It’s a home run for the NHL, this matchup for the Stanley Cup between Chicago and Boston that begins Wednesday night. It’s two powerhouse clubs, two glamour U.S. markets, two franchises who have reversed so much of their respective Original Six histories to become model organizations with profiles of stability.
For the celebrated Original Six Era, identified as the quarter century from 1942-43 through 1966-67, wasn’t so celebrated by either the Bruins or Blackhawks, who combined to win one Stanley Cup in those 25 years (Chicago’s in 1961) while missing the playoffs a total of 24 times.
Indeed, it got so bad in Chicago in the early 50’s that the club farmed out 19 home games to St. Louis, Indianapolis, Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul over the four seasons from 1952-53 through 1955-56.
But then soon came Bobby Hull to the rescue just as Bobby Orr would come to the rescue of the Bruins in the final season before the NHL doubled in size for 1967-68.
There are no Hulls and there are no Orrs in this year’s finals, but there are big-time players and very, very good and very, very deep teams waiting to take the stage for tonight’s Game 1 in Chicago.
Both teams are big, both teams can skate — oh, the Blackhawks are exceptional in that department — and both teams can create and defend.
If this is going to be the showcase for the sport that it promises to be, the league must empower referees to apply the same standard now as they did during the first week of the season. It is nonsense, this theory that putting away the whistles allows the players to decide matters.
This can’t be about wrestling, or holding, or clinches all over the ice; not with the talent and playmaking ability on both sides. No one wants to watch that.
If you were having a dispersal draft of these two teams, the Blackhawks have the three forwards you would take one-two-three in Marian Hossa (the best player on the planet at the moment), Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.
But then you would go with Boston’s splendid Patrice Bergeron, and maybe then the B’s Milan Lucic and David Krejci, and where oh where would you select difference-maker Brad Marchand, and would anyone be surprised if Jaromir Jagr, aging perhaps more gracefully than any player in NHL history, made a difference against the team against which he won his second and last Cup in — yep — 1992?
Who wants to register the force of the collision between Lucic and Dave Bolland?
Both clubs have blue lines that defend—Zdeno Chara, Hall of Famer—and join the attack while stacked deep. No team in the league moves the puck out of its own end as well as Chicago.
The Blackhawks have been the best team in the NHL since Day 1. But the edge in goal that belongs to Tuukka Rask over Corey Crawford, is the one that should ultimately swing this duel between these two marquee, big-market franchises.
Bruins in six.