Chicago Blackhawks Page 8

  And that hero, fittingly, turned out to be Hossa. The Blackhawks finished off the kill, and Hossa stepped out of the box and drifted immediately toward Rinne’s right side—the same spot from which Kane scored the equalizer, only on the other end of the rink. Sopel fired a shot from the far point, and the deflection came right to Hossa, who smacked it in for the game-winner. Hossa did a rock-star power slide from his knees, twirling as he pumped both fists in jubilation.

  Just like that, Hossa was off the hook. Just like that, the Blackhawks had a 3–2 series lead. Just like that, the Blackhawks were on their way to their first Stanley Cup in 49 years.

  “Every team has one of those moments where it’s going to go one way or the other,” Andrew Ladd says. “You get past that piece of adversity and your confidence goes through the roof. Being down, being in the box with no time remaining in the game, we didn’t think we really had much of a shot to even get an opportunity to tie it. Ninety-nine times out of 100, you’re not scoring shorthanded with a minute left in a playoff game to take the game to overtime. But we did it.”

  It was an absurd, unthinkable, impossible victory. Hossa knew it. He felt it. But the rest of the guys? Hey, no big deal.

  “Everyone always wonders how we did so well that first year,” Brouwer says. “It was sheer dumb confidence. We didn’t know any better. Us young guys, I don’t think we knew the magnitude of what was going on at the time. We’re just going out there having fun, playing hockey. I remember after we got through that series, Kris Versteeg and his girlfriend, and Colin Fraser and his girlfriend, came over to my house. We were sitting there around the dinner table—I’m 24, Fraz is 25, Steeger is 23—and we’re just openly talking about how there’s nobody that’s going to beat us. You’re not supposed to think things like that, let alone say them out loud. But that was the feeling throughout the entire team. Nobody was going to beat us. It was that dumb confidence. We knew early on that we were going to win the Stanley Cup.”

  Marian Hossa’s goal of redemption against the Nashville Predators in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series in 2010 proved to be a turning point in the Hawks’ run to the Stanley Cup.

  These days, the Blackhawks basically are the Red Wings—the multiple-time champions, the crafty veterans, the indomitable ­intimidators. Tried and tested. Older guys with families who enjoy a quiet night at home even more than a wild night on the road. In his late thirties with two little girls at home, Hossa fits in nicely.

  But being around—and being bailed out by—all those young guys? It might just have added years upon years to Hossa’s career.

  “In Detroit the year before, you go to the wives room and there are so many families and kids running around,” Hossa says. “All of a sudden you go to the wives room in Chicago and it’s just girlfriends, nobody else. It was like a junior team, basically. The guys talked about different things than the older guys in Detroit did, and they went out all the time. It was fun to be part of such an experienced group in Detroit, but it was really fun to be with that young group in Chicago.”

  And it turns out, no, Hossa was not a jinx.

  “If I had never won, if it never happened, then I’d live with it,” Hossa says. “But I didn’t want to think about what-ifs too much. I just tried to focus on that moment during that playoff, and I think that helped me. And when [Kane] scored that big goal to win the Cup in Philadelphia, I’m never going to forget that moment. Best moment in my hockey career.”

  Buff Being Buff

  These days, the Blackhawks are a polished, media-savvy professional outfit. Players say the right things. They dress the right way. They act the right way. They speak in well-­meaning but banal ­platitudes and clichés, and they never stir up any ­controversy. Nobody complains about playing time, nobody complains about Joel Quenneville’s relentless line-tinkering, nobody ­complains about teammates. At least, not publicly. With the ­notable exception of the ham-fisted and tone-deaf Patrick Kane press ­conference about the sexual assault allegation made against him—later dismissed—on the first day of training camp at Notre Dame before the 2015–16 season, the Blackhawks are a well-oiled public-­relations machine.

  But in those early days, when the Blackhawks were still striving for relevance in the crowded Chicago sports scene, things were a little looser. Oh, they remembered all of John McDonough’s rules for the most part but these were basically kids. And rowdy ones, at that.

