Chicago Blackhawks Insider: Looking Back at '61

Sunday night was 1961 Heritage Night during the Blackhawks and Islanders game.  Fans were able to reflect back on the 1961 Blackhawks, a team that won the Stanley Cup.  The team was led by such Chicago hockey icons as Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull and provided the city with a lot of excitement during that championship season.

The 1961 Stanley Cup Final was played between the Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings.  This had been Chicago’s first finals appearance since the 1944 season, so it had been a while since the Hawks had been to the Stanley Cup Finals.

In order to get to the Stanley Cup Finals, Chicago had to defeat the Montreal Canadiens while the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The six game series can be considered one of the best in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs.  The games ended up being very close until the end when the Blackhawks started to take control of the series and then seal it up at the end.

In the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Hawks beat the Red Wings 3-2.  In the second game, Detroit evened things up by winning 3-1.  In the third game, Chicago won 3-1 but the Red Wings evened it up again with a 2-1 victory.

The Blackhawks ended up winning the final two games of the series to clinch the Stanley Cup.  The fifth game of the series saw the Blackhawks beat the Red Wings 6-2 and then, in the final game of the series, they defeated Detroit 5-1 and won the Stanley Cup.

As previously mentioned, the Blackhawks were led by left winger Hull and center Mikita.  Hull ended up scoring two goals in the first game (a 3-2 win) and even scored the game winner.

Mikita ended up scoring the game winner in the fifth game of the series.

Together, they are legends in Chicago hockey history.

Hockey had lost its popularity in Chicago when the Blackhawks of ’61 made their run at the Stanley Cup.  The team has been so bad for so long, fans in Chicago have pretty much given up on the Blackhawks and they were considered to be Chicago’s “forgotten team."  After all, other Chicago teams like the Bears were winning games and fans didn’t really have time for a team that didn’t win.

That was until they took care of the Red Wings and won the Stanley Cup.  All of the sudden the city fell back in love with their professional hockey team and the Hawks were back at the forefront of the Chicago sports scene.  It was good for the Hawks and good for the city.

The 2010 Blackhawks had a similar “revival” of hockey in Chicago.  The team hadn’t won a Stanley Cup Championship since1961 and once again, interesting in Chicago hockey had waned.  Couple that with the NHL’s lost season (when they shut down for a year) and Chicago hockey was at an all time low.

Chicago actually started to lay groundwork for their championship team back in 2002 when they drafted defensemen Duncan Keith in the NHL Draft.  They added some other pieces along the way including forward Marian Hossa (signed in July of 2009) as well as Patrick Sharp (brought over in a trade in 2005) and Niklas Hjalmarsson who was drafted by the Blackhawks in 2005.

The Blackhawks drafted future star Jonathan Toews in the 2006 NHL Draft and the ball started rolling from there.  The Blackhawks then added forward Patrick Kane in the next year’s draft (2007) giving the Hawks to nice scoring options and two leaders.

Winning the Stanley Cup helped propel the Blackhawks back into the forefront of Chicago sports back in 1961 and winning the Cup last year helped bring it back again in Chicago.  Now people fill the stands to see them play, they buy their merchandise, they talk about them constantly and they defend them ferociously.

There are some definite similarities between these two teams but perhaps the biggest is the way that they helped save hockey for the city of Chicago.