 2013

37. Adam Burish, RW, 2006 - 2010

38. Cristobal Huet, G, 2008 - 2010

39. Nikolai Khabibulin, G, 2005 - 2009, 2013

40. Darren Pang, G, 1985, 1987 - 1989

41. Jocelyn Thibault, G, 1998 - 2004

42. Jon Klemm, D, 2001 - 2003

43. James Wisniewski, D, 2005 - 2009

44. Patrick Poulin, C, 1993 - 1996

46. Colin Fraser, C, 2008 - 2010

50. Corey Crawford, G, 2006 - 2020

51. Brian Campbell, D, 2008 - 2011, 2016 - 2017

52. Dustin Byfuglien, D, 2005 - 2010

55. Eric Daze, RW, 1995 - 2005

56. Erik Gustafsson, D, 2015 - 2020

57. Trevor van Riemsdyk, D, 2014 - 2017

60. Collin Delia, G, 2018 - present

65. Andrew Shaw, C, 2011 - 2016, 2019 - present

72. Artemi Panarin, LW, 2015 - 2017

77. Kirby Dach, C, 2019 - present

81. Marian Hossa, RW, 2009 - 2017

82. Tomas Kopecky, C, 2009 - 2011

86. Tuevo Teravainen, C, 2014 - 2016

88. Patrick Kane, RW, 2007 - present

92. Bernie Nichols, C, 1994 - 1996

93. Doug Gilmour, C, 1998 - 2000

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The Puck Stops Here

The Blackhawks of the early 1960s were blessed with three outstanding young forwards (Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Bill Hay) and two rock-solid veteran defensemen (Pierre Pilote and Elmer “Moose” Vasko). But the glue that held the whole enterprise together was goaltender Glenn Hall, who was so respected around the league that both teammates and opponents called him “Mr. Goalie.”

GLENN HALL

After the Hawks won the 1961 Stanley Cup, they went through the traditional handshake line with the runner-up Detroit Red Wings, received the greatest trophy in team sports, and then paid Hall the ultimate compliment--lifting him to their shoulders and carrying him off the ice. Mr. Goalie had allowed just 12 goals in the last eight games of the playoffs.

Hall did not win the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1961 because the award was not introduced until 1965. (He did win it in 1968 as a member of the St. Louis Blues, even though the Blues were swept in the Stanley Cup Final series by the Montreal Canadiens.) He won the Vezina Trophy as outstanding goalie three times, was a first-team All-Star seven times, and finished in the top ten for the Hart Trophy as regular-season MVP eight times.

Throughout his career, Hall was entirely fearless in doing whatever it took to stop the puck. He pioneered the “butterfly” style of goaltending, in which the goalie drops to his knees with his shin pads splayed out in either direction. This practice tended to put his face directly in range not only of the puck, which was more or less a given, but of swinging sticks as well. Hall nonetheless disdained the protective masks that other goalies had taken to wearing.

A year and a half after leading the Hawks to the Stanley Cup, Hall was forced to leave a game against the Boston Bruins because of a back injury. Denis DeJordy replaced him. It was November 7, 1962, and the date was noteworthy because it marked the first time since the start of the 1955-56 season that Hall had been off the ice during a regular-season or playoff game. He had played—without a mask and without a break—for 552 consecutive games, or more than seven full seasons (the first two were for Detroit, the rest for the Hawks).

“Hall had played the most demanding position in sports,” George Vass wrote in his 1970 history of the Blackhawks, “for 31,195 minutes and 33 seconds. He had played despite severe injuries, despite the constant tension that kept his stomach in turmoil and brought him to the bench on occasion to throw up. He explained his unbelievable tenacity as a case of simply doing his job. ‘Sure, there have been times in the last seven years when perhaps I wasn’t in condition to play,’ Hall said, ‘but making that decision is not my job. My job is to stop the puck.’”

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Mr. Blackhawk

Forty-eight years ago, on October 15, 1972, Blackhawks center Stan Mikita became the sixth player in National Hockey League history to reach 1,000 points (goals plus assists) in his career. Mikita assisted on Cliff Koroll's goal, the only one the Hawks scored in a 3-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues.

Bobby Hull, Mikita’s teammate for 14 years, was not at Chicago Stadium that night to see Mikita join the exclusive club to which he (Hull) already belonged (the other members were Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, Norm Ullman, and Jean Beliveau). Hull had jumped to the Winnipeg Jets of the fledgling World Hockey Association during the previous off-season.

In later years, Denis Savard and Patrick Kane have also joined the Blackhawks' section of the 1,000-point club.

STAN MIKITA

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1940, Mikita was sent at the age of eight to live with his aunt and uncle in Canada, escaping the Communist subjugation of his homeland. When he joined the Hawks ten years later, at five-foot-nine and 152 pounds, he made up his mind to hit rather than be hit. “Either they were going to kill me and carry me out in a box, or I was going to survive,” Mikita recalled. “Luckily, I survived.”

Mikita was among the most penalized players in the league early in his career, earning the nickname Le petit diable (“the little devil”) from French-speaking fans. Then, in 1966-67, he suddenly decided that he needed to spend more time on the ice and less in the penalty box.
The new Mikita was a revelation. His high-powered Scooter Line, featuring Kenny Wharram on right wing and Doug Mohns on left wing, accounted for 91 goals and 222 points as the Blackhawks broke the NHL record for goals scored in a season. The Hawks won their first Prince of Wales Trophy as regular-season champions, and Mikita was rewarded with three trophies of his own: the Art Ross as the league’s top scorer, the Lady Byng as its most gentlemanly player, and the Hart as the player “adjudged to be most valuable to his team.” No player had ever swept the three coveted awards in one year before, and no one (not even Wayne Gretzky) has done it since 1968—when Mikita repeated the feat.

“The guy has such tremendous reflexes and so much talent,” goalie Glenn Hall said of Mikita, “that he can change his mind in mid-stride when he’s skating or shooting. And believe me, a guy who can do that drives goalkeepers nuts.”

Mikita remained with the Blackhawks for almost a decade after Hull’s defection to the WHA, retiring in 1980 after 22 seasons. He remains the franchise leader in games played, assists, points, and plus/minus.

Mikita and Hull were reunited when both were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Chicago Blackhawks Trophy Case

No member of the Blackhawks ever won the Conn Smythe Trophy, emblematic of the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, during its first 45 years of existence. The award was introduced in 1965, four years after the Hawks' last Stanley Cup championship prior to 2010. Now there are three recent Stanley Cups in the Hawks' trophy case, and (not coincidentally) three Conn Smythes as well.

Below is a recap of the honors the Blackhawks have won over the years. Stay tuned for a future post in which we review those enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Blackhawks retired numbers:

1 - Glenn Hall

3 - Keith Magnuson

3 - Pierre Pilote

9 - Bobby Hull

18 - Denis Savard

21 - Stan Mikita

35 - Tony Esposito

Stanley Cup champion head coaches:

1934 - Tommy Gorman

1938 - Bill Stewart

1961 - Rudy Pilous