  But there was nobody quite like Dustin Byfuglien—a guy who once grabbed a police officer’s gun for fun at a bar, who once rode a motorcycle all the way into another bar, who just, in the words of one teammate, “didn’t give a fuck.” It was part of his charm—a unique character on a unique team.

  But the most Byfuglien moment ever might have been at a humdrum press conference at Signature Flight Support—the ­charter-flight portion of O’Hare International Airport in Chicago—during the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs. A few players were there, going through the usual motions of a mid-series interview session. When it was Byfuglien’s turn to speak, he confidently strode to the lectern, looked out at a bunch of cameras and microphones and recorders, and abruptly stated: “Patrick Sharp did not rape that girl.”

  Silence.

  Dustin Byfuglien was a physical presence on the ice and a unique character off it.

  After a very awkward moment, Blackhawks communications director Brandon Faber stammered and soft-shoed his way through an apology/spin session where he desperately tried to make it abundantly clear that Byfuglien was just kidding, and the press conference continued. Byfuglien’s bizarre, out-of-the-blue comment never made it to the air, or to the printed page, or, perhaps most remarkably, to the Internet at all.

  “Faber was going sideways,” says Adam Burish, who was part of that press conference. “He was trying to put the pieces back together.”

  It was just Byfuglien being Byfuglien.

  But even Burish couldn’t believe what Byfuglien had said.

  “Why’d you say that, man?” he asked.

  “I don’t really care,” Byfuglien responded.

  “Buff didn’t care about anything,” Burish says now. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to say whatever I think. I don’t like talking to the media. I don’t like talking to anybody anyway, and I certainly don’t want to talk about hockey. So I’m just going to talk about whatever I want to talk about.’ That was Buff, man. He was one of a kind.”

  “Crazy Uncle” Burish

  Officially, Adam Burish’s contribution to the 2009–10 Chicago Blackhawks was one goal and three assists in 13 regular-season games, along with 15 pointless games in the postseason. He missed most of the regular season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He was a healthy scratch in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Philadelphia Flyers. Game 5, too. Yes, the decisive Game 6, as well.

  On paper, Burish was a footnote to a historic season, a role player playing a very limited role.

  To his teammates, though, Burish was an integral piece of the puzzle. Even a bunch of kids who are “too young and dumb” to know any better can feel the weight of a playoff push, of a 49-year drought, of an entire city aching for a championship. And in those heavy moments, when even Marian Hossa is nervously wondering about his legacy if he were to fail to win a Cup for the third straight season, you need someone to lighten the mood. To make everyone laugh. To remind everyone they’re a bunch of kids playing a game.

  Enter Burish.

  “There’s always that one guy,” Brent Sopel says. “There’s always that one crazy uncle.”

  Burish’s contribution to the 2010 Cup run went beyond playing six minutes a night. It went beyond the occasional “dumbass comment,” in his own words, in the dressing room. It even went beyond annoying the crap out of Kane and Toews, though he was a master of it for three seasons.

  In the spring of 2010, Burish wasn’t just a player. He
was an assistant coach. Sort of.

  Before each playoff series, a typical coach will provide each player with a packet highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of every player they’ll match up against on the other team. It’s generic stuff—plays the half-wall on the power play, likes to shoot from the left circle, has a quick release, shies away from contact, etc. It’s known as a “pre-scout.” Players take it home, study it a bit, and then there’s a big team meeting where it’s all discussed and supplemented with video.

  Joel Quenneville did a pre-scout, too. Only he didn’t provide it. He assigned it as homework.

  Before the first-round series against the Nashville Predators in 2010, Quenneville assigned each of his players an opposing player about whom to write up a report and then present it to the team. They were due in two days. Quenneville then left the room, the mic dropped.

  “All the guys were like, ‘Shit, I’ve gotta do homework? I’ve gotta speak in front of the team?’” Burish recalls. “Guys were nervous. They’re all, ‘What do I say? What do you mean “a report”?’”

