Hockey is the most beautiful sport in the world when played well. In Chicago, for decades, it was played poorly. That, of course, has changed. But although the sight of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Dustin Byfuglien crossing the blue line on the attack in perfect coordination, or speedy defenseman Duncan Keith beginning a rush from behind the net, has reinspired many a Blackhawks fan, these moments aren’t what brought the team the Stanley Cup. What brought home the trophy was the system coach Joel Quenneville has imposed on his talented players. It’s not always pretty, but it works. The Hawks would have been fun to watch playing the more freewheeling hockey of Denis Savard, the former Hawks great whose coaching was only slightly more regimented than his pirouetting style of play. But under Savard they never would have been champions.
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Toews and Kane—the Hawks’ star Irish twins—led the revival. Their paths to Chicago mirrored each other. Toews, a Canadian from Winnipeg, played college hockey at North Dakota; Kane, a slighter, flashier sharpshooter, was sent away from home in Buffalo to play Canadian junior hockey. The Hawks claimed Toews in the first round of the the 2006 draft and Kane in the first round a year later, but they arrived together in 2007, each expected to be great. Adept at both offense and defense, his head up at all times, natural leader Toews was named team captain in his second year. . Shifty and scheming, seeing the whole ice the way only the greats do, Kane skated with a hunched-shoulders style that made him look like Snidely Whiplash—he all but sported a cloak. He built up his strength and improved his defense going into this season, but was still prone to lapses, none more costly than the blind, behind-the-back pass that was picked off and turned into a game-winning breakaway goal in the Hawks’ first playoff series against the Nashville Predators.
Not unlike Bears coach Lovie Smith, Quenneville even called on his defense to think offense: he asked his penalty killers, usually led by Toews, to lead counterattacks. The Hawks led the league in shorthanded goals, and none was more stirring than the goal that followed the major penalty called against Marian Hossa late in the pivotal fifth game of the opening series. The Hawks were already down a goal when Hossa, the wizardly stickhandler and hockey mercenary, playing on his third team in three years in a desperate attempt to win the cup, was sent off; but Kane, on a rare penalty-killing assignment, tied the game, and Hossa came out of the penalty box in overtime to immediately score the winner.
