- [Narrator] In 2005, the Chicago Blackhawks
had missed the NHL playoffs
in six of the last seven seasons.
That's when owner Rocky Wirtz
hired general manager Dale Tallon to rebuild the roster
of what ESPN called the worst franchise in sports.
Just two years later,
Chicago would boast a pair of generational superstars
ready to headline a modern dynasty.
The Blackhawks took center Jonathan Toews
third overall in the 2006 draft,
and a year later, won the lottery,
literally and figuratively,
selecting winger Patrick Kane first overall.
The franchise now had two future megastars
at the same time they were already developing
a defensive core of Duncan Keith,
Brent Seabrook, and Niklas Hjalmarsson,
with prospects like winger Bryan Bickell in development.
After trading for the Flyers' Patrick Sharp,
a title caliber foundation was in place.
Off the ice, Wirtz lured
Chicago Cubs president John McDonough across town,
not just to oversee a rebuild of this Original Six franchise
but, like McDonough had created for the Cubs,
a transformation of the Blackhawks into a cultural brand.
Finally, Joel Quenneville was promoted to head coach
in 2008 to stabilize a bench
that had seen eight head coaches since 1998.
By the time the baby Blackhawks lost to Detroit
in the 2009 Western Conference Finals,
Forbes magazine already hailed the franchise
as the greatest sports-business turnaround ever.
Believing a championship was close,
Tallon signed veteran winger Marian Hossa
to a huge 12-year, $62 million contract.
Hossa was meant to be a missing piece
to an almost perfect picture, and a year later,
the Blackhawks won their first Stanley Cup since 1961,
defeating the Philadelphia Flyers in six games.
During a hangover season in 2011,
Chicago drafted winger Brandon Saad,
and longtime backup goalie Corey Crawford
became the permanent starter and a fan favorite.
Chicago would lose another first-round playoff series
in 2012 before the NHL lockout,
but the Hawks bounced back in a shortened 2013 campaign,
winning the Presidents' Trophy
and beating Boston in a legendary six-game Stanley Cup.
After they were knocked off
by eventual Cup champs Los Angeles in 2014,
the Hawks came right back to beat Tampa Bay
for a third Stanley Cup in 2015.
Three Cups in five years, led by two young superstars
and a dynamic core of supporting players.
Chicago had already completed a dynasty,
and there was no reason this group
couldn't keep going at a championship level.
But even superstars can't do it alone.
Along the way to becoming hockey's
best franchise of the decade,
Chicago's promising youth had evolved
into veteran superstars, with contract demands to match.
But let's back up a second,
because Tallon, the GM who built this dynasty,
was actually gone before the Hawks' first Cup win.
Before the 2009-'10 season,
the NHLPA filed a grievance against Chicago,
claiming Tallon had waited too long
to offer qualifying offers to restricted free agents,
which ultimately resulted in Chicago
paying more to retain a few of their players.
All things considered, it was a minor gaffe at the time,
but enough for McDonough to demote Tallon
and promote assistant GM Stan Bowman,
son of NHL coaching legend Scotty Bowman.
Tallon quickly resigned.
Even as a GM, he was well liked by players,
but Bowman was hockey royalty
and understood to be McDonough's guy.
During the excitement of the dynasty run,
the new GM pulled off what Chicago fans demanded,
locking up both Kane and Toews
to identical eight-year extensions in 2014
at an average annual value of $10.5 million each.
Both players had offers for more money on other teams,
but the logic of all involved
was that Chicago and its superstar duo
would be stronger together.
And both deals featured no-trade clauses,
further cementing the pair's presence
for the decade to come.
Now that two players made up roughly a third
of the Hawks' payroll in 2015 and beyond,
one of the very first casualties of this investment
was Saad, who was traded to Columbus
when Chicago couldn't fit his contract demands.
If Tallon was the architect of these dynasty Hawks,
Bowman became the custodian,
and because Chicago was so good and so young
and so popular seemingly all at once,
these Blackhawks' real rival wasn't the hated Red Wings
or the Crosby-Malkin Penguins
or the Kings' neutral zone defense;
it was the salary cap.
Remember that lockout in 2012 and 2013?
To resume play, the league and the players' union
settled on a $60 million salary cap
subject to an annual adjustment in either direction
based on league revenue.
