On Saturday, they'll play in the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since Jeremy Roenick led them there in 1992, when they were swept by Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since then, the Blackhawks have made the playoffs only seven times, suffering through a miserable stretch of futility that saw them advance to the postseason only once in 10 seasons between 1997-98 and 2007-08.
Yet last season, a rebuilding project on and off the ice came to fruition, and team is riding that momentum into this year's finals, where they will have home-ice advantage against the Philadelphia Flyers in front of a packed and raucous United Center. They'll be trying to end one of the longest championship droughts in pro sports and win their first Stanley Cup since 1961.
Former Blackhawks winger and current pro scout Martin Lapointe was not alive for that last Cup win, but he did play for the Hawks during the tail end of the bad times in Chicago. He remembers when the building now known as the "Madhouse on Madison" was routinely empty.
"It's like night and day," Lapointe said. "I mean the most we played in front of was probably 14,000, and now it's 22,000-plus every night. It's an amazing atmosphere — probably the best besides the Bell Centre in Montreal. To see this happen and having played when you could hear a pin drop in there, it's just so cool to see."
Lapointe, who played for the Bruins from 2001 until the lockout following the 2003-04 season, related the situation to the Bruins' struggle to regain their place in the Boston pro sports scene with the media and fans. As he pointed out, the Bruins' hardcore fan base was never ignored or phased out in the manner of which the Blackhawks' diehards were.
Until current president and marketing guru John McDonough came over from the Cubs and opened the eyes of current owner Rocky Wirtz, Blackhawks fans were literally in the dark when it came to home games. If they didn't go to the United Center, they couldn't watch their team on home ice, because former owner and father of Rocky, the late Bill Wirtz, wouldn't broadcast the home games for fear that it would keep fans from attending the game. But under the advice of McDonough, the younger Wirtz lifted the ban and also put the Blackhawks on the top sports radio station in the Windy City, WGN.
"John McDonough and Rocky have done an amazing job of making the Blackhawks matter again," Lapointe said. "It's amazing the buzz that's around this team now. Obviously, how they perform dictates that the most, but the philosophy that they brought into the organization helped build this team back up in the community and with the fans.
"The United Center is packed every night," he continued. "Everywhere you go, you see or hear Blackhawks, and I think that translates on the ice with the players or with players wanting to come here. They're proud to wear the logo and represent this team. It's really great to see."
As Lapointe noted, the product on the ice has been a major factor in the organization's resurgence, and that path to success started with the work of former general manager and current GM of the Florida Panthers, Dale Tallon.
Tallon drafted young talents Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and traded for Patrick Sharp and Kris Versteeg (a former Bruins farmhand in Providence). He has also brought in free-agent defenseman Brian Campbell after the 2007-08 season to improve the team's power play and star winger Marian Hossa after a successful 2008-09 campaign that saw the team go 46-24-12 for 104 points and a fourth-place finish in the Western Conference.
Unfortunately though, Tallon was demoted and later fired after a costly mistake, when he didn't file the offers for the team's restricted free agents by the deadline, allowing players such as Versteeg, a Calder Trophy finalist, to become unrestricted free agents. That forced the Hawks to overpay and put them up against the salary cap. But according to Lapointe, the new Panthers' GM deserves loads of credit for rebuilding the team.
"Dale did a great job of rebuilding the team developing kids like [Dustin] Byfuglien and [Dave] Bolland," Lapointe said. "He also made some key signings as well and really helped bring back that winning attitude. He basically went through that team and figured out who wanted to really win and who would sacrifice to win, then got rid of those that didn't."
Tallon was replaced by Stan Bowman, the son of the legendary Scotty Bowman, who coached Lapointe in Detroit when the Red Wings won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1997 and '98. According to Lapointe, the Bowmans have created a perfect working environment among the team's brass and scouts.
"The lines of communication are always open and everyone gets a say," Lapointe said. "It's a great way to do business and Stan is doing a great job. It's nice to have Scotty around, obviously, because he's such a great guy to bounce ideas off and gain insight."
This revamped organizational approach now has the Blackhawks on the brink of breaking a 49-year Stanley Cup drought, and Lapointe sees a bright future beyond that.
"This is the way things should be run and it's only going to get better," Lapointe said. "The Blackhawks are back and it's great to see."
