Two of a Kind, Part 2

This is the second of two companion posts.

Even before I started to write this post, I got blowback. Tough crowd, but at least someone is paying attention.

The argument:  “Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa are not role players – they are freaking Hall of Fame talents! You cannot re-define ‘role player’ to suit your own purposes.”  Fair argument (but I kind of can re-define the term, it’s my blog).

Here’s my point in singling out the 2009-2010 Blackhawks: they were exceptional because Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa selflessly played their roles better than anyone else in the game at that time. Sure, hockey jargon is full of names for role players: sniper, creator, two-way center, stand-up defenseman, fourth-line grinder, and enforcer, to name a few. Duncan Keith was really none of those things.  He was a puck-possessing, rush-stopping defenseman. Nor do any of those descriptions do justice to Hossa: let’s call him a dogged, puck-retrieving two-way forward. But before I defend my take on the players, let me talk about the team.

The Blackhawks

Again, Covid-19 provided me an opportunity to re-watch several 2010 playoff games and inspired my decision to feature this team here. Yay Covid-19, I guess. Then I did some research. (Author’s Note: if Hockey Reference or Baseball Reference or Basketball Reference had existed when I was a child, I may never have gone to school. I had playing cards and Sports Illustrated, that’s about it.) The 2009-2010 Blackhawks finished the regular season with 112 points, second in the Western Conference (to San Jose) and third overall (to the league-leading Capitals, who got bounced in Round 1 by the Canadiens).

The Hawks then dispatched the Predators in six (more on that later), the Sharks in four, the Sedin Sisters in six, and the Flyers, of course, in six, to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup since 1961 – a 49-year wait.

A couple of things stand out when you dig in to Hockey Reference.  First, the balance. Offensively, third out of 30 teams.  Defensively, fifth out of 30.  Six guys who scored at least 20 goals, none of whom scored more than 30.  (Kane 30, Toews 25, Sharp 25, Hossa 24, Brouwer 22, Versteeg 20.) Second, the youth. My guys Hossa (31) and Keith (26) were basically old men on this team. Of the 31 guys who played for the Hawks during the regular season, John Madden was the oldest at 36 and Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews the youngest at 21. But here’s the kicker:  24 of the 31 players were 28 or younger, and 14 were 24 or younger. That’s bonkers, and it’s the answer to the meatheads’ favorite question:  “why in da hell didn’t we keep Ladd, and Byfuglien, and Bolland, and Brouwer?”  (And later, Panarin, Teravainen, and Leddy.) The answer is really painfully simple:  You can’t keep together a group of players who achieve so much at a young age. In the hard-cap NHL, players who achieve success early in their careers become too expensive to keep.  If you have four or five to re-sign, you’re good. But you cannot resign 12 guys. You pick your horses and ride – and the horses the Hawks rode to two more Cups were prrrrrretty, prrrrrretty good nags.

The first game I re-watched recently is one that is on my personal Top 5 All-Time Sporting Events Attended In Person list (no spoilers on the other four, I see a blog post in the future here). Game 5 of Round 1, at the United Center. The Hawks were tied in the series 2-2, and down by a goal to Nashville late in the third period. With the goalie pulled, Hossa draws a five-minute major for boarding behind the Predators net – very uncharacteristic of him to take a bad penalty. Depression sets in. Then Kane miraculously ties it (kind of) shorthanded in the last minute, Hossa does his time in the sin bin into the overtime period, skates out of the box directly to the side of the Preds’ net, collects a wayward/deflected shot and buries one into a near-empty net. Big Hoss slides on his knees at the near boards, the bench empties and piles on top of him, pandemonium ensues.

That win was the springboard to the Cup. People forget how close the Hawks were to a first-round exit. Nashville was good, and being forced to win Games 6 and 7 was not something the Hawks relished. Alas, Kane and Hossa saved the day. The Hawks went on to eliminate the Sharks in four and Sedins in six, and they closed the deal on the road in Game Six in Philadelphia.

OK, so you’re up to speed. But what was so great about this Hawks team – they did win a couple more, right? Well, I suppose part of me is a sucker for the fact that the 2010 team was the first to raise a Stanley Cup banner in nearly 50 years. But I was also struck by the comparisons to the 1996 Bulls in this way: the response to “remember that 72-win Bulls team?” absolutely has the names “Michael” and “Jordan” in the answer. And, especially after their dominant playoff performances, “Toews and Kane” will roll off the tongues of most casual fans when asked about the 2010 Blackhawks. But just as Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman played an enormous part in that Bulls team’s success, it’s hard to imagine the Blackhawks raising the Cup without Big Hoss and Duncs. The ultimate role players. (Ducking.)