So when something as random as Canadian crude oil prices
drove down the value of the loonie in 2014,
it lessened the revenue of the NHL's
seven Canadian franchises,
lowering the cap growth for the following season.
For teams carrying big contracts,
the difference of a few million dollars
could reshape an entire offseason,
and Chicago was shouldering some serious debt.
But even with a tighter purse,
the Blackhawks still needed to keep their defense in place.
Bowman chose to pair Keith and Seabrook for the long run,
signing Seabrook to a huge deal
alongside a 13-year extension
that Keith signed back in 2009.
The Blackhawks expected another Cup run
with their now-expensive young core.
That meant Bowman's margin for error would be nonexistent,
and Kane and Toews would have to be perpetually awesome.
To create some breathing room under the cap,
Chicago traded Sharp, a fan favorite,
to division rival Dallas.
But at least for the 2015-'16 regular season,
the price tags matched the hockey.
Kane especially played like a $10 1/2 million superstar,
scoring a league-best 106 points
amidst a sexual assault investigation
in his hometown of Buffalo.
But another potential dream season
disappeared in the playoffs.
Chicago was minus Keith for Game 1
after he was suspended for six games after a high stick.
St. Louis jumped to a 3-1 series lead,
and winger Andrew Shaw was suspended for one game
after using a homophobic slur against a referee in Game 4.
The superstars went silent.
Kane was held to just one goal and Toews went scoreless.
Still, Chicago managed to scrape back,
tying the series and forcing a Game 7.
But a freak shot on goal by Seabrook
that bounced off both posts
was initially called a game-tying goal.
After video review, it was called off
and St. Louis knocked out the defending champions
in the first round.
From a distance,
this was a brutally close loss against a division rival,
but with Kane and Toews as non-factors,
the series was also a new blueprint
on how to beat these post-dynasty Hawks.
If you take the two big names out,
Chicago wasn't so scary anymore.
With a handful of players chewing up payroll
from then on out, Bowman would be forced to hit
on almost every other minor contract and ancillary trade
to maintain Chicago's quality depth.
He couldn't afford to miss on any deal that ate up cap room,
such as Bryan Bickell.
After Bickell exploded for nine goals in the 2013 playoffs,
Bowman signed him to a four-year, $16 million deal.
But Bickell's production plummeted
and his $4 million annual cap hit
became an albatross for Bowman,
who finally unloaded him in a trade with Carolina in 2016
in exchange for draft picks.
Luckily, a gift from Russia had already landed on the ice.
Calder-winning rookie forward Artemi Panarin
helped mask the effect
of an increasingly apparent cap crunch
just as Toews and Kane peaked as legit superstars.
Chicago's headliners carried the load in the 2016 season,
even with Toews battling through injuries.
The Hawks finished with 109 points
and the first seed in the Western Conference,
led by the top-heavy line of Kane,
Panarin, and Artem Anisimov.
As long as you didn't look too far down the roster,
these Blackhawks were still a superstar team in their prime
capable of another Cup.
Then everything disappeared in four games.
The Blackhawks were swept in the first round
by a comparatively no-name Nashville Predators team
that swallowed Toews and Kane whole.
Nashville goaltender Pekka Rinne
allowed only three goals in the entire series,
with a .976 save percentage.
It was the first eight-over-one sweep in NHL playoff history
and the first postseason sweep of the Blackhawks since 1993.
Just like the previous postseason, Chicago fell down early,
but there was no chance of a comeback.
Nashville outscored the Hawks 6-0
in Games 1 and 2 at the United Center.
Toews, still just 28, was shockingly mortal
against a faster, more aggressive Predators team.
His only goal of the series came down three in Game 4,
while Chicago's expensive defense looked alarmingly slow,
leaving Crawford on his own.
This wasn't the close, gritty loss
like the seven-game series against the Blues a year prior.
This was a total blowout,
a sweep at the hands of a franchise
considered to be Chicago's little brother.
Bowman called the sweep unacceptable
and deemed the season a complete disappointment.
When asked if complacency had set in around the franchise
after three Stanley Cups, Bowman raged, "If that's the case,
then we're going to get rid of those people.
Because the only reason we come here is to win the Cup."
A wild overcorrection began.
