Young Chicago Blackhawks Ahead of Schedule

This shouldn't be happening.  At least not now, not so soon.  The Blackhawks motto the entire season has been "One Goal": to finally get back to the postseason. Something they had only achieved once in the past decade plus.

It was get to the playoffs and everything from then on is a bonus. The belief was that being the youngest team in the league budding with potential stars that their time to shine and really make an impact was still a year or two away. And yet here they stand today, in the Western Conference Finals.

It's not just that they have made it this far so soon, being the rookie playoff campaign for many of the players, but how they made it this far. They have now had six, count em', six comeback victories in the playoffs.

In their series against the Canucks they gave up the first goal in every game but one.  The odds are stacked against any team, let alone a young team new to the playoffs, that allows that, especially against veteran teams like Vancouver. 

But in such a short amount of time, the kid Blackhawks have grown wise beyond their years. With a few of them still unable to even grow playoff beards they've learned how to keep calm when down, how to bounce back from bad plays, how to play against and best every kind of style the opposing team has thrown at them so far. 

They've used their depth in speed to wear down opponents, sending out wave after wave. No first, second, checking, or fourth line labels need be applied, as Coach Quenneville regularly shuffles the deck and more often than not proves to find golden combinations.

Whether it's Dustin Byfuglien, the typical big mean looking power forward that does the dirty work in front of the net, who is now emerging as just that kind of player that the Hawks were hoping for, to Adam Burish, the scrappy trash talker that gets under the skin of the opposition, they all have their roles. 

All of them being led by the oldest young player in the game, "Captain Serious" Jonathan Toews.

And with Scotty Bowman looking down at this team, it all seems a little hard to believe, like some kind of alternate universe.  But they've proven so far, at least in their case, experience can be overrated.