Blackhawks' Bandwagon Still Knows Nothing About Hockey, But Loves it Anyway

Many fans in Chicago learned they have another hockey team besides the Wolves this year. They also learned that this team has spent the past few seasons stockpiling talent younger and more playoff ready than most of the Cubs’ minor league system.

Unfortunately for us bandwagon fans, the next thing we have to learn is when hockey season starts again, because we miss it already.

Until then, here are a few things that watching the Blackhawks’ 2008-2009 campaign has taught us new followers:

Canadians pronounce things strangely -- somehow Toews is NOT pronounced “toes” -- but then again, so do Americans -- that Byfuglien isn’t “Buy-fug-lee-ehn” we don’t understand at all.

Everybody gets nicknames. If nobody on the team is creative, you get an “er” added to the end of your name. If there is already an “er” at the end of your name, take it off.

The old adage “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out” is misleading, because we all know that fighting is to protect Patrick Kane.

The reason for pulling somebody’s shirt over their head is so they can’t see where they are punching.

If you get into a fight with Adam Burish, he will be smiling the entire time.

Players run into each other so frequently because they’re ON FREAKING ICE! (From the bandwagon girlfriend.)

Single guys -- more girls seem to enjoy live hockey over any other sport. Unless they still find Brian Urlacher attractive.

Almost as many bandwagon ladies now find Patrick Sharp just as attractive, and he’s from Thunder Bay, which just sounds cool.

Brunei is southwest of the Philippines (thanks, Craig Adams).

Murphy’s Law says there will be a hat trick on hardhat giveaway night.

Hockey has the most annoying penalties ever: too many men on the ice (“You didn’t jump off fast enough, idiot!”) and delay of game (“You hit the puck into the crowd just to save your own ass. Wuss”). 

Hockey on the radio: less fun than baseball, way more fun than basketball.

Hand passing: more okay than in soccer, less okay than in volleyball.

Goalie: less glamorous than a quarterback, far more sweaty.

Ice crews: nobody cares what they do.

The blue line: easier to understand than a balk.

“Blowout”: when Brian Campbell falls down.

“Crease”: like the pretty girl with older brothers -- you want to be there but you’re gonna get knocked around.

Four minutes in the box for drawing blood. . . still cool.

My playoff beard growing thicker than Kane or Toews’. . . even cooler.

The National Anthem sung by an opera tenor over 21,000 fans screaming for mayhem. . . coolest, most patriotic damn thing ever.

So if you’ve made it through this year, congratulations -- you are no longer a bandwagon fan. You can say that you were there when many of the young ones became legal, when ecstatic energy overcame the brutes out of Vancouver and that you’ll keep coming back until the Blackhawks prove that Detroit still does, in fact, suck.

By Dan “Daner” Bradley, Blackhawks fan for life