To kickstart a youth movement on defense,
the GM pulled a series of shockers,
first trading Hjalmarsson,
arguably the team's healthiest and most reliable defenseman,
to the Coyotes for Connor Murphy and Laurent Dauphin.
Then, in a stunner, he sent Panarin to Columbus
to return fan favorite Saad
in addition to prospects and draft picks.
Panarin, a player Kane himself
credited with making his own game better,
was traded for a less-effective veteran version of himself
with the same cap hit but a few extra years of control.
Oh, and both players were favorites of Quenneville,
creating friction between the coach and GM.
Panarin represented the best and worst parts
of Chicago's front office.
They had an eye for young talent
and were smart shoppers on the international market,
but couldn't hold onto rising stars
once they reached market value.
Bowman dealt a player
who would become a top-10 forward in the league,
knowing that he'd never be able to fit
an inevitable long-term deal for Panarin
under their bloated cap.
Despite the fact he'd arrived at just the right time
to help compensate for an expensive, aging group,
Panarin was too good.
And when Saad was traded away for prospects again
just a few years later,
the Hawks basically had nothing to show for Panarin,
a superstar who could've been the bridge
to another title run.
Bowman had shaken up the roster to shake off their sweep,
and now the last thing Chicago could afford
would be an unexpected injury
to any of their remaining core players.
Which, yeah, it's hockey, so that's bound to happen,
but no one saw the end of Marian Hossa's career coming.
In June of 2017,
the Hawks announced that Hossa would miss an entire season
due to an aggressive form of eczema.
The otherwise healthy veteran,
who was still a reliable goal scorer,
had developed a rare severe skin allergy
to his own equipment.
Hossa literally couldn't put on his own pads
without aggravating his condition,
and while Chicago was able to use his status
as a long-term injured reserve
to move his big contract off the books,
they couldn't replace his offense.
A year later, the remainder of Hossa's deal
was traded to the Coyotes,
and after league doctors determined the side effects
of the medication treating his eczema
were too severe to play effectively,
Hossa stopped playing and announced that he'd retire
at the end of his contract.
Down Hossa and Panarin and only getting older,
the Hawks scrambled,
re-signing an aging Sharp after a two-year stint in Dallas,
only to have him retire at season's end;
as well as a slew of cheap veterans
like Tommy Wingels, Lance Bouma, and Cody Franson,
all in an effort to build immediate depth.
But the patchwork slapped across
the 2017-'18 roster busted open
when Crawford missed the second half of the season
with an upper body injury believed to be a concussion.
Crawford's game had arguably improved
since the team's Stanley Cup run,
to the point where he could've been considered
the team's actual MVP.
And when they lost his .929 save percentage
after just 28 games,
an aging, thin defense was badly exposed.
Kane and Toews still played like stars,
combining for 128 points,
but Chicago was a team that, according to Saad,
just lacked confidence.
They finished with 76 points, 19 shy of the playoffs,
missing the postseason for the first time in 10 years.
The signs had obvious, but now it was a reality.
The ride was over.
All of a sudden the hockey world could see Chicago
for what they actually were: victims of their own success.
The kismet of draft luck and a near-perfect hot streak
of young signings was long gone.
Now, almost a decade later, Bowman, the guy after the guy,
just looked desperate, constantly rolling the dice
on small, short contracts and trades
to create space for those cheap deals.
After the cap-mandated youth movement
had failed to keep playoff momentum,
Bowman immediately used the space
freed up by Hossa's retirement
and traded for another group of veterans:
Chris Kunitz, Brandon Manning, and goalie Cam Ward,
potentially to permanently replace a still-injured Crawford.
Things certainly looked bleak in the front office,
but as team president,
McDonough gave a public vote of confidence
to both Bowman and Quenneville,
who had just coached through his first losing season
in 21 years.
McDonough promised that both
would return the following season.
That lasted 34 days into the 2018-'19 regular season.
After a five-game losing streak in November,
Chicago fired Quenneville and replaced him
with Jeremy Colliton from Chicago's AHL affiliate.
Despite a pedigree coaching career, three Stanley Cups,
and a top-heavy roster and cap hell for multiple seasons,
McDonough assumed that Bowman could still figure out a way
to rejigger a quality supporting cast
underneath its big names,
but a change on the bench would spark a roster
suffering from age and that perpetual patchworking.
It did not.
