I thought when I ultimately sat down to write this farewell ode to a disastrously disappointing Blackhawks season I’d have something far more clever, wittty and demonizing to open with in order to transition you into the actual obituary aspect of this article. But the harsh truth is, it’s not even worth the time or effort.
If the Blackhawks didn’t give a shit, then why the hell should we?
In reality, If I were to attempt to replicate the Blackhawks given effort from their first round sweep at the hands of the Nashville Predators, all I’d have for you is a stick figure, sketched in crayon, on a snot-ridden, scrunched up napkin, taking a nose dive off a poorly-doodled cliff into some unknown abyss. Simply resisting the urge to write the word “fart” 500 times unceasingly all along this blank WordPress document took more effort than the Blackhawks emitted throughout the entirety of the last two weeks of what turned out to be the biggest con-job season in Chicago Blackhawks hockey history.
The Blackhawks have given us so much to say, yet – for the life of me – I can’t piece together a way to appropriately assemble or convey these observations. I feel like Alan Turing attempting to crack the Nazi code with nothing more than a KFC spork and a roll of wet toilet paper. I’ve settled on the conclusion that I’d have to be the offspring of the world’s two best critical thinkers in order to hypothesize exactly what the hell went wrong for the Blackhawks down the stretch.
So, as is tradition, I’ll bid a proper farewell to the individual entities many are deeming responsible for the bitter, post-Jeppson’s Malort taste we fans must live with for the next five months.
Farewell, Jonathan Toews. You concluded your brief and far from spectacular playoff run tied for the team lead in goals and points, which, in baseball equivalence would be like leading your team with a .220 batting average. As a devoted, undying apologist of yours for many years now, even I have fallen upon hardships trying to justify your gargantuan $10.5 million cap hit that spans from now until what is seemingly eternity. There’s no denying your past achievements and utter importance to the city of Chicago and the sport of hockey as a whole, but there is no player in the cap era NHL worth double digits in the millions – let alone two of them on the same books. I hope to god fans remember your significance to this city and this sport when you’re 34, still taking up a good chunk of the salary cap, a shell of your former self, and preventing the organization from signing or re-signing anyone by being virtually unmoveable by that time.
Adios, Patrick Kane. Like the aforementioned Toews, you tied for the team lead in playoff scoring with an outstanding 2 points in 4 games which, I’ll again epitomize, is like being smartest member of the Kardashian family. If there’s one silver lining here it’s that you, like a barrel-aged imperial stout, seem get better with age. Also, your inspired game 3 performance was the only sign of sentience a living, breathing member of the Blackhawks conveyed all series.
Farval, Johnny Oduya. Boy, I had some serious PTSD of the days of Michal Rozsival and Kimmo Timonen watching you try to chase around Nashville speedsters like Viktor Arvidsson and Kevin Fiala. I felt as if I was watching a wheelchair-bound sloth giving chase to a jackrabbit hopped up on speed. It isn’t your fault, though, that millions of Blackhawks fans forgot about this neat aspect of human evolution called “aging” and then held it against you after realizing after a handful of games you weren’t the same, circa-2013 Johnny Oduya who could effortlessly log 20 minutes of ice time per night. Perhaps your failed acquisition will act as a turning point for Stan Bowman to stop re-acquiring past their prime former Blackhawks and allow the inner 16-year old in the Patrick Sharp sweater within him to die.
I haven’t a clue how to say farewell in Russian. I attempted to google it but all that appeared was some extraterrestrial language likely signalling the invasion of Earth. Anyway, enjoy your summer off, Artemi Panarin. Another off-season, another hefty pay raise. Remember my advice from last season, get yourself a stretch limo, stock it with Eastern European models and all the vodka you can drink but come to camp next season in one piece, please.
Cherish the rest, Artem Anisimov. I feel sorry for you. I truly do. It shouldn’t take a medical specialist to diagnose that you were not healthy enough yet to draw back into the lineup. I’m actually kind of surprised it has yet to be announced you were competing with torn ligaments in your knees or a fracture in your foot or something, to be honest. Yet, there you were, reliably skating hefty minutes each night in each zone. Here’s what you’re going to do this summer, though. You’re going to lock yourself in wherever the hell your home rink in Russia is and you’re going to do face-off drills for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next three months. Got it? Good? If I took a shot each time you lost a crucial face-off, alcoholics would go extinct.
Adjo, Niklas Hjalmarsson. Enjoy the the next four months recuperating from the countless number of pucks you’ve taken point blank this season in a bacta tank like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.
Drink this one away, Coach Q. It’s funny to think masses of Hawks fans were asking for your head on a spike after your team’s inexcusable first round performance. The witch hunt and blame game must have grown so dire that the Blackhawks were even forced to release a statement that they were, indeed, retaining you, one of the five greatest coaches in NHL history and winner of 3 of the past 7 Stanley Cups, into next season. Because shitty, uninspired hockey is all on the coach, I guess. I guess I understand where you critics are coming from to a certain extent. When you’re an airheaded pea brain who doesn’t understand the fundamental rules of hockey and you only pay attention to the sport for one month out of the calendar year, coaches and goalies are typically the easiest targets to go after. These cretins usually sound like me bullshitting my way through class trying to convince my teacher that I did the readings the night before when I actually never even owned the book in the first place.
I would wish you a happy summer but I know the word “happy” is probably the absolute worst way describe your looming off-season, Stan Bowman. As you declared during Saturday’s press conference, changes are imminent and your wrath will be felt. And today your purge commenced, with assistant coach Mike Kitchen being the first victim of your vexation-fueled blood-lust. Anyway, Stan, find yourself a mirror. Any mirror. Look into this mirror. Take a long, deep breath and repeat, “let the past go” over and over and over again until the mere idea of pursuing Patrick Sharp this off-season makes you queasy to point where your lunch begins creeping up into the back of your throat. Re-acquiring former players, many of which are shadows of their former selves, is not working. Think young, think fast. Remember the holes in your surgically manufactured lineup (cough, face-offs for one) and stop feeling the need to tickle the fan’s nostalgia.
Would it be inappropriate if I kissed you, Corey Crawford? Of all the players on this team hung out to dry, you’ve been left baking in the blistering and relentless sun longest. I couldn’t even imagine what this disaster of a series would have looked like without your exploits. What was already a dumpster fire of epic proportions instead would have mirrored an entire city going up in flames. The best goalies in the world couldn’t have endured what you just put up with for the past week.
Lastly, let’s bid a proper, obnoxiously large, foam middle finger to the impervious 2016-2017 Chicago Blackhawks. The team that many experts wanted to deliver the Stanley Cup to on a silver platter, no questions asked, just a bit over a month ago. The team that entered the season with little-to-no serious aspirations but awe-inspired us for nearly all of the 82 games they played. The team that rode into the playoffs on a heavenly chariot of praise but left everything that made them a great hockey team back in reality. The 2016-2017 Chicago Blackhawks embodied the headlines impulsively seating them amongst hockey’s royalty and accepted the notion that their reputation alone would be enough to defeat a very good Nashville Predators hockey team. All I can conclude with is, hopefully the Blackhawks are putting forth more effort on the golf course right now than they did on the ice last week.
