Chicago Blackhawks: Stories from the Chicago Blackhawks' Ice, Locker Room, and Press Box by Mark Lazerus

Author:Mark Lazerus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2017-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

3. 2010–12: The Lost Seasons

BEEP…BEEP…BEEP.

The Blackhawks blew it. There was no other way to look at it.

After a season of transition, plugging so many holes left by the summer cap purge, they needed a point against the hated Detroit Red Wings in the early afternoon on April 10, 2011, in Game No. 82, to clinch a playoff spot. Just one point. It was a home game. It was against a team that was missing star center Henrik Zetterberg. It was against a team that already was cemented as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference. It was against a team with nothing to play for.

And they blew it.

The Blackhawks lingered in the dressing room longer than usual after the 4–3 loss, trying to wrap their brains around how it had happened, how they could go from Stanley Cup champions to ­missing the playoffs in 10 months. Oh, technically, there was hope. If the Minnesota Wild could beat the Dallas Stars later that night, the Blackhawks would back into the playoffs. But the Wild were bad, and were ravaged by injuries, with several AHL call-ups in the lineup as they played out the string.

Defenseman Brian Campbell, a day earlier, said matter-of-factly, “I know Dallas is going to win their game.” It was that sure a thing. In fact, it was so sure a thing, Troy Brouwer and some of his teammates already had put together plans for a year-end party. Dinner was ordered. Drinks, too. It was all set up.

Brouwer and John Scott, who lived a couple of blocks away from each other, didn’t know what to do with themselves that night, so they went down to the Pony Inn to have a beer and watch the Stars-Wild game. When they saw the lineup the Wild were putting on the ice, they needed another beer.

“Oh, shit, Minnesota’s pretty much playing their minor-league team against Dallas, who was a good hockey team,” Brouwer recalls. “At that point, we pretty much realized that we were going to be out of the playoffs.”

Hockey’s a funny game, though. The Wild kids took it to the Stars, and somehow pulled out a 5–3 victory, allowing the Blackhawks to sneak into the playoffs as the No. 8 seed. By the time the Blackhawks’ media-relations staff put together a conference call with Joel Quenneville for reporters, it was pretty clear that Quenneville had written off the season, too. The normally tight-lipped coach was, let’s say, looser than usual, his voice jumping octaves and his tone downright giddy.

“I’ve never been more excited after a hockey game in my life that I didn’t participate in,” Quenneville said. “I was acting like a two-year-old, celebrating—maybe a three-, four-, or five-year-old—­celebrating his birthday. I was shocked.”

A couple of days later, the Wild had their own end-of-year party, and Andrew Brunette—who played three seasons for Quenneville in Colorado—hosted. The next morning, Brunette was trudging around the house, picking up beer cans and cleaning up the mess while ­nursing a massive headache.

Then he heard some beeping.

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