#2 and #81

My singling out Keith and Hossa as ultimate role players should not be taken as some sign of disrespect. They are two of my three favorite Blackhawks of all time, and both should enter the hockey Hall of Fame someday. If your definition of “role player” is the “journeyman, limited minutes, limited skill set,” then there are a gaggle of 2010 Blackhawks you would call role players without catching flak. Names like Madden and Sopel and Eager and Fraser come to mind. But that’s not Keith and Hossa.

The Blackhawks in 2009-2010 – and really throughout the Stanley Cup run – thrived on puck possession. They routinely got out-hit and didn’t much care. (Which made it especially fun when the meathead sitting a few rows down would yell at the top of his lungs for Patrick Kane to “hit someone!!” and would implore Brent Seabrook loudly to “Shooooot!” from the point on the power play notwithstanding the fact that four sets of shin guards separated him from the goal.)

For a team valuing puck possession, it was critical to have guys who were incredibly skilled at (a) moving the puck from the Hawks zone to the offensive zone, and (b) retrieving the puck if the other team had the audacity to possess it. I give you Exhibits A and B, Keith and Hossa. I like to think of hockey players having a radius of impact when they are on the ice – a measure of their ability to impact plays when the puck is within a certain distance. To my eye – and I have no advanced metrics to back this up – Keith and Hossa impacted the game seemingly whenever the puck was anyhere in the same zip code. Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction was The Wolf – the guy who cleaned up the messes. I don’t know why it popped into my head, but I think The Wolf is a pretty good comp for Keith and Hossa – they cleaned up messes, and made things right. And got the puck back where it belonged – in the other team’s zone.

Trivia.  In 2009-2010, the Blackhawks had two US-born players who played all 104 games (82 regular season, 22 playoffs). One led the team in regular season goals and the other tied Patrick Sharp for the team lead in playoff goals. Who were the two Americans, and where were they born?

TRIVIA QUESTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE ONE TRUE TEAM

Duncan Keith won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman in 2010 – another nice point for those wanting to ridicule a guy who labels him a “role player.” He was second on the team in scoring with 69 points (14G, 55A). So, yeah, he could play. What Keith did better than anyone else that year, and maybe anyone I have ever seen – is possess the puck. On the defensive end, his insanely active stick was his weapon. He is not a hulking presence like Chara or Pronger. But come within a stick’s distance of Keith on the rush, and the puck was probably being knocked off your stick. And 26-year-old Keith’s speed and skating ability seemingly allowed him to always take away your “time and space” (as Eddie Olczyk would say). Once the puck was on his blade, it was leaving the Hawks zone. He’d skate it, or pass it – whatever it took. And let’s not forget this morsel: in the regular season Keith played 26:36 a night, and in the playoffs a ridiculous 28:11. Imagine how demoralizing it must have been for opposing coaches to look up and see him on the ice so damn much – kind of like when you are coaching youth basketball and the jackass coach of the other team has his star 10-year-old play every second and take 47 shots. Duncan Keith played several roles, but the role he played better than anyone else was Chief of Puck Possession.

Marian Hossa only played 57 games in the regular season, and still managed 51 points (24G, 27A). Not shabby. At times, he was a highlight reel. (If you follow that link, I recommend the “catch and release” clip.) But what I loved most about Marian Hossa – and what the Blackhawks sorely missed most about him when he stepped away – was his work as a back-checking, puck retrieving forward. To call him dogged defensively doesn’t do him justice. I wish I had a reel of highlights like this: (a) Hossa carries the puck at center ice or in the offensive zone in traffic, (b) the puck comes loose and an opponent seizes the puck and starts the other way, and (c) Hossa stops on a dime (no lazy circling around) or makes a tight turn and chases the puck-carrier as if the guy had taken his passport two minutes before Hossa’s honeymoon flight was boarding. I saw this play out literally hundreds of times, but they don’t turn plays like that into highlight reels. There was no one in the game who did this better, and I know because my eyes were glued on Big Hoss on every shift. Sure, Hossa won three Cups, made five All-Star teams, and has a ridiculously long Wikipedia page, but the fact that he never won a Selke Trophy as the league’s best defensive forward is a criminal omission. Again, for the Three Cup Blackhawks puck possession was everything. Marian Hossa did it all – but the role he played best was Chief of Puck Retrieval. If you want to possess something, and you don’t have it, you go get it. That was Marian Hossa.

Argue it. Debate it. Disagree. Whatever. That’s part of being a sports fan. But give me this: the “old men” on the 2009-2010 Blackhawks wearing sweaters #2 and #81 made them champions, because they made sure the Blackhawks had the puck more than the guys on the other side.

 Trivia Answer:  Buffalo’s Patrick Kane led the Hawks with 30 goals in the regular season; Roseau, Minnesota’s Dustin Byfuglien tied Sharp with 11 goals in the playoffs.

trivia answer brought to you by the one true team