  For some players, it was a nightmare. Public speaking isn’t everyone’s strong suit. But few players enjoy the spotlight more than Burish. And sensing his teammates were tense and rattled by the assignment, he took it upon himself to loosen things up. That was his job, after all.

  Burish’s assignment was Jordin Tootoo. And rather than just point out that Tootoo was quick to drop the gloves, that his penalty minutes were down that season, that he wasn’t much of a scorer, and that he made up in scrappiness what he lacked in size, Burish wrote a song. Two verses, set to Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” just mercilessly making fun of Tootoo. He only let the athletic trainers and equipment staff in on his plan in advance.

  When the time came for the pre-scout, seven or eight Blackhawks went ahead of Burish. It was standard stuff: “Shea Weber’s got a big shot on the power play, plays with Ryan Suter, blah blah blah.” Nobody was learning much, nobody was interested much.

  “Bur, you’re up,” Quenneville growled. “You’ve got Jordin Tootoo.”

  Immediately, a Blackhawks staffer wheeled a stool out of the trainer’s room. Another brought out Burish’s guitar and dramatically handed it to Burish, who was now sitting center stage. The song lasted about two and a half minutes.

  Burish was singing. Players were howling. Quenneville could barely breathe.

  The lyrics are lost to history, but everyone remembers the gist.

  “Bur just destroyed him,” Sopel says. “Fucking brutal.”

  The following round, Quenneville again assigned pre-scouts to every player. Burish drew Vancouver’s Alexandre Burrows. And again, rather than explain how Burrows managed a career-high 35 goals that season, or how to exploit his physical nature and tendency to take penalties, Burish wrote a song making fun of him. This time, it was set to Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”

  “Just blasting him,” Burish recalls with a laugh.

  After dispatching the Canucks in six games, the Blackhawks had four days off before opening the Western Conference final in San Jose. They flew straight there from Vancouver. As Burish got off the bus and walked into the hotel lobby, he saw Quenneville waiting at the front desk. It was an unsettling sight, as Quenneville’s usually first off the bus, first to grab his room key, and first to disappear. As Burish grabbed his key off the table, Quenneville said, “Bur, can you come here for a second?”

  For a moment, panicked thoughts ran through Burish’s mind.

  “I need to ask you something,” Quenneville said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want you to do the whole pre-scout on San Jose.”

  “Wait. What? What do you mean?”

  “I want you to do everybody. I’m not going to give the guys any players. Tomorrow’s a day off, and the next day at the rink, I want you to do the whole report. Guys won’t even have time to think about not getting assigned a guy. They’re probably wondering when we’re going to do it. I want you to do the whole thing. Can you handle it?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure. I think so. That’s a lot of work, though.”

  “You can handle it.”

  “All right.”

  As Quenneville started to walk away, he turned back.

  “You better make it good.”

  A few minutes later, Burish was sitting in his hotel room at the desk, with a blank piece of paper and a pen, staring into the void and wondering what the hell he was going to do. His roommate, Patrick Sharp, had seen Burish do a lot of strange things on the road. But studying was not one of them.

  So after a brief inquisition, Burish let Sharp in on Quenneville’s assignment.

  “No way,” Sharp said.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” Burish said. “He told me not to tell anybody.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, man, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t sing a song about everybody. That’ll take forever.”

  “Well, good luck.” And with that, Sharp left.

  Eventually, Burish scratched out a lengthy poem, with some heavy audience participation to get his teammates involved. When the time came, Burish handed scraps of paper to a dozen or so teammates. And one by one, he teed them up for their part in the poem.

