Well, they did it; the Blackhawks have finally reached dead last in the NHL all by themselves. With 1 win in their last 15 games, the Hawks are 7-18-4; they have 18 points. They are officially the worst team in the NHL.
These are great times in Chicago sports. The Bears are holding on to the 3rd draft pick with their bang up performance thus far this year, the Bulls (which we’ll get to in a second) have told the Sox, no, no, WE will be the most disappointing team in Chicago this year, the Cubs coming off a punted season, continue their tight grip on the dollars, refusing to sign anybody of note, the Sox, previously mentioned absolute face plant of a season, followed up by, wait a second, they DID sign somebody with Benintendi… hey it’s something… and of course, the Blackhawks, who are leading the quest to make 2022 the worst in Chicago sports history; do I need to look this up? Well, let’s just start here, on the ice, with the Hawks.
It’s not that long ago in the big scheme of things, where the Blackhawks only won 20 games in a season. Yes, the famous 2003-2004 season; that was right around the time I attended a game at the UC, and could hear the guys talking on the ice… from the 200 level! Yeah, it was empty; the Hawks were bad. Tyler Arnason lead the team with 55 points this year; I honestly don’t even know who the hell that is. I did hear of Tuomo Ruutu and Alex Zhamnov who were also on that team, but wow… that roster… let’s just say the record makes sense. The season preceded the lockout year that cancelled the entire 2004-2005 season. Great times all around in the NHL.
20 wins sounds pretty bad, but don’t underestimate the bad years that the Blackhawks have had. Sure, we have to go way back, back to when the NHL schedule was only 70 games, so I guess 20 wins wouldn’t be that bad, but… Here are the list of seasons where the Blackhawks won LESS than 20 games (newest to oldest): 1957, 1956, 1955, 1954, 1952, 1951 (wow we’re the 50s bad), 1947, 1945, 1943, 1941 (40s weren’t so much better), 1939… OK, maybe this isn’t the best way to look at things. In the 1937-1938 season, when the NHL season was only 48 games long, when there were only 8 teams in the league, the Blackhawks went 14-25-9, but if you know anything about the Hawks, they won the Stanley Cup that year!!! That was their 2nd in franchise history. Heck, their first Stanley Cup in 1933-1934, their regular season record was 20-17-11, so that whole 20 win mark… not too shabby turns out back in the 1930s… I guess we’ll have to dig deeper to find the worst Blackhawks season of all time.
We’ll get back to that another day, but for today, for this year, yeah, the Blackhawks are a bad team, AND they still have Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, two guys who’ll have statues one day, on the roster. How bad must this feel for them? Having been the kings of the NHL 3x… all-timers… hoping for one last run… watching the front office dismantle the current roster late last season and in the offseason… gotta be tough. It’s tough to watch them. I was lucky enough to watch their last win, their ONLY win in the past 15 games in New York against the Rangers. Well, guess who our next opponent is. Yep, the Hawks will welcome the NY Rangers to the UC on Sunday night, looking for their 19th & 20th points of the year. If it’s anything like the last one, there will be fights. Go Hawks!!!
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