Instead of a spark, Colliton just ignited friction
with many of the team's Cup-winning veterans,
especially Seabrook, when he tried to overhaul
the defensive scheme mid-season,
and Chicago finished six points out of the playoffs.
Yes, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews were still superstars,
but finally and inevitably,
that's where it ended for the Blackhawks.
After another flurry of trades,
Chicago entered the COVID-19 suspension of play
in March of 2020 at a mediocre 32-30-8,
having suffered a string of injuries
to Seabrook, Saad, and others.
Looking for his own spark,
owner Rocky Wirtz opted not to fire Bowman,
saving the GM yet again, and instead sacked McDonough.
Out went the man who took a franchise
from blacked out of their own TV market
to an 855-game sellout streak and three championships.
In October of 2020, the team released a public statement
that touted their commitment to, quote,
"developing young players and rebuilding our roster."
Soon after, every supporting player
from the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup run was unloaded.
Bowman didn't renew the contract of Crawford, now 35
and third in career wins all-time in franchise history.
After Chicago missed the playoffs again
following a shortened season,
Duncan Keith requested a trade
to finish his career closer to home
and was dealt to Edmonton,
while Brent Seabrook was sent to Tampa
where he would soon retire.
Toews, still a Blackhawk, opted to sit out the 2021 season
due to an immune system condition.
And despite a still-growing list of blunders
and the inarguable fact that he could never recreate
the core Tallon had built to support Kane and Toews,
Bowman kept dealing, still firing away
while his pair of superstars had their window.
The man who critics say usurped his position
on the eve of those three championships
had managed to outlast the boss he politicked to get the job
and the coach he'd stymied with bad trades.
Having too many superstars is certainly a good problem,
but it's still a problem.
No franchise in the NHL's salary cap era
shined as bright and as suddenly as the Blackhawks,
but you can't win with just a pair of aces,
and after failing to maintain or replace the production
of their supporting players during the Cup run,
Chicago was an old, expensive husk of its championship self,
no matter the names left on the marquee.
Just a year after that public commitment
to developing those young players,
Chicago sent highly touted defensive prospect Adam Boqvist,
two first-round picks, and one second
to Columbus for veteran Seth Jones,
coming off of a terrible season for the Blue Jackets.
Then Bowman immediately signed Jones
to a $76 million extension with a huge annual cap hit.
It was just the latest in a series of questionable moves,
but however Jones figured into Bowman's
latest retooling or rebuilding scheme never mattered.
For all of the Blackhawks' desperation
to maintain a championship facade,
something far worse had been present in the franchise
since the beginning of their dynasty.
On May 13th, 2021, former Blackhawks player Kyle Beach
filed suit against the team,
alleging that the Blackhawks worked to cover up, quote,
"a prolonged sexual assault" of Beach
by former assistant coach Brad Aldrich in 2010.
Beach's suit prompted an investigation that found,
in May of 2010, a meeting of Blackhawks leadership
that included Bowman, Quenneville, and McDonough took place
to acknowledge Beach's assault allegations against Aldrich.
But team leadership concluded
that no action would take place
until after Chicago's playoff run
and eventual Stanley Cup championship concluded.
According to the investigation,
Bowman recalled that, after learning of the incident,
Quenneville shook his head and said
it was hard for the team to get to where it was,
and they could not deal with this issue now.
On October 26th, 2021,
Bowman was one of multiple Blackhawks executives
who resigned from the team
in response to the internal investigation.
Quenneville, then the head coach of the Florida Panthers,
also stepped down.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman
stated that anyone involved in the Blackhawks coverup
would have to meet officially with him
before pursuing any future job in the NHL.
The very end of the Blackhawks' darling run
of championships and business accolades
started at the beginning,
because for three weeks between May and June of 2010,
Aldrich was allowed by the leadership
of Chicago's hockey renaissance
to continue working with the team,
interacting directly with his alleged victims
and even riding in the championship parade.
According to the report,
Aldrich also made an unwanted sexual advance
to an intern during that period.
Chicago eventually allowed him to resign with severance
after the 2010 postseason.
The Blackhawks did not report his behavior to authorities,
and Aldrich would go on to coach at a Michigan high school
where he would plead guilty
to sexual contact with a student.
His name was etched on the Stanley Cup
as part of the Blackhawks' first championship in 49 years.