Flashback: To when Ryan Kesler almost went to the Chicago Blackhawks

This might be a scary memory for a lot of Chicago Blackhawks fans, but remember when Ryan Kesler almost went to the Chicago Blackhawks in the summer of 2014?

Ryan Kesler was not going to get any younger and he was not going to win a championship in Vancouver, so he requested a trade from the Vancouver Canucks. He wanted to go to a championship quality team to try and win a Stanley Cup. Many people were talking about the Chicago Blackhawks as a potential landing spot for Kesler, but that was a scary thought for many Blackhawks fans.

The idea of having Ryan Kesler on the Chicago Blackhawks was not really appealing to me back in 2014. Yes, he was a great player, but at the same time, he was one of our biggest rivals when we played the Canucks in 2009-2011 in the playoffs. Yes, we ended up getting the best laugh because we would win the Cup, but it would just not seem right to have Kesler on the same team with Toews, especially when you consider how those two always butted heads.

Just imagine for a second, a team with a young Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, with a great second line centerman like Ryan Kesler. While Toews was the best defensive center at the time, Kesler was just as good. This would have allowed the Blackhawks to let Toews play some more offense and score some more goals. It would also give Patrick Kane a great centerman. That is no disrespect to all of the other linemates Kane has had on the second line behind Jonathan Toews, but at the same time, Kesler would have been his best linemate.

Just the thought of Kesler with all of those guys seems kind of interesting, even if we did not like him across the ice. However, I think we get the final laugh here. Not only did we not have to give up an absurd amount of draft picks and prospects to Vancouver to bring Kesler in, but we also got to beat him in a game seven of the Conference Finals to grab our ticket to the Stanley Cup final for the third time in six seasons, something Kesler only got to do once, oh and they did not even win in the final.