One Minute Remaining: One (Goal) Down, Two To Go

After 49 seasons, the Blackhawks brought the Stanley Cup back to Chicago, achieving their “One Goal,” and now Hawks fans are ready for a second: the repeat!

The aim of the salary cap when it was instituted after the last lockout was to create parity in the league, and thus far it has worked: no team has repeated in the salary cap era. In fact, dating back to 1967-68 when the NHL expanded to 12 teams, there have been only eight repeat champions and none since 1998.

Now that the Blackhawks have successfully navigated the salary cap, they now must face 29 other teams, each aiming to knock off the defending champs. GM Stan Bowman has done a great job juggling the issue and gotten some promising young players through trades and draft picks, which bodes well for the future. Joel Quenneville will have the task of melding the new players with the existing core to produce the same chemistry that brought the Cup to Blackhawks fans.

While it was tough to see some favorite players leave in favor of untested newbies, it’s important to remember that Blackhawks fans recently had many of the same questions about players who were soon to be the foundation of a championship.

Just a few seasons ago, Patrick Sharp was toiling in the Flyers’ minor league system with only a handful of NHL games to his name before being traded in 2006. Niklas Hjalmarsson was a fourth-round draft pick in 2005 and played in only 21 NHL games before developing into one of the Hawk’s top blueliners in this year’s championship run. There was also former seventh-round pick Troy Brouwer, who broke out this past season with 22 goals and seven game-winners, good for fourth-best in the league.

Even core players such as Duncan Keith, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were at one time question marks. While Keith became a force on the blue line, Toews has grown into one of the premier two-way players in the league and Patrick Kane has developed into a scorer in the mold of Blackhawks greats such as Denis Savard.

In all, the Blackhawks retained seven of their top ten scorers, plus Dave Bolland, who missed 43 games last season because of injury. On a team as deep as the Hawks were last year, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

After having accomplished so much last season, the Hawks have certainly set the bar even higher this year. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Blackhawks are ready for “Goal Number Two” — repeating as Cup champions!

Tags: Dave Bolland, Duncan Keith, Jonathan Toews, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp