Did you know the Chicago Blackhawks are playing meaningful games?
Yup. They actually opened the season on Friday and lost to the New York Rangers 4-2. Christian Huet had 25 saves, and Duncan Keith and Patrick Kane scored goals.
They played again on Saturday and lost to Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, again by the score of 4-2. This time Nikolai Khabibulin had 30 saves and Kris Versteeg and Jack Skille had goals.
The Blackhawks home opener is tonight. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at this site. Music has more entries on MidwestSportsFans.com. The NHL has absolutely no presence on this site, despite having franchises in Detroit, Columbus, St. Louis and Nashville that would be considered Midwest.
I can’t speak for the other cities listed (except for Detroit, where hockey is king), but the Blackhawks have made a concerted effort to get the word out there that the Hawks do, in fact, still play hockey. And they’ll be playing hockey at home – ON TELEVISION. I’ve even seen commercials for the Hawks, something I haven’t seen since the days of Hawkvision. Throughout the year at US Cellular field there were Blackhawks-sponsored events, like goal shooting with baseballs, Hawk and DJ wearing Hawks jerseys for one broadcast, and players throwing out the first pitch. And possibly the biggest coup of all was getting the Winter Classic game (to be held at Wrigley Field, which seats about 40,000 as opposed to Soldier Field, which holds about 61,000) against Detroit on January 1, 2009. Rocky Wirtz and John McDonough have done an outstanding job of getting Chicago aware of the Blackhawks again.
But you wouldn’t know it.
After the strike of 2004-2005, many fans chose not to care about hockey anymore (except the Canadians). Older fans chose other “sports†to watch and attend, like NASCAR, bass fishing and bowling. The younger fans gravitated towards more “X-treme†things like skateboarding, snowboarding, and bike riding. The NHL still has a lot to do with respect to getting the fans back.
And it all starts with winning.
[tags]ice hockey, nhl, chicago blackhawks[/tags]
