CHICAGO — Little Madelyn Sharp sat upright in her father’s arms in a manner that suggested she had been there before.
After politely asking permission, she looked straight into the television camera and hollered: “THREEEEEEEE!!!!”
Family. That is what I’ll remember most about the latest Stanley Cup triumph by these impressive Chicago Blackhawks.
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Locally this was being billed as a city’s Cup — the first won here in 77 years — but the madness on the streets stood in contrast to the celebration on the United Center ice. Once the trophy was handed over and the Zamboni gate opened, it resembled a daycare as much as a party.
Patrick Sharp was one of several players negotiating the crowd with a child in tow. Three-and-a-half-year-old Madelyn was nothing more than a glint in her father’s eye when the Blackhawks won in 2010 and she didn’t stand as tall as the trophy when it came home in 2013.
This time she had a little bit of understanding about what this all means.
“It’s pretty special to be holding this little girl right here,” said Sharp, one of seven players to be part of this entire Blackhawks dynasty.
It would be hard to imagine a group that has gone through so much together. The almost unparalleled number of on-ice battles is one thing; everything that goes into a full life is quite another.
Consider: Kris Versteeg’s wife delivered a baby boy just before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final while Antoine Vermette’s wife carefully stepped across the ice on Monday night. Her due date is Wednesday.
Brent Seabrook, meanwhile, will become a father for the second time on Friday when his wife goes in for a scheduled C-section.
Perhaps there will be a couple Stanleys running around the family room here in the future. Remember that the team’s general manager, Stan Bowman, was named after the trophy by his famous father Scotty.
What the rapidly expanding Blackhawks family represents in the big picture is a team in transition. A group of young men that grew up together, and learned to win together, added to their legacy by proving they could do it again as adults.
“In the beginning when I got here no one had kids basically, but now everybody has one or two kids,” said defenceman Niklas Hjalmarsson, while cradling his two-year-old son Theo. “Everybody’s growing up and we really love each other as brothers in this team. I think that’s something really different that maybe not a lot of other teams have; that feeling in the locker-room that you’ll do anything for anyone.
“You just love the guys; I feel like they’re my brothers, all of them.”
That’s one thing they seemed to share with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who climbed from 27th overall to a first-round exit to a Stanley Cup finalist over the last 30 months. That group is so close it resembles a fraternity, but was slowed by injuries and ultimately ran out of steam here.
The Lightning were the highest-scoring team in the league this season, but managed just 10 goals in the six-game final.
Still, it was a close, hard-fought series. At no point did either team hold a two-goal lead until Patrick Kane scored with just over five minutes to play in regulation on Monday night.
“It seems like it was the hardest (Cup),” said Kane. “Teams are getting better and better and faster and faster. We’ll have to keep doing some adjusting as time goes on. Three in six years is amazing.”
It really is.
When the salary cap was instituted following the 2004-05 lockout, no one expected to see anything like it. But the Blackhawks have found a way to continually reinvent the bottom half of their roster and will need to do so again with more cap issues looming this summer.
That was a storyline the players had to contend with repeatedly during a regular season where they finished third in the Central Division. Everyone knew the clock was ticking. There were no guarantees they’d get back here again.
It was the familiar faces that helped pull them along, with the support of some new faces. Duncan Keith was a unanimous winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy after becoming the fourth defenceman in playoff history to log 700 minutes of ice time in a playoff series.
Kane tied Tampa’s Tyler Johnson for the post-season lead with 22 points, while captain Jonathan Toews finished one behind.
More than anything, they showed a champion’s spirit at a time when contentment could have set in. Chicago survived Games 6 and 7 against Anaheim in the Western Conference final and overcame a strong surge from the Lightning early in the Cup final.
When commissioner Gary Bettman turned the trophy over to Toews once again, there was still a sense of disbelief to go with the familiarity.
“I signed here hoping for one,” said veteran winger Marian Hossa. “In six years I got three.”
“It’s gratifying in so many ways, both personally and professionally,” added team president John McDonagh. “We’ve had to fight through some things, but it’s been worth every second of it. To see these guys mature into young adults, into grown men … most of our guys when I started here were single.
“Now there’s babies all over the place.”
It was a celebration unlike any these eyes have ever seen while covering the Stanley Cup final for a decade. Young children in the arms of every second player. Plenty of slightly older ones bouncing around the ice surface where their fathers go to work.
The circle of life has clearly gone into overdrive since the young Blackhawks won a title in Philadelphia five years ago.
“Things change,” said Toews. “It doesn’t feel like a long time, but it’s been a long time. A lot of things change. But we’ve still got an amazing group of guys that had the desire to get back here.
“That’s what stayed consistent.”
No wonder they are winners again. Without will and skill and a family’s support you can never scale a summit this high.
