BLACKHAWKS WIN

BLACKHAWKS WIN!  And why the Bruins lost.

Congratulations to the Blackhawks!

As anyone with more than a passing interest in sports likely knows, Monday night the Chicago Blackhawks, trailing 2 to 1 in the sixth game of the Stanley Cup Finals, scored the tying goal with only a minute and sixteen seconds to go in the third period. With the game headed to overtime, they followed it up with another goal seventeen seconds later avoiding sudden death overtime, avoiding a Game 7 showdown, and winning Lord Stanley’s Cup on the road in Boston. Sports radio and sports journalism have been calling it one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of sports. Hyperbole aside, it was an incredible seventeen seconds of ice time, and an incredible one minute and seven seconds of real time.

My son Glenn had come over to watch the game with me. He was wearing his Blackhawks #9 Bobby Hull jersey; I was wearing my #88 Patrick Kane jersey. The comeback was shockingly surprising to me at the time. In fact, with six minutes to go in the game, I was ready to walk my dogs and stayed to watch only because my wife asked me how I could possibly give up when there was a chance. As she said, “These are the Blackhawks, not the Cubs.”

I have always imagined that I am a curse to the Chicago Cubs. They last played in the World Series in 1945. I was born in 1946. Sixty-eight futile years later they haven’t been back. In 2003 they came close. In Game 6 of the NL Playoffs against the Marlins, they were five outs from the World Series, leading 3-0 when a fan, the infamous Steve Bartman, interfered with a foul ball and the mood of the ballpark went from ecstastic to funereal. With the crowd chanting “asshole, asshole, asshole,” and the fans waiting for the proverbial roof to fall in, Alex Gonzalez kicked a double play ball, and by the time the inning was over, the Cubs were losing 8-3.

A mathematical analysis of the probability of scoring runs as a function of the number of men on base and the number of outs showed that BB (Before Bartman) the Cubs had a 98% chance of winning. AB (After Bartman) it was 96%. The drop in the chance of winning occurred after only Gonzalez booted the double play ball. But baseball players are not APBA or Strat-o-matic cards, to name two statistical baseball games of my generation. Baseball players are people whose performance is mood dependent. Gonzalez’s error turned the game around, but Bartman’s act changed the mood of the ballpark and of the players and – one will never convince me otherwise – played a role in Gonzalez’ blowing the double play. Yes, baseball players are professionals. They are also people. And so are hockey players.

I grew up in Chicago as a Blackhawks’ fan, as was my father. While I played baseball, I couldn’t even skate. However since the Cubs, playing under the motto “Anyone Can Have a Bad Century” always lost, being a Blackhawks fan was easy. Since there were only six teams, at one time I actually knew the rosters of every team in the NHL. It was simple since the only games on television were the Saturday hockey games, which meant a steady diet of Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, Frank Mahovlich, Andy Bathgate, Johnny Bucyk, and, our own Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita.

In 1961, the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. In 1962, my father took me a Stanley Cup Semi-final game. The Blackhawks, down in the series two games to none, won the game and upset Montreal in seven games. They lost to Toronto in the finals, but I have never felt that I was a curse to the Blackhawks, they tended to win most of the time that I saw them play.

Monday night, the tying goal was simply a matter of the Blackhawks pulling their goalie for an extra attacker and executing a great play in the offensive zone. The winning goal was a matter of one team playing with their egos deflated and completely flat while the other team was sky-high. The announcers were saying that the Bruins’ bench was yelling for the team not to be back on their heels. They were not only back on their heels they were playing with their heads down. The Blackhawks scored before they got back in the game. Had the game gone to overtime, I suspect the Bruins would have been ready.

The Blackhawks gave up a tying goal in the final seconds of the final game of the series against Los Angeles, but the period ended before their depression could hurt them. They played tough in an evenly played overtime and won.

After the Blackhawks tied the score, the Bruins were playing with an attitude of “Seventy-six seconds until regulation time runs out and we regroup and go to overtime.” The Blackhawks were playing hockey. I have watched the last seconds of the game over twenty times on DVR in the last thirty-six hours and it is amazing to watch.

Of course, if one wants a more mystical explanation, the Cubs lost in 2003 because I was there with my son Adam, in a grandstand seat on the first base side. That was a curse that could not be overcome.

The Blackhawks won because I stayed on the sofa, wearing my Kane 88 jersey, almost believing that the team could come from behind. Okay, not believing it because my years as a Cub fan had drained me of optimism for any team from Chicago, but at least not so totally skeptical that I got up to walk my dogs.

If a man sits on a sofa in Nashville, does it affect the possibility that the puck may go in the net behind Tuukka Rask in Boston. I doubt it. But if so, if so, if not for my wife, Game 7 would be tonight.

Go Blackhawks!