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Stanley Cup Final: Blackhawks on cusp of modern-day dynasty after beating Bolts in Game 5

Stanley Cup Final: Blackhawks on cusp of modern-day dynasty after beating Bolts in Game 5

TAMPA — We’re so eager to use the word “dynasty.” Too eager. Entering the Stanley Cup Final, some actually anointed the Tampa Bay Lightning as a potential dynasty, even though this group hadn’t won one championship, let alone two.

But here are the Chicago Blackhawks, one win from earning the title – or at least redefining it for the modern era. With a 2-1 victory Saturday night, they took a 3-2 series lead. They can win their third Cup in six years on Monday night in Chicago.

“We understand,” said Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, “how unique this group is and how unique this chance is.”

The Blackhawks can claim a special place in hockey history with a third Cup in six years. (AP)
The Blackhawks can claim a special place in hockey history with a third Cup in six years. (AP)

No, the Blackhawks are not the Montreal Canadiens of the 1970s. They are not the New York Islanders or Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s.

But this is not the NHL of those days, either. This is the NHL of the salary cap, a league of parity – a league so competitive that the Blackhawks’ biggest foils, the Los Angeles Kings, winners of two of the past three Cups, didn’t even make the playoffs this season.

The Blackhawks won the Cup in 2010. They had to part with half their roster because of cap problems. They kept their core and rebuilt their supporting cast, and they won the Cup again in 2013.

As training camp opened the following season, team president John McDonough said “a dynasty is something that is many more Cups than we’ve won over a much longer period of time.” With what McDonough called a “humble swagger,” the Blackhawks set out to win many more Cups over a much longer period of time.

“We’re not satisfied with where we are,” McDonough said then. “We’re not close to being satisfied. We need to get a lot better. I know that sounds absurd in the face of two Stanley Cup championships in four years, but this is an organization with lofty expectations.”

The Blackhawks almost reached them last season. They went to overtime of Game 7 in the Western Conference final. Had they beaten the Kings, they would have been heavy favorites to beat the New York Rangers in the Cup final, as the Kings were. (The Kings won in five.)

Only when a puck deflected off one of their own players, fluttered in the air and fell into the net did they lose the series – and lose their chance to become the first NHL team to repeat since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and ’98 and the first to win three Cups in five years since the Oilers won three in four in 1987, ’88 and ’90.

“I’ve lost some tough games,” coach Joel Quenneville said then, “but nothing like tonight.”

Now they have a chance to be the first to win three Cups in the cap era and the first to win three Cups in six years since the Wings did it in 1997, ’98 and 2002. In relative terms, yes, that qualifies as a dynasty.

It has been a long, hard 104 games to this point, 82 in the regular season, 22 in the playoffs.

The cap cost the Blackhawks yet another player, defenseman Nick Leddy, whom they traded to the New York Islanders just before the season. Winger Patrick Kane suffered a broken collarbone Feb. 24, when he was tied for the NHL scoring lead. He was supposed to be out approximately 12 weeks. Their Cup chances were supposed to be shot – according to the so-called experts, anyway.

Chicago put two pucks past Ben Bishop in Game 5 as the Bolts starter battled through injury. (AP)
Chicago put two pucks past Ben Bishop in Game 5 as the Bolts starter battled through injury. (AP)

“We haven’t had any discussions on, ‘Oh, boy, what are we going to do?’ ” said GM Stan Bowman back in March. “You’ve still got to play games, and we’ve still got to find a way to win, and we focused our efforts on that.”

The Blackhawks used the cap savings from Kane’s injury to acquire defenseman Kimmo Timonen and center Antoine Vermette at the trade deadline, then watched Kane return for the playoffs. They battled through a six-game, first-round series against the Nashville Predators, in which goaltender Corey Crawford got benched. They swept a second-round series against the Minnesota Wild.

They lost Michal Roszival to a gruesome ankle injury in Game 4 against the Wild and primarily relied on four defensemen afterward. But they rallied from 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 deficits in the Western Conference final against the Anaheim Ducks, and they have rallied from a 2-1 deficit in the Cup final against the Lightning.

Toews and Kane have combined for only one goal in the Cup final. Yet they have set the example along with the rest of the core – Marian Hossa, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Patrick Sharp, Niklas Hjalmarsson – and the supporting cast has come through.

“We’ve always said that the experience that we have, in tough moments, when things don’t look so good for us, I think that’s when we really realize, ‘Hey, just keep pushing. You never know what can happen,’ ” Toews said. “And here we are, one win away.”

This series is not over. It has been ridiculously tight. It is only the second Cup final ever in which the first five games were all decided by one goal. (The other was in 1951 between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens.) The teams have been tied or separated by one goal for all 300 minutes.

The Bolts will not be intimidated by the atmosphere at the United Center on Monday night. They are 8-4 on the road in these playoffs. They won Game 3 in Chicago.

But it’s there for the Blackhawks to take, especially with the Lightning weakened by injuries. Goaltender Ben Bishop is playing hurt. Center Tyler Johnson, the playoffs’ leading scorer, is playing hurt. Winger Nikita Kucherov, the playoffs’ second-leading scorer, left Saturday night after slamming his right shoulder into a goalpost.

If the Blackhawks win Monday night, Chicago will see the Cup hoisted on home ice for the first time since 1938. The city will see not just a champion, but a team that has separated itself from its peers and earned a special place in history.

“It’d be amazing,” Toews said. “But I like said …

He sort of smirked.

“Uh …”

He looked into the camera lights.

“You know …”

He searched for the right words – how they can’t afford to think about the end result, how they had been talking about that for days already.

“It’s easy to daydream sometimes and all of a sudden just completely snap out of it, when you’re thinking of winning the Cup and hoisting the Cup and all the things that come with it,” he said, as if he were doing it as he spoke. “But we’ve got to try to get those thoughts out of our head and just focus on the task, and I think that means playing our best game of the year, and we know we’ve got it in us.”

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