Chicago Blackhawks Make Case For Worst Team Of Kane/Toews Era

The Chicago Blackhawks once again shocked the hockey world, like they have so many times since Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane first donned Blackhawks sweaters. The only difference is this time the shocking achievement was an embarrassing first-round sweep that leaves the organization with a lot of questions heading into a long summer.

In the 2007-08 NHL season, there was a newfound sense of hope surrounding the Chicago Blackhawks for the first time since the early 90s. Two promising rookies in Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane joined the team and immediately left their mark. The team missed the playoffs that year, but Blackhawks fans were about to witness the best decade of hockey in Chicago’s long history.

A decade that saw the Blackhawks make the conference finals five times, winning three times, also saw them bring home three championships. The era has had memorable moments such as a 24-game point streak that revitalized hockey not only in Chicago, but in the United States as well coming off a disastrous lockout.

It’s a period that has seen general manager Stan Bowman retool and revamp a championship-caliber team with his back against the salary cap wall time and again when everyone said he couldn’t.

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Maybe this time the naysayers were right, though. Maybe the cap wall finally squeezed Bowman’s organizational wallet too thin in the Blackhawks’ first-round playoff exit against Nashville on Thursday.

Maybe Toews has hit and passed his peak after a second straight sub-par season in which the captain just did not look like the dominant two-way center we’re used to. After filling holes with NHL-ready farm players for so long, maybe the organizational reserves were depleted. Has legendary head coach Joel Quenneville lost the room?

There are so many questions this organization and its players will be left thinking about this long summer. So many nights spent wondering what could have been for a 50-win regular-season team that made a remarkable late-season comeback to not only win the division, but the entire conference.

But those 50 wins are for naught, and it may not be too much of a stretch to say this is the worst Blackhawks team since the dark days ended with Kane and Toews’ arrival, worse than even the ’08 team that missed the playoffs entirely.

What has changed — and reasons for hope

Credit the Nashville Predators in this series — they beat the Blackhawks the same way the Blackhawks have dominated other teams for years, with pure speed and possession. It’s somewhat ironic that the Blackhawks, who arguably perfected this new style of speed-based hockey, let it become they’re undoing. The league saw what the Blackhawks did and copied it with younger teams and cheaper contracts.

Next season, Toews and Kane will be entering their 29th year. They are certainly not old, but they are definitely not the young new faces of the NHL anymore, and that’s a tough pill to swallow for Blackhawks fans.

It certainly is for me. It no longer feels like Stanley Cup parades will be a regular part of Chicago summers, and we may have to grapple with the idea that we have seen our last Stanley Cup in this era.

This is clearly a very pessimistic piece, but I want to offer mourning fans a bit of hope, because even for me, writing this is like sprinkling salt in a deep, fresh wound. The club’s two franchise cornerstones are still only 29, and a long summer for them could do wonders for freshening up their bodies and minds, and maybe this embarrassing exit will make them truly angry for next season.

But let’s move past just those two players for now — they are known commodities, and that won’t change in one season. The story of this season was about the new guys. While the team’s rookies didn’t perform at all in the playoffs like they did in the regular season, there are glimmers of hope.

If you expected a prospect that the organization was ready to give up on in Ryan Hartman to score 19 goals this season, you’re lying to yourself. The player Nick Schmaltz grew into this season was a player who was exciting to watch and can only improve more.

Tanner Kero could replace Marcus Kruger if he departs in the Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft this summer. Trevor Van Riemsdyk has developed into a flawed, but dependable defenseman, and there are a few more prospects rearing to get started in Gustav Forsling, Michal Kempny, Vinnie Hinostroza, Tyler Motte, John Hayden and phenom Alex DeBrincat.

Richard Panik came out of nowhere and became a true top-six forward after he couldn’t even make the Toronto Maple Leafs last year when it was a cellar dweller, rather than the upstart it is today, and find of the century Artemi Panarin will continue to develop.

Next: Chicago Blackhawks’ Youngsters Went Missing Against Predators

The Blackhawks lost and they lost bad. They have a lot of work to do and a lot of questions to answer, but they have proven so many wrong so many times this past decade, and even coming off this disastrous effort, you can never count these Blackhawks out.