  “I start the rhyming, da da da da, da da da, what do you have to say, Patrick Sharp?” Burish recalls. “And then he has a verse about Patrick Marleau. But his part is making fun of himself while he’s making fun of Marleau. ‘I’m so much better-looking than Patrick Marleau, I put on more makeup and hair gel,’ stuff like that. And then I give one to Dustin Byfuglien. And it’s on Dany Heatley. ‘Everybody says he parties and drinks so hard, well, I party and drink way more than this guy.’ Just embarrassing him in front of the coaches by ­making him tell them how much he drinks and goes out. Then I give one to Quenneville, and it was all his little quirky lines that he says, and they all rhymed. Something like, ‘We gotta get on these ­stupid, cunty refs, and we need to do a lot of hard rims, and if we don’t do enough fucking hard rims I’m gonna fucking kill you guys.’ And he’s reading all this, and guys are just dying, and he was ­laughing, too. Thankfully.”

  The Homer-esque epic ended with goalie coach Stephane Waite’s part. Goalie pre-scouts tend to be painfully obvious. “When he’s down, shoot up”—duh. “He doesn’t like traffic in front of him”—as if any goalie does. So Burish had ridiculous video clips to ­accompany the usual goalie axioms. “Get him moving side to side”—a video of a 2-on-0 rush with a comically easy backdoor tap-in. “He has a real tough time with traffic”—a video of four unchecked players standing in front of a poor goalie as a puck whizzes over his shoulder.

  “Just so stupid,” Burish says.

  Quenneville rarely, if ever, changes his lineup after a run-of-the-mill regular-season victory. So after the sweep of the Sharks, it was a given that Burish would again be in charge of the pre-scout for the Stanley Cup Final against the Philadelphia Flyers.

  “Bur, you’re doing it again,” Quenneville told him. “The whole team. And this needs to be the biggest, baddest one yet. It’s the Final. Bur, can you do it?”

  “Yeah, Q, I’ll think of something.”

  “It’s gotta be big, though.”

  “Yeah, okay, Q. I got it.”

  This time, Burish went visual. He roped the Blackhawks TV crew into helping him make a 15-minute movie starring Burish as all of his teammates doing their pre-scouts. Thanks to the sweep, the Blackhawks had five days off before the start of the Final. Burish needed every one of them.

  Fade in on Burish wearing a No. 10 Patrick Sharp jersey, ­standing in front of a mirror, putting makeup on, adjusting his hair.

  “Hey, Patrick Sharp, can we talk to you a little bit about Claude Giroux?” the interviewer asked.

  “Yeah hang on, let me finish putting on this eye
shadow,” Burish-as-Sharp says. “How do you guys think I look today? How are my teeth? Are they white? Giroux? He sucks. He’s not as good as me. I’m the Sharp Shooter. He likes to shoot from that ­backdoor on the power play, but he can’t do it as good as me. He’s gonna try, though.”

  Zoom in on Burish, wearing a No. 19 Jonathan Toews jersey in bed, because that’s all Toews did—play hockey and sleep all the time.

  “Jonathan, can we get an interview with you?”

  “Aw, man, leave me alone,” Burish-as-Toews says. “I always have to do all the interviews. Why don’t you guys ask Kane? Get Kane do to the interview. Why do you make me do it every time?”

  “Just real quick, talk about…”

  Quick cut to Burish in a No. 88 Patrick Kane jersey, in the back of a taxi, berating the unseen cabbie.

  “Hey! You’d better speed up or I’m gonna beat your ass!”

  Pan over to Burish in a No. 81 Marian Hossa jersey, sitting in a Lamborghini at a Gold Coast dealership the noted car-fetishist Hossa frequented.

  “Marian, can we talk to you?”

  “Don’t bother me. I don’t do interviews.”

  This went on and on. Each “player” dropped a few relevant ­nuggets about a Flyer, but it was mostly Burish mocking his own teammates for 15 minutes. And yes, that was the last video the Chicago Blackhawks saw on the day before they faced the Flyers with the city’s first Stanley Cup in five decades on the line.

  (It’s worth pointing out here that Quenneville and his staff did actually provide packets on the Sharks and Flyers, and that there was a standard video session, too.)