The First and Hopefully Not The Last Chicago Blackhawks SI Cover In My Lifetime

This weeks Sports Illustrated cover. (Picture courtesy of insidesportsillustrated.com)

When the calendar turns towards  spring the only cover of  Sports Illustrated on people’s minds is the swimsuit issue, but a historical thing happened which brought hockey and the Blackhawks back into national focus.

There are two pretty ironic things that happened with the Blackhawks making the SI national cover. One is that the legend says getting on the SI cover is a jinx and since the SI reporter arrived the Hawks have lost two straight games. The second thing that is ironic about the SI cover is who was on the last national cover which was Bobby Hull. The announcement comes on the anniversary of Hull becoming the first Blackhawk to score his 50th goal.

Hull on the last Blackhawks SI cover (photo courtesy of the SI Vault picture taken by Tony Triolo)

The Hawks have  lost a Stanley Cup final to the Pittsburgh Penguins and won a Stanley Cup championship and none of that has made a national covers of Sports Illustrated, but the Hawks putting together a Cal Ripken like streak which brought baseball back to prominence after their lockout got them back on the cover.  The Hawks may have not saved hockey but they brought it back not to where it was before the lockout but to higher ground with almost record ratings on a nightly basis from regular season games on local cable outlets, to NBCSN, to Nationally broad-casted games on NBC.

The Hawks streak may have ended but the story isn’t over just a  new chapter of the 2013 Blackhawks. It took my entire lifetime for SI to write a national cover about the Blackhawks and even though the streak is over hopefully their will be one more cover for the magazine to take when it’s all said and done let’s just call it a sequal.

What do you think about the Hawks getting a SI